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Effective communication is the key to all successful collaborative efforts. This is especially important for more complex forms of cooperation such as companies because the thing that holds everything together within a business is the fact that everybody is working towards the same goal. It doesn’t matter if it’s a three people operation or a huge multinational conglomerate, the same principle is applicable to all: everybody involved must be clear about what the objective is, and have a clear idea of how to achieve that goal.

Although you would assume that this would be common sense, reality shows that this is not the case. Studies have concluded that more than half of all employees’ report that they are not given clear directions or tasks, and almost 3 out of every 4 managers aren’t comfortable communicating with employees in general.

But why is effective workplace communication so important? Here are a few reasons you might want to look into improving communication at your company:

  1. It avoids confusion

Effective communication puts an end to wrong assumptions, confusion, and costly mistakes. Miscommunication issues can cause packages to be lost, deadlines to be missed, clients left unsatisfied, and generally wasting time cleaning up that mess.

  1. Boosts productivity

Everybody knows exactly what they are responsible for and what the priorities are, this means less delays too. When you have such an efficient back end, your client facing operation improves as well, because employees have the correct information instead of making unrealistic promises to their customers.

  1. Reduces absenteeism

When people can communicate effectively why they need to be absent from work, you can address that situation specifically and find the perfect solution. Taking the guesswork out of absenteeism helps tremendously because there are many reasons why someone would prefer to stay home. They could be very ill and need a few days to recover, they might just need to miss a few hours to go to the dentist, or there might be a deeper issue there such as harassment at work.

  1. Helps boost employee morale

When everybody at a company feels like they can express their truth instead of having to go through toxic workplace politics, they get a morale boost. This is also the case when people know exactly what is expected of them and what they can expect from their coworkers, managers, and the company itself.

  1. Makes it easier to expand into global markets

A huge barrier that your company will face when trying to expand into global markets is precisely communication. To make this move happen you will have to talk to many different people that may be in an entirely different time zone, and this forces you to trust that they got the message exactly right until they update you many hours or days later. If your organization as a whole doesn’t communicate effectively, chances are that they won’t be able to do so with a new branch halfway around the world, making any thought of expansion unrealistic.