The ways people communicate don't just facilitate work. They are vital to employee happiness and general wellbeing.
Research by Salesforce shows that 86% of employees and executives cite the lack of effective collaboration and communication as the main causes for workplace failures.
With more fully remote or hybrid teams than ever before, asynchronous communication is on the rise. That means more email, more instant messaging, and the tools that enable them. But the same tools that allowed us to do our work from home, that we celebrated for their convenience early on in the pandemic, have started to leave room for misalignment. They've even begun to encroach on our mental health.
But they don't have to.
With defined guidelines, email, Slack, Google Hangouts… can all become powerful resources. Teams who communicate effectively can increase their productivity by as much as 25%.
Companies tend to develop their own messaging habits, whether they're explicit, or just part of the tacit culture. But having an unspoken cultural understanding of email, Slack, or virtual meetings leaves lots of room for frustration and confusion.
That's why you need to create a digital communication framework to set up your team for success.
What's inside
Inside these pages you'll find everything you need to establish your own communications guide for your distributed or hybrid team, as well as a few tips from our own internal guide (templates included!). With this, you can create a guide that's intentional and reflects your company values.
5 steps to create your own remote or hybrid communication guidebook
- Communication as a tool for retention and happiness
- Step 1: Assess main points of friction
- Step 2: Putting the focus on wellness
- Step 3: Productivity guidelines
- Step 4: Centralizing and making information accessible
- Step 5: Embedding and upholding new guidelines
- Bonus: Email as a tool for transparency
