Improving information flow within your company

Improving information flow rarely gets into focus at companies. At smaller ones this is because management believes that in a family-like environment information reaches everyone quickly. At larger ones it is because there are always "more important" tasks to deal with. Neither of these is a sufficient reason not to deliberately work on optimising and reviewing your information flow. You really do need to allocate time and energy to developing and implementing an internal communication strategy. After all, the better information flows within the company, and the faster and more accurately colleagues get access to data and briefings, the higher-quality work they can do. And this also contributes to improving the company's market position.

Passing on information

You might think that passing on information is self-evident, since  we have been communicating with one another since ancient times. We communicate not only with spoken or written words, cave drawings or, more recently, emojis, but also with every flicker of our body and with our mere gaze. Establishing connection with one another comes from our very nature. However, this does not yet mean that we all know how to conduct an effective dialogue with one another. Especially not in a corporate environment, where every colleague has different background knowledge, a different way of thinking, interpretation, culture and language.

You can carry out a simple test yourself that can highlight whether improving information flow needs to be an urgent item on your agenda too.

Test your information flow

With the so-called Chinese whispers game, which professionals like to use in communication workshops too, you can very easily test how information flows at your company. Choose 5-6 colleagues who work at different levels of the company. For example a senior leader, a middle manager, a team leader and 2-3 colleagues doing simpler manual work. As far as possible, choose the colleagues doing manual work so that there is someone among them who has worked at the company for a long time and someone who started relatively recently. 

Once you have chosen the colleagues for the test, line them up one behind the other, or even better, call them into the room where the test is taking place one by one. Call the colleagues into the room taking the workplace hierarchy into account, because this way you can best model what actually happens in reality.

Suggestion

It is worth carrying out the test either in the presence of senior leaders, or recording it on video. This way you can later show it to leaders as documentation when you argue why budget needs to be allocated to optimising and digitalising internal communication. It also helps to support why leaders themselves need to actively work on improving information flow.

Show a shorter text to the senior leader, giving them about half a minute to read it, then call the middle manager into the room. Ask the senior leader to tell the middle manager what they have just read. After that, call in the team leader, to whom the middle manager has to tell what they heard from the senior leader. The senior leader is not allowed to speak, even if the middle manager passes on the information incompletely or incorrectly. Repeat this process all the way down to the last person. Close the test by asking the last colleague to tell you as well what they understood from what they heard. Then read out, in front of everyone, the text that you originally showed to the senior leader.

Experience shows that by the time the information reaches the bottom of the communication chain, it has shrunk compared to the original message. In fact, the two often bear no resemblance to each other at all.

This is why improving information flow matters

If you carry out the test mentioned above, then it will probably prove true at your company too that the colleagues at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy have incomplete and inaccurate information. This means that they are not aware of the company's goals, strategy or resources either. Because of this they are unable to do effective work. Especially not the kind that would contribute to the company's business success and increased performance within a short time. On the contrary, there is a huge chance that they will unintentionally cause financial damage to the company.

Let us suppose that your colleagues are involved in manufacturing parts, and only the partial information reaches them that X pieces of Y-sized sheet metal need to be produced. They know nothing about the fact that this sheet now needs to be Q mm thick instead of Z mm. They start producing the sheets, and then it turns out that they made the wrong product, which has to be kept in storage for an indefinite time because there is no buyer for it. 
In this case the storage cost might still be the smallest problem. However, in such situations numerous other costs also arise. If management notices too late that the parameters of the manufactured parts do not meet the requirements, then it may happen that the company has to pay a penalty to its client because of the production delay. It may also happen that during the faulty production almost all of the raw material is used up, so there is nothing left to make the sheets with the right parameters in the required quantity. In other words, the cost of purchasing raw material arises again, and this time it falls entirely on the company. Because of the previously signed agreement, it cannot pass on even part of this cost to the client. In addition, numerous other costs may arise, all because the information flow ran into an obstacle. So it may even happen that the company books a deal at a loss, simply because it did not develop a well-functioning internal communication strategy.

Effective internal communication made simple

Improving your company's information flow is child's play with the right tool in your hands. The good news on top of that is that you can put this tool to work almost immediately. You can introduce the CHEQ digital internal communication app within days and make it available to all of your colleagues. Through it, all the important information reaches accurately even those colleagues who do not have a company email or phone. How is this possible?

CHEQ works on Viber, as a standalone app, and even as a Microsoft Teams add-in. So in practice colleagues only need a smartphone, which they most likely have. According to one survey, about 6.2 million Hungarians own a smartphone. In other words, you can reasonably assume that your colleagues have a smartphone too.

Of course, it is not enough just to provide a channel for the purpose of improving information flow. The messages also have to be shared. To this end you can set messaging permissions for leaders. Senior leaders can share messages more broadly. For example, the company director can send a message to every employee of the company reporting on the results achieved and outlining the plans for the future. This way information can reach every employee at the same time in the same form. 

But you can also give team leaders messaging permission, with the small restriction that they can only send notifications to the members of their own team. For example, that colleague XY has become a father and therefore needs to be covered for 2 weeks, and who to turn to in his absence for this or that matter.

With CHEQ, improving information flow is simple. Download our FREE checklist, which helps you optimise your internal communication regardless of which communication app you use.