Studies have shown that 67% of manufacturing employees feel they would be more productive at work if they could communicate better with management. This is a big problem for many factories and manufacturing plants around the world, but with the workforce often being huge, dispersed and offline, it’s not always easy to streamline communications. A good place to start is by tackling these 3 barriers:
The top-down mindset
One common mistake employers, including those in the manufacturing industry, make is to rely on a top-down flow for communications in the workplace. This means that important updates, company news and new policies travel by word-of-mouth through layers of seniority before reaching the bottom line. Once it does reach these workers, the information is likely inaccurate or outdated. Implementing an internal communications software can transform this easily – allowing for big announcements to be shared to the entire workforce at once or directed at specific relevant groups based on job function or location. Keeping communications streamlined and flat means everyone gets access to the same information at the same time, making employees feel more valued and management more transparent.
One-way conversations
When was the last time you welcomed feedback directly from employees on the factory floor? It’s common for employers to give constant feedback to their staff, but too often this is a one-way conversation that doesn’t make room for suggestions or opinions to come back the other way. Making room for these feedback sessions regularly means you’ll have many more effective and useful conversations now that your staff feel they can speak up about what’s on their mind. Don’t forget, your bottomline workers know best about the problems in your factory – whether it be machines that are breaking down or a conflict between two workers.
Outdated communication tools
Even to this day, it’s very common for factories to still rely on face-to-face conversations, emails or walkie talkies for internal communication. Due to the offline set-up of the work environment and the size of the workforce, this often leads to delayed communications. It’s time to say goodbye to these outdated tools and introduce a digitised mobile-first system that will guarantee to make critical information more instant, transparent and effective for the entire workforce.
