Below are several articles relating to the importance of communication in the workplace. Please take a few moments to browse through what is listed below, the results may surprise you. 

 

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Although several factors are related to employee morale in organizational settings, the single most influential factor in enhancing job satisfaction and group cohesiveness is superior-subordinate communication.

  

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Harvard Business Review readers placed “ability to communicate” as the top ranked criterion for
managerial success.
  

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Over 5000 executives found that communication has had and continues to play the highest overall significant role in management advancement. Four in five respondents cite communication as the single, most important course for career preparation.  
 

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Managers are often astonished when employees complain about communication.  "But we communicate all the time," they say.  And they are right.  And so are the employees.  Managers communicate.  Employees haven't heard. Addressing the problem with "more of the same old…" will not fix the problem. Organizations need to establish whether their communications are heard, and, if not, what the reason is for their not being heard.
 

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If properly planned and delivered, communication will ensure that everyone understands what your goals are, what their part in achieving them is and what they can do to make sure that the goals are achieved.  The time lost through lack of direction and misunderstandings will be dramatically reduced.
 

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A survey of Fortune 500 vice presidents shows that 97.7 percent of them believed that communication skills had affected their advancement to a top executive position.
 

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Communication is one the most esoteric of sciences known to man. Wars are fought, marriages end, employees leave and customers are lost when there is poor communication.
 

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Why is it that, when so many businesses commit so many resources to internal communication, people always seem to say that communication in workplaces is a significant problem? One reason is that too often we take “communication” for granted. After all, we know how to talk to people, don’t we? In organization surveys (and also in exit interviews) employees frequently say that no one ever tells them anything or listens to them – but managers say in reply that they seem never to stop communicating with employees on important matters. Poor communication – or perceptions of poor communication - can be directly linked to increased operating costs and reduced efficiency.
 

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Employee surveys consistently show us that organizations missing effective workplace communication practices suffer from poor employee morale. The repercussions of this include not just putting up with disengaged employees. Employee productivity also suffers, along with a range of other business performance indicators.
How effectively are your executives, managers and supervisors communicating with your employees? What was once considered a “soft” skill is now seen to have “hard” business impacts.
Employees will put in that extra "discretionary effort" when they are kept informed openly and honestly on aspects of their job and the business and they feel that they are being listened to with empathy.
Just as important is the communication between and within levels. Gone are the days when departments could stand as silos, isolated from the rest of the organization by impenetrable barriers. Intra-national and international competition is now so fierce that everyone in the organization needs to collaborate closely on solving organizational challenges and on achieving agreed strategic objectives. What are the communication barriers in your organization?
Where is your organization at in its life-cycle? Is it large or growing rapidly? As more people are added to an organization, employee communication needs and stresses increase exponentially. Joe, who used to do purchasing, inspection and warehousing on his own now needs to talk to three other departments as well as the people in his own growing team. What structures, systems and processes has your organization put in place to encourage and facilitate effective workplace communication flow?

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In a survey sponsored by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB),
over 1000 academic and corporate respondents gave a #1 importance ranking for managers to all interpersonal skills, including written and oral communication.
 

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Effective Workplace Communication: Multiple Times, Multiple Channels:

    I've just been reading about the frustrations of a Human Resources manager. He's tired of having to answer the same questions about benefits over and over again. I understand that, having been on both sides of the issue, both as a consumer of benefits and in communicating about them on behalf of corporate clients. Benefits can be the slippery eels of internal communication. But, to put the issue into context, this is another case of complex communication. In this case, a large volume of information that's not easy to understand. Descriptions of benefits typically involve a high level of density: in other words, they contain a lot of information in a small amount of space. Many of them resemble insurance policies - long on legal language and short on examples and anecdotes. As a result, the information is accessible to only a small proportion of the whole group.
    How do you deal with this kind of communication challenge? Multiple channels, multiple times. That means repeating the message many times, and sending it through as many different channels as possible. For example, when one of my clients changed its benefits package to offer more choices, it used this strategy. Collectively, the overall value of the benefits would work out the same for the company. But, individual employees would have to make choices, and in many cases the value of the individual benefits they received would depend on how wisely they made their decisions. In turn, that could lead to the equivalent of buyer's remorse and complaints.
The company took a proactive approach to the changeover. It began planning well in advance of the switch, and its preparations included the equivalent of focus groups to identify concerns, questions, and problems. Then, in the month or so before the changeover, it began communicating on several fronts. It held information sessions with employees, it sent each employee an information package, it sent out a special edition of its newsletter, it offered in-house computer programs for calculations and enrollment, and it offered appointments with benefits personnel if employees felt they needed individual counseling. Employees got the information in several formats, and at several different times, greatly increasing the odds that most of them would make informed decisions.
The odds that they would understand their choices went up because of different learning styles. And, needless to say, their ability to learn varies from time to time.
    Some people learn best by reading (and you may be one of them since you're reading this article). Others may learn more effectively by listening, while yet others do best when they act in some way (like using a computer program). Similarly, you may not be receptive to new information about a benefits program right now because you're focused on an important meeting later today. Or perhaps you'll be more interested in the subject after you talk with a friend and colleague at lunch tomorrow.
    By using multiple channels and multiple times, we provide our readers/listeners/participants with several different learning options. That, in turn, means we increase the odds there will be a time and method that's optimal for them.
  

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    The act of communicating is so basic and so fundamental that most people don’t think much about it. It happens all day, every day and in every corner of the globe. It happens using the telephone, the fax machine and the computer. Thanks to modern satellite technology, it can even happen between two people standing on opposite poles of the earth. In virtually every way that matters, it could be argued that the world today is built to support communication. While communication mediums have become increasingly faster and more convenient, the fundamental goals of communication haven’t changed. This is particularly true in business. Whether communication takes place between employees and managers, employees and customers or managers and executives, effectiveness is as much of a necessity as ever. Why? Because effective communication minimizes conflicts, increases efficiency and generally enables a company to run more smoothly. On the other hand, if a company’s employees lack communication skills, the company’s ability to work as a team is significantly impeded. When this happens, the company will falter and ultimately fail. 
    While communication is one of the most basic human activities, its importance within the business environment is all too often underestimated. Effective communication doesn’t begin and end with the ability to relay correct information. It also includes the ability to listen, act assertively and ask questions when appropriate.  
 

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