As any successful entrepreneur will know, there are a lot of different factors that make up the perfect business. You need to have a strong team behind you, state of the art computing systems and be aware of all the latest marketing trends, to name just a few things. However, you also need to perfect the glue that holds your company together, and this glue is internal communications. We all know the scary statistics about all the small businesses which fold within the first couple of years, and many of these cases are largely down to poor communication between teams. If you have started to see a fair amount of success with your business, you have probably already begun to expand your internal team – you may even have hundreds of employees under your wing already. So, to keep everything running smoothly, you need to ensure that you have a workable communications system in place so that nothing is amiss.
Email protocol
A huge percentage of work communication is carried out via internal emails – in fact; it is the most common way in which members of staff speak to each other, even if they are sat in the same office! Email has a lot of benefits – such as being able to have a proven record of what was said/decided between groups of people – but it can also bring up a lot of issues too. The main one is that everyone checks and responds to their emails differently, which can result in some being unanswered for ages while others are prioritized straight away. Speak to your team and suggest that you brainstorm a few options for company-wide email protocol – it will make everyone’s jobs a lot easier.
Phone protocol
We all have urgent moments at work when we need to speak to someone directly. Or, sometimes it’s just good to speak to someone in person rather than typing out a lengthy email. Whatever it is, having an internal phone system can be a huge asset to your business. Speak to a company such as VoIP Phone Solutions about what would work best for your team’s needs. Chances are you’ll need a lot of different lines setting up, and every individual employee will need their own handset, so it can be worth putting some money into this addition to your business to get the best results.
Out-of-work contact rules
No one wants to be that nightmare boss who calls up their employees at 3 in the morning, asking if they can urgently do some paperwork. After all, everyone deserves a work/life balance, and studies show that employees work better too when their life isn’t all about their job. But equally, you need to know that you can count on your staff to help you out at short notice if you need them to. Consider providing your staff with work cell phones and if you know you have a particularly busy time coming up, consider using an instant messaging service so you can contact them in a non-disruptive manner, should you need to.
