Does your organisation lack open communication? Do you see a huge gap that needs to be filled within your teams? Are your employees unable to communicate about their poor work-life balance to you directly?
Since the internet's evolution, one-on-one communications have lost their presence. Group chats have been a new way for team discussions. In fact, people have started using it as a curtain to avoid difficult conversations.
As a result, the communication gaps between senior executives and their teammates have expanded. Junior employees are more hesitant to talk to their leaders about their work-life hurdles.
If you see the same void within your team, let us talk about this in detail. Let us take you through the effects of restricted communication. Also, take a look at how you can encourage your personnel to talk freely and improve their work-life balance.
Effects of Restricted Communication on Work-Life Balance
When an organisation lack communication and coordination, it has a ripple effect of negative impacts on the teams.
Why?
When employees are not able to communicate freely, they are not able to talk about their priorities. Consequently, this makes them over-stressed and impacts their efficiency.
Let’s understand how that has an impact on the organisations in detail:
Impaired Collaboration Within Teams
Communication is the key when it comes to collaboration. When the communication flow is limited, teams start to fall apart. It leads to restrictive idea-sharing, problem-solving, and overall performance.
However, open communication ensures that everyone in the team is on the same page. As a result, it leads to lesser conflicts and misunderstandings.
Increased Burnout and Anger Issues
It is not a surprise that every person gets frustrated when he is stressed everywhere he goes. He reaches the office, and the boss starts piling him up with work. Late at night, when he gets home, his family have certain expectations.
Because he is unable to communicate his work-life priorities at work, the person starts getting angry. Consequently, he gets frequent burnout, and this affects his productivity and relationships.
Poor Client Relationship
With limited feedback and information, it is highly likely that it can affect the client relationship. It increases the misunderstanding and clarity about the work and impacts trust amongst the team members.
When the team works as one, the client feels confident and valued. This has a direct impact on the organisation.
Misaligned Priorities
With no one communicating about the work and where they are at, goal achievement becomes difficult. Not only is this a waste of resources, but it also ends up in conflicting objectives.
However, clear communication ensures the alignment of priorities. This way, the team's overall productivity increases and ends in faster goal achievements.
How Can Open Communication Improve Work-Life Balance
You might not be able to recognise it now, but encouraging open communication within your organisation can be a game changer.
How?
Let’s find out together!
Enhance Transparency for Clear Expectations
Encouraging open and clear communication within your team enhances transparency between the employer and the employee. Eventually, this can help set realistic expectations and contribute to a healthy work-life balance.
Flexible Work Arrangements
When team members are able to have honest conversations with their leaders, it affects their performance. They discuss their work arrangements and negotiate them according to their personal needs.
Note that this doesn't mean requesting unacceptable working agreements. The flexibility is offered, ensuring that it neither affects the employee nor the organisation in any way.
Lesser Mental Health Issues
Speaking up about your struggles is critical. This can have a significant impact on your physical as well as mental health. Telling your manager about your priorities can help your employees improve relationships and performance.
Better Time Management
When employees are honest and open, they tackle personal and team time management struggles better. Additionally, with better collaboration, delegation and task completion becomes easy.
This also helps companies eliminate unproductive hours and avoid unnecessary wastage of resources,
Final Statement
Do you know that employees who feel heard are 5x more encouraged to offer their best at work?
Amazing, right?
Well, this is why you must ensure a transparent mode of communication in your company. This will positively impact the employees and, eventually, the organisation as a whole.
Open communication pushes employees to talk about their needs without any hesitation. Also, this improves their overall well-being and productive collaboration.
If you also want to promote a healthy culture within your team, you can sign up for our work-life balance program. Here, we talk about how you can motivate your employees to have a healthy work-life balance. Head to our website and start your journey with our expert coaches today!
Authored by Gouri Maheshwari. To know more about Originbluy, send us an email at gouri.maheshwari@originbluy.com.
