It can be hard to communicate with your employees and them with each other throughout the day, as no one is ever in the right place at the right time, so to speak. Also, it is no secret how critical effective communication is within a business. Not only is it critical for employees to be able to communicate with each other, but also that they can interconnect with one another. Such effective communication allows for a business to take full advantage of the knowledge, talent and the insights of its people.
When a business and its people are able to communicate adequately, increasing profits become the inevitable reality, as the sense of community builds from within. As employees begin to feel more open and confident with their surroundings, the overall sense of happiness and assurance will increase, leading to consistent surpassing of goals.
In order to develop a corporate culture that is built on the foundation of robust internal communication, firms can implement a number of business solutions to drive employee morale and therefore improve their bottom line.
- Evernote
How effectively a company internally communicates mainly depends on the coherency within the business. Evernote is very much like sticky notes that one would use to write notes to themselves, only they are available for your whole team to see. This app has a free version available that not only allows you to post notes to your staff, but also to take audio notes, store images, and clip web pages. These notes are available across devices to be viewed anytime, from anywhere.
- Mailbox
Mailbox is a free email app that was recently purchased by Dropbox. It is also award winning, and it supports Yahoo, Gmail, me.com and also mac.com email accounts. This app is a communication-organization dynasty that works with:
- iPad
- iPhone
- Android
- Mac OS X
It only makes sense to leave the organization of your inbox to the pros, let Mailbox take care of the hard stuff so that you can focus on improving internal communication within your business.
- VOIP
In the current years, Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP) has gained immense popularity. Nowadays, VoIP phone systems are emerging as adequate alternatives to the substandard Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). In case you are not familiar, PSTN refers to the dinosaur aged analog phone system. VoIP phone systems, on the other hand, tap into internet connectivity to digitally transmit your telephone signal. Using a VoIP phone system for your business not only will save you money, but it will also allow employees to communicate anytime, from virtually anywhere.
- SIP Trunking
Taking advantage of SIP (Sessions Initiation Protocol), an advanced use of VoIP phone systems, will allow you to make use of progressive multimedia communications. These advanced efforts will give way to innovative voice, video and data capabilities for you and your employees. In order to take advantage of these forward-thinking multimedia communications, you must first contact your Internet Telephony Service Provider to allow you to set up the capability to have multiple phone lines simultaneously communicating over the internet. The first step will be to configure a SIP Trunk, of which you will be guided through the process of. Once you have accomplished this, you will be able to take your business number with you anywhere, meaning you will never miss a chance to communicate with your team. Moreover, the SIP trunks are virtual instead of physical systems, thus maintaining them is a lot easier than the traditional lines.
- Asana
Using a project management tool like Asana is critical in maintaining effective internal communication within your business. This tool can be used to keep all info regarding each project in one convenient place. It is fast and easy to set up and requires minimal effort to manage. The design of this software is geared toward those individuals that are “list makers.” Asana allows you to manage projects through use of the calendar function, assign tags and tasks to your team, as well as keep track of updates and progress as it happens.
- Yammer
Having the ability for your employees, especially if they are scattered over different locations, to chat in real-time with infinitely improve internal communication. Having a platform to chat live with other employees will help to boost confidence in teams, not to mention gives them an excellent place to comfortable in sharing ideas. With Yammer you employees can chat live one-on-one or invite others to chime in on a group chat. Not only that, but they can also invite clients to the join in on the conversation.
- UberConference
UberConference is an excellent and rather reliable conference call tool that would prove useful to any business. With UberConference, you can schedule conference calls with employees from different office locations as well as schedule meetings with vendors or clients. The tool displays a video image of everyone participating in the call so you know who is speaking. This is a great tool to improve internal communication because it allows employees to put faces with the names of people that they may have never met, or that they do not see every day.
The use of these 7 tools will help your team to effectively streamline communication in a way that establishes confidence and productivity. Creating an environment for you employees where they can comfortably exchange ideas and receive feedback will inspire innovation within your team, improve company culture and ultimately boost profits.
If you know of any additional tools that can be used to improve internal communication within a business, please share. We would love to hear from you!