Effective communication is the key to creating a safe environment for your employees. Barriers in communication lead to diminished clarity and mistakes.
According to recent reports, 70% of corporate errors were reported in organizations due to poor communication in the US.
It is important to identify what factors lead to poor communication and how it can be improved. Effective communication can save your employees and organizations from severe consequences and workplace hazards. Employees must also complete their online OSHA training courses with trusted website like OSHAEducationSchool.
This article helps you recognize the communication barriers within organizations and suggests strategies to enhance communication among your employees.
What are the communication barriers in an organization?
-
Lack of attention:
Employees, like every other normal human being, are likely to be preoccupied with their own personal problems. These problems reflect in their work a lack of attention. Accidents occur when workers are not attentive to environmental cues while working in high-risk locations such as construction sites. Lack of presence of mind results in accidents and injuries, OSHA 30-Hour training NYC educate employees on the importance of being attentive and considering environmental circumstances.
-
Authoritative Supervisors:
Workers resist sharing their concerns with supervisors if they are rigid and defensive. Their defensive personalities cause resistance in workers to communicate their problems effectively. When these concerns are not conveyed, it increases safety risks.
-
Impulsive Decision Making:
Some people are always in a hurry by nature. They want to get things done without thoroughly analyzing them. Working in industries requires meticulous planning and closely supervised implementation, so there is no room for accidents and mishaps.
-
Noise:
Construction sites are noisy due to heavy machinery. Such loud noise leads to poor communication as workers cannot hear each other. There are chances of misunderstandings and misinterpretation of information and instruction, which results in accidents.
Exposure to frequent loud noise can also cause stress and anxiety in workers.
-
Lack of clarity and consciousness:
Lack of clarity and consciousness stems from a lack of training. Lengthy communications are confusing and delay the response rate. In emergencies, ineffective communication can lead to life-threatening outcomes.
Strategies to improve communication in workplace:
To have effective communication, you need to implement effective strategies. Following are a few suggestions that you can implement for precise and efficient communication in your industry:
-
Distraction-free entertainment:
The work environment for you workers should be free of distractions as they interfere with performance and productivity. Your workers will be able to focus and concentrate better when there are no external factors present in the environment to distract them.
Increased concentration and focus will automatically reduce accident rates.
-
Psychological Assistance:
As we mentioned above, workers are sometimes occupied with their personal struggles, due to which their performance at the workplace decreases. When they get to share their problems with someone, they feel better. That is human nature. We all need someone to talk our hearts out and feel better about ourselves. Effective communication can make it possible. You must hire licensed counselors to help your workers communicate their concerns effectively in a confidential manner.
Workers under stress are attentive and productive and are less likely to cause accidents.
-
Team orientation culture:
Your industry needs to adopt a Team-Oriented Culture to enable workers to communicate effectively. Such a culture is warm, friendly, and supportive for the workers.
Employees will be encouraged to share their knowledge with one another and will learn from one another. Supervisors will be flexible and willing to collaborate with everyone instead of bossy around.
A toxic environment hinders effective communication, while an inclusive culture promotes it.
-
Feedback:
Feedback not only improves the productivity of workers but also promotes effective communication. You must implement feedback mechanisms in your organization as it will create an opportunity for workers to share their thoughts, suggestions, and concerns. This feedback will help you identify the needs of your employees and assist in creating a healthy environment for them.
Workers who feel satisfied at work are less likely to get into accidents.
-
Technological devices:
Technological gadgets aid in communicating efficiently. Various types of devices are available in the market that your workers can use while working in a noisy space.
Hearing protection headsets are available that not only reduce noise pollution but also enable effective communication with built-in microphones and speakers. If you’re a small company, you can encourage your workers to use their personal communications systems, such as Bluetooth headsets and wireless headphones. These solutions may not be advanced, but they can support effective two-way communication
-
Emergency Communication Services:
You must train your workers on how to effectively communicate during a crisis. As long and convoluted conversations cause confusion and waste time. Prolonged conversations also delay the response time, resulting in significant loss. Workers should be taught how to keep their conversation short and to the point so that immediate action can be taken.
Installing alarms is also beneficial for prompt reporting of emergencies, as workers will not have to travel from one location to another to make phone calls.
Seven C’s of effective communication:
The Seven C’s of communication provide guidelines for effective communication and are commonly used in the business sector. It sets criteria for the conversation of your employees to be considered effective. Their communication will significantly improve by implementing the 7cs in their speech patterns. They can be applied to written communication as well, such as emails and letters.
The 7 C’s are as follows:
-
Clear:
The message should be crisp and to the point without extra information. It should be simple and easy to understand.
-
Correct:
The message should contain relevant and accurate information only. Workers, while conveying the message, should ensure that it is correct, such as the name of the location of the emergency or the person who got injured.
-
Complete:
The message should contain complete information. Incomplete information will create confusion for the recipient.
-
Concrete:
The message should not create misunderstandings for the recipient. All facts and figures should be accurately reported.
-
Credible:
The message should be transparent without any ambiguity. Your message should be supported by others, adding to its credibility.
-
Consideration:
You must listen to the suggestions and opinions of the recipient after conveying your message. Without consideration, the communication will lack effectiveness.
-
Courteous:
Messages that sound ude are not received well. Therefore, you should give positive regard to your recipient.
Train and encourage your employees to use these 7Cs, as they are the best ingredients needed for effective communication.
Conclusion:
Smooth and efficient exchange of communication between your workers and the company is essential for the safety of workers. It prevents accidents and reduces mishaps.
By implementing the strategies mentioned above, we are hopeful that your employees will be able to effectively communicate with each other.
Osha training programs provide training to employees to communicate effectively in emergency situations. We recommend that you sign up for the OSHA course and train your employees to communicate efficiently.
