It’s common knowledge that effective communication is key to a productive workforce. Being able to communicate ideas effectively is key to encouraging innovation, improving efficiency and setting better safety standards.
As such, businesses spend a lot of time and effort developing communication channels for their employees, and ensuring that all internal messaging is clear and without room for interpretation.
Over the years, the number of ways in which businesses can communicate with their employees has grown. Digital forms of communication such as email, instant messaging and video calls allow employees to instantly share ideas no matter where they are. In addition, workplace messaging, such as signs and lights, help to transmit information to all employees in the building. Here are some of the most important innovations in workplace communication.
Signal Towers
For large manufacturing plants, it’s important that employees are aware of the status of different machines and production lines at all times. A miscommunication in this type of environment can be costly, not just to the business but also to the health of the employee. Proper communication helps to reduce the risk of accidents, ensuring that employees carry out their work safely and without issues.
Signal towers provide instant communication in the form of lights and sounds, conveying an instant message to anyone in the vicinity about the status of a machine and providing warnings if needed. Busy manufacturing plants are often noisy, so the level of sound needs to be loud enough for anyone to hear. Lights are also used in case employees are wearing ear protection, delivering a clear message to anyone that sees it.
With signal towers, different coloured lights and tones of sound can be used to convey different meanings. For example, an amber light is normally seen as a general warning, whereas red would be used to signal that something is wrong. This type of communication relies on proper training so that employees understand what the signals mean and how to act.
Virtual Collaboration Rooms
Over the past few years, remote work has grown significantly, with a large number of people now regularly working from home. Although there are many benefits to remote working for employees, it does often make collaboration more difficult. However, many businesses are now experimenting with virtual collaboration rooms. These allow multiple employees to share a video call where they can share ideas together and work on a project as one.
Some video conferencing software now offers collaboration tools designed to facilitate effective teamwork through remote teams. Live editing allows everyone within the room to see changes and contribute to a project. Additionally, shared sticky notes and whiteboards encourage employees to share ideas with one another. This helps speed up the process of working on a project and makes collaboration much simpler, even if not everyone is in the office at the same time.
Instant Messaging
Most people use some kind of instant messaging app in their day-to-day lives, chatting with friends and family through platforms such as WhatsApp. These apps allow fast and effective communication through a mobile device, and many workplaces also utilise similar software to encourage instant messaging at work.
Instant messaging is suitable for short and urgent communication, as well as for sharing ideas with coworkers. All members of a team can be added to a single group chat to ensure no one is left out of the conversation, and it allows for ideas to be shared instantly with everyone. OF course, email communication still has its place, but instant messaging has sped up communication and made getting in touch with everyone much simpler.
