The front line communication challenge – how can organisations close the loop?

Guest feature from Ross McCaw, CEO at OurPeople

For most people, the conversation and government guidelines around remote working are clear – employees are to stay working from home, where they can. Yet, there is a whole workforce of deskless workers, mainly consisting of those on the front line, who don’t have this option. While businesses, many of whose success depends on these deskless and remote workforces, are doing all they can to ensure workers are COVID safe, they face another issue – the communications challenge.

COVID-19 has forced UK businesses to adopt a blended workforce model. To conform with lockdown restrictions, companies have turned to a mixture of in office, at home and deskless working – at the expense of peer-to-peer and face-to-face conversation.

How then, can businesses effectively ensure all staff – wherever they are – receive essential information, especially given the majority of workforces will continue to be displaced and blended for the foreseeable future?

Closing the communication loop

Given the disruptive corporate climate, it’s more important than ever for businesses to make changes now to ensure they have a streamlined approach to delivering vital communication. But what does this look like?

Put simply, it’s all about ensuring the communication loop is closed.

This means that, rather than blindly sending out communication without knowing who sees it, the sender instead has visibility of who has accessed and viewed the information. With reduced numbers of workers and social distancing measures in place and being constantly updated, face-to-face interaction is no longer a viable loop closing solution, but it is also not enough for managers to just send an email or message and assume colleagues have received it. Workers now need to know for certain their teams are receiving and understanding the information being sent out.

Saying this, not every employee needs to, or should, receive every bit of information. It’s about being strategic with communication and ensuring information only reaches its intended target. Having deskless workers receive communication meant for those who are working remotely, or vice versa, can lead to employees becoming overwhelmed and engagement could suffer as a result.

Not only will putting in place an effective comms solution improve employee efficiency and productivity, closing the loop also boosts relationships between employees and their managers, and even establishes a direct line of support to quickly resolve future issues. An adaptable workplace which communicates with and empowers all staff is fundamental to creating a happier, more supportive environment, which is vital in the current climate.

Barriers to success

Ensuring the communication loop is closed at every stage of the process is by no means easy. Change on this scale usually takes practice, time and a substantial effort from the workforce. But as restrictions are likely to remain in place for some time, now is the time to invest, and one of the biggest challenges to its success will be that of shadow IT.

Referring to IT projects and applications outside the control of an organisation’s IT department, shadow IT has returned with a vengeance thanks to lockdown. In fact, Gartner even predicted a third of security breaches in 2020 will come through shadow IT.

Alongside the security challenges, shadow IT poses an extra issue for those looking to ensure effective communication within their organisation. With numerous communication apps out there, such as WhatsApp and Zoom, it only takes one employee to share information on one unauthorised app to cause major issues. Not only this, but the use of these apps makes it impossible to ensure workers are receiving the right information. Organisations therefore, need to work closely with IT teams to combat the issue of shadow IT and educate staff about the communications channels they need to be using.

Taking the first steps

As businesses try to get to grips with the new working model, there’s a lot to take into account to ensure every part of a business’s workforce is getting the information they need to do their jobs well.

Implementing the right channels and educating teams on how to use them correctly is now more vital than ever. Not only could it save a lot of time further down the line but, it will help protect organisations against security threats and data breaches in the long-term.