#Fail

Failure to Communicate With Employees

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

One of the many newsletters I’m subscribed to, I Hate it Here, shared a statistic that jumped off the screen at me in their latest issue.

Only 7% of US workers feel communication is timely, accurate and transparent.

Naturally, I had to follow that link and find out more. And boy, did I ever find out more:

  • Teams with effective communication see their productivity increase by up to 25%.
  • 86% of workforce respondents blame poor communication as the main reason for company failures.
  • Only 7% of US workers feel that communication is accurate, open, and timely at work.
  • Up to 95% of employees don’t understand their company’s strategy.
  • 28% of employees believe poor communication is the reason for missed deadlines.

How does anyone work like this? Is it possible that 95% of those working for your organization don’t even get the company strategy? Probably because 93% of them feel like they aren’t being communicated with clearly.

I’ve been on record many times talking about the need to intentionally communicate with a remote workforce. This study clearly shows why so many managers struggle with that because these aren’t just remote workers in these surveys. This is everyone. We suck at communicating, period. And, if the vast majority of employees don’t understand the company’s strategy, I also have to assume this starts at the very top.

If you can’t clearly communicate your strategy to the very people you’ve hired to bring that strategy to fruition, how do you expect to succeed? How do you expect to sell your strategy to outside investors and customers?

You can’t. If people don’t know your strategy, they’ll replace it with their own ideas of what the strategy should be. Is that what you want?

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