Corporate communication is the most important aspect of any organisation. Whether your company is small or big or just starting, communication with the employees can help you in different ways. But keeping clear and transparent corporate communications with your team and stakeholders is important.
Telling the truth and giving the employees the whole picture of the situation will make them feel valuable and important to the company. There are several other benefits that you need to learn about transparent communication. Read further to get an idea.
What is Transparent Communication?
It is a type of communication where both negative and positive information is shared downward, upward, and laterally. And what is meant by transparency in the workplace? It means to take care of three things when communicating messages or interacting with subordinates, peers, and supervisors. These elements are:
- Participation – you need to include stakeholders while making any decision
- Disclosure of information – you need to reveal necessary legal information and explain the internal procedure of the company
- Accountability – you stay accountable for your decisions and actions
Incorporating these three elements every time you communicate in a corporate setting ensures your communication is transparent and helps you reap the benefits it offers.
Importance of Transparent Corporate Communication
Improve Workplace Culture and Builds Trust
Trust is the primary reason every organisation must strive to become more transparent. When companies honestly share information and encourage people to do the same, employees are more likely to consider them trustworthy.
When the team trusts each other, they develop stronger relationships. Not to mention, people enjoy working together, helping the company culture to flourish.
Removes Ambiguity
One of the biggest barriers to clear communication is jargon. Does your target audience properly understand what CBI means? Do you use synergy to discuss combined efforts? Moreover, do they know what these concepts mean?
There are great chances that some employees don’t know its meaning. Therefore, it’s important to know your communication is clear and easy to understand while maintaining transparency to ensure your team gets your message.
Helps to Cope with Organisational Change
Transparent and clear communication is significantly important when your company is trying to bring a change of any size. Employees and stakeholders find it hard to adapt to change. Rebranding, change in products, or even change in management can force employees to leave the company.
Experts suggest that people are more likely to cope and accept organisational change if trust is established. But trust, in this situation, can only be achieved with clear and honest communication. So, if you ever decide to change something that can affect your team, whether the impact is small or big, you need to maintain clear and honest communication.
Makes Employees Feel Valued
When you choose clear and transparent corporate communication, your employees are more likely to engage in the workplace. Authentic communication shows that the company gives value to its employees. Your team feels important, so they try to help you with your goals and objectives.
The higher engagement of people improves productivity, boosts sales, and strengthens employee and client relationships. Opting for clear and transparent communication is also ideal for companies struggling to build trust among their team. With little effort and honesty, you can improve your company’s environment.
Improves Employee Morale
Companies that try to maintain transparency generally enjoy higher employee morale levels. Research indicates employer’s lack of honest and open communication negatively affects employee morale.
Note that employee morale is important for the growth of your business. If your employees don’t feel good about working in your company, they try to avoid doing their work with honesty. Even if they do work hard, retaining them will be challenging for you if they don’t like their job. So, to retain your workers, avoid making false claims and promises, and try to build a relationship with them on a lie.
Improves Knowledge Sharing and Innovation
Transparent organisations encourage employees to make their own decisions. They let people try and fail. This is how they motivate people to be their best versions in the corporate setting.
On the other hand, it creates an impression on employees that they can also share their knowledge with other people in the company to learn from each other. This approach is more important in companies with knowledge workers. Also, innovation usually happens when your employees act transparently and selflessly to share their skills and knowledge with others.
Helps to Develop Accountability
You might not know, but an employer’s transparency encourages accountability in the company. Experts believe that transparency in the corporate industry leads to employee responsibility and trust, which eventually leads to accountability. Keep in mind that accountability is key to ensuring your employees work efficiently and with full responsibility.
Encourages Cross-Functional and Team Collaboration
Transparency depends on honest and frequent communication. Frequent communication leads to more collaboration. This is typically evident in remote and hybrid organisations, where the team needs to spend more than 50% time engaging in collaborative work.
Moreover, transparency increases alignment among employees. A great number of workers believe that a lack of team alignment impacts the success of a project or task. So, companies who opt for digital settings don’t need to put extra energy into ensuring sufficient information is shared between the employees and the company. This helps them to collaborate better and more efficiently.
Bottom Line
In a nutshell, corporate communications can play a great role in the progress and growth of an organisation. But it needs to be clear and transparent to make your employees trust your company. Honest, straightforward, and clear communication will boost productivity, improve collaboration, help you achieve your objective, and retain honest and hardworking employees.
