Are your employees communicating as effectively as possible? If they’re not, it could be costing your company quite a bit of money every year.

There are some larger companies that are literally losing tens of millions of dollars on an annual basis due to poor communication among employees. And even if you aren’t coming anywhere close to that, you might still be hurting your bottom line by not making business communications a bigger priority.

If you suspect that you might be able to improve communication in business for your employees, we’ve got some tips that should help you out. We would suggest putting them to good use so that your employees are able to acquire better business communication skills.

Here are the ten steps you should consider taking to give your company’s business communications a big boost.

1. Equip Employees With the Necessary Business Communication Tools

If you want to make sure that your employees are taking business communications seriously, you’ll need to provide them with all the latest tools of the trade. They’ll be able to use business communication tools to improve the ways in which they speak to one another by leaps and bounds.

Tools like Zoom, Slack, and others have made it so easy for people to stay in touch at work without having to chase people down. You should give your employees access to these tools as well as any business communication software you might be able to find.

You might have to invest some money into certain types of business communication tools. This might make you think twice about whether or not it makes sense to do it.

But by investing this money into business communications, you might be able to make a lot more money in the long run. Or at the very least, you might be able to help your company avoid losing money due to communication issues that may arise.

2. Teach Employees How to Use Business Communication Tools

It isn’t enough to simply set your employees up with business communication tools and send them on their way. You’re also going to need to make it a point to teach them how to use these tools so that they aren’t completely lost. These tools won’t do some of your employees any good if they aren’t up on how they should be used.

Some of your employees might pick up on how to use business communication tools quicker than others. But some might also struggle to get the hang of things like video conferencing.

You can train your employees how to use business communication tools yourself or bring in a communication expert to go over them. Either way, it’ll ensure your employees know how to use each and every tool that they’ll have at their disposal. They will be able to make the most of them following your training sessions.

3. Encourage Employees to Pick Up the Phone Every Once in a While

Because there are so many ways for your employees to communicate these days, a lot of them might write off the idea of picking up the phone to call someone and ask them a question. This could potentially be to their detriment.

There is so much that can get lost in translation when your employees are emailing one another, chatting, etc. It’s why you should encourage them to continue to talk on the phone as necessary to guarantee that they’re able to get their messages across.

You might even want to go as far as to conduct a telecom audit. It’ll help your company to make the absolute most of the phone system that you have set up. This type of audit could also trim your telecommunication costs and even show you changes that you might want to make to the business communication equipment that your employees are using to speak by phone.

4. Push Your Employees to Hold Regular In-Person Meetings

Thanks to the rise of videoconferencing software like Zoom, some companies have stopped holding in-person meetings as often as they used to. They’ve found that it’s more convenient for their employees to meet on Zoom.

While this may be true, you shouldn’t let this stop your employees from still holding in-person meetings every now and then. These meetings can be very valuable when it comes to helping your employees perfect their business communication skills.

Your employees will learn how to speak to one another more clearly when they hold in-person meetings. They’ll also get to know one another better, which will work wonders for business communications.

Your employees don’t need to hold meetings for every little thing (some meetings really can just be emails, guys!). But at the same time, they shouldn’t eliminate in-person meetings altogether, either.

5. Ask Your Employees to Create Agendas for Their Meetings

No matter how your employees choose to hold meetings, they should always have agendas for them created. Otherwise, there is a good chance that at least some meetings will prove to be huge wastes of time.

There should be at least one employee in charge of every in-person or virtual meeting that is held among your employees. This employee will be responsible for coming up with an agenda for a meeting and letting other employees know about it.

This way, your employees will be ready to roll once a meeting begins. They’ll also be able to keep things moving along so that what should be a 30-minute meeting doesn’t turn into a two-hour meeting because it doesn’t have a clear purpose.

You should find that your company’s meetings will be way more worthwhile when there are agendas for them. It’ll help improve your company’s business communications and make your employees feel like your meetings are worth their time.

6. Create Summaries of Meetings to Keep Everyone on the Same Page

There will inevitably be a few employees who space out during your company’s meetings. There will be others who have a million and one things on their minds and can’t focus. And of course, there will be a few who won’t be able to make it to meetings for one reason or another.

Because of these things, it might be worth creating brief summaries of all the meetings your company holds. By doing this, you’ll be able to ensure that your employees are on the same page after these meetings.

If an employee wasn’t paying attention during a meeting or didn’t show up for a meeting, they’ll be able to consult the summaries that you’re creating to catch up on things they may have missed.

7. Revisit Conversations Among Employees That Have Been Tabled in the Past

During at least some of the meetings that your company will hold, you’ll “table” certain conversations and say that you’ll come back to them later. This will happen a lot when your employees aren’t able to agree on a plan of action for something that your company is working on.

The problem is that, far too often, companies won’t end up getting back around to revisiting these conversations. It’ll lead to certain decisions blowing in the wind and not ever being dealt with.

There is nothing wrong with tabling a conversation if it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere during a meeting. You’re welcome to revisit it at a later date once your employees have had time to think it over and possibly even cool off.

But it’s imperative that your employees actually get back to these tabled conversations instead of just allowing them to sit unresolved. You should come up with some kind of a system for how you’re going to deal with issues that your employees haven’t been able to figure out yet.

8. Discourage Employees From Using Jargon Unnecessarily

Have you noticed that some of your employees seem to rely on jargon too much when they’re presenting ideas during meetings or holding presentations for clients? All of this jargon can cause severe problems for your business communications.

People often think that using jargon makes them sound like they know what they’re talking about, even if they don’t. But in reality, this jargon often makes them sound like they’re trying a little too hard to make it appear as though they know what they’re speaking about.

There is some jargon ingrained in business culture that people just can’t stop using. But you should discourage your employees from using jargon of any kind and ask them to keep things simple, both when they’re talking to other employees and when they’re touching base with clients.

9. Work to Turn Your Employees Into Better Listeners

You want all of your company’s employees to feel comfortable sharing their ideas with one another. You also want them to feel confident when they’re addressing questions and concerns from clients.

But at the same time, you want your employees to do more than just communicate effectively in a verbal sense. You also want them to be excellent listeners.

There is something to be said for your employees keeping their mouths closed at the right times so that they can listen to others talk. If they don’t do this, they might discourage other employees from wanting to share their ideas. They might also have a tough time addressing a question or concern from a client.

You aren’t going to be able to turn all of your employees into great listeners overnight. They’ll need to work hard to perfect their business communication skills when it comes to listening.

You might want to give some thought to helping them out by providing them with tips on becoming better listeners. You might also want to come right out and ask them to sit back and listen to certain things during meetings as opposed to always chiming in with their own thoughts.

10. Evaluate Your Employees’ Business Communication Skills From Time to Time

As long as you take each of the steps that we’ve already listed here, you should be able to dramatically improve your employees’ business communication skills in no time at all. You’ll notice a big difference in the way that your employees communicate with each other and your clients.

But here’s the thing about business communication: It’s always changing! So you shouldn’t ever take your foot off the gas and assume that your employees are communicating as effectively as they can.

Every few months, you should revisit the topic of business communications and see what your employees could be doing to communicate better. You should also keep a close eye on all of the new business communication tools that are being released all the time.

When you do this, you’ll notice that business communications will become a lot less of a concern for you. You’ll know that your company is always doing everything that it can to keep your business communication skills sharp.

Better Business Communications Can Work Wonders for Your Company

Improving your company’s business communications is something that is going to take time. It’s also something that you’ll always be trying to improve to some degree since the ways in which those in the business world communicate are changing all the time.

Take some of the steps listed here to start to make improvements to your business communications. It’ll be well worth all the effort you put into it once you see how much better your employees are able to communicate.

Would you like to get some additional tips on how to improve business communications? Find them in the other business-related articles on our blog.