• FREE RESOURCES
  • PREMIUM CONTENT
        • SEE MORE
          PREMIUM RESOURCES
  • HR DEEP DIVES
        • Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources for HR Professionals
          Employment Law
          Labor Law Posting Requirements: Everything You Need to Know
          Recruiting
          businesswoman selecting future employees on digital interfaces
          Recruiting Resources for HR & Hiring Managers
          Performance Management
          vector image of young female making star rating
          Performance Review Resources
          Employment Law
          Understanding Equal Employment Opportunity and the EEOC
          Recruiting
          Onboarding Resources for HR & Hiring Managers
  • CORONAVIRUS & HR

  • LOGIN
  • SIGN UP FREE

HR Morning

  • FREE RESOURCES
  • PREMIUM CONTENT
        • SEE MORE
          PREMIUM RESOURCES
  • HR DEEP DIVES
        • Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources for HR Professionals
          Employment Law
          Labor Law Posting Requirements: Everything You Need to Know
          Recruiting
          businesswoman selecting future employees on digital interfaces
          Recruiting Resources for HR & Hiring Managers
          Performance Management
          vector image of young female making star rating
          Performance Review Resources
          Employment Law
          Understanding Equal Employment Opportunity and the EEOC
          Recruiting
          Onboarding Resources for HR & Hiring Managers
  • CORONAVIRUS & HR
  • Employment Law
  • Benefits
  • Recruiting
  • Talent Management
  • Performance Management
  • HR Technology
  • More
    • Leadership & Strategy
    • Compensation
    • Staff Administration
    • Policy & Procedures
    • Wellness
    • Staff Departure
    • Employee Services
    • Work Location
    • HR Career & Self-Care
    • Health Care
    • Retirement Plans

5 tactics to get HR messages heard, acted on

Effective Communication For Todays Workplace
Michele McGovern
by Michele McGovern
March 12, 2021
3 minute read
  • SHARE ON

Just because your HR messages are important, doesn’t mean people will listen and act on them.

Whether you send a corporate-wide email on something as important as COVID-19 vaccine policies or a short message to a few people on a meeting time, the chances it’ll evoke action aren’t great.

What’s the problem?

HR communication is often over saturated – too much, too often. That’s especially true as more people work remote full-time or part-time.

What works?

“Bursts of rapid-fire communications, with longer periods of silence in between, are hallmarks of success …,” Christoph Riedl and Anita Williams Woolley found in their research recently published in the Harvard Business Review.

Worplace Virtual Summit

“Those silent periods are when team members often form and develop their ideas. {It’s} deep work that may generate the next steps in a project or the solution to a challenge faced by the group.”

Effective communication takes a lot more than nonstop morning chats and silence the rest of the day. Good communication through HR takes these best practices, Riedl and Williams Woolley found.

Schedule it

Communication through messaging – email, text, Slack and other apps – isn’t as productive as real-time communication. Communication Bursts are more effective when people are together in person, on the phone or over video.

So it’s important for you and other managers to actually schedule time to talk with teams regularly, even daily, if possible. It might be difficult with a remote group juggling other responsibilities. But researchers said many teams find agreeable times early and late in the day. That way, important messages are far less likely to be ignored.

Earmark purpose, outcome

Because it can be difficult to find the perfect “bursty time,” it’s critical to waste no time when you get people together to discuss.

Earmark a purpose and outcome for conversations, so employees get out as much they put into meetings.

When employees come out of well-organized Communication Bursts, they’re prepared to act quickly and as needed on the information.

Foster silence

Efforts to communicate effectively will be useless if employees can’t stay focused on their individual work after hearing it.

Encourage employees to schedule silent periods so they can take the next steps in the project, stick to their most important tasks and/or develop needed new ideas and solutions based on what’s been shared.

Temper the video

This could be the most surprising outcome of their research: Teams communicate more effectively using audio over video.

Without visual cues (which are limited on computer screens), team members speak and listen more evenly during calls.

Plus, the quality of the interaction increases. The group might have more “collective intelligence.” They come up with more impactful ideas, share more useful information and increase team effectiveness.

Aim for less content, more quality

Beyond bursty communication, when you use email and other forms of asynchronous communication with your team, create focused messages. Researchers found the fewer ideas in a message, the more likely the message gets the necessary action or response.

For instance, if you have three things to cover, send three separate emails instead of one. It’s easier to get in-depth and exchange ideas about each topic.

Michele McGovern
Michele McGovern
Michele McGovern is a journalist with decades of experience working for local and national newspapers, business publications and websites. She has covered the HR, customer service and sales fields for more than 20 years, writing everything from white papers for upper-level executives to daily online posts for practitioners.

Get the latest from HRMorning in your inbox PLUS immediately access 10 FREE HR guides.

I WANT MY FREE GUIDES

Keep Up To Date with the Latest HR News

With HRMorning arriving in your inbox, you will never miss critical stories on labor laws, benefits, retention and onboarding strategies.

Sign up for a free HRMorning membership and get our newsletter!
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
HR Morning Logo
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linked In
  • ABOUT HRMORNING
  • ADVERTISE WITH US
  • WRITE FOR US
  • CONTACT
  • Employment Law
  • Benefits
  • Recruiting
  • Talent Management
  • HR Technology
  • Performance Management
  • Leadership & Strategy
  • Compensation & Payroll
  • Policy & Culture
  • Staff Administration
  • Wellness & Safety
  • Staff Departure
  • Employee Services
  • Work Location
  • HR Career & Self-Care

HRMorning, part of the SuccessFuel Network, provides the latest HR and employment law news for HR professionals in the trenches of small-to-medium-sized businesses. Rather than simply regurgitating the day’s headlines, HRMorning delivers actionable insights, helping HR execs understand what HR trends mean to their business.

Privacy Policy Terms of Service
Copyright © 2021 SuccessFuel

WELCOME BACK!

Enter your username and password below to log in

Forget Your Username or Password?

Reset Password

Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.

Log In

During your free trial, you can cancel at any time with a single click on your “Account” page.  It’s that easy.

Why do we need your credit card for a free trial?

We ask for your credit card to allow your subscription to continue should you decide to keep your membership beyond the free trial period.  This prevents any interruption of content access.

Your card will not be charged at any point during your 21 day free trial
and you may cancel at any time during your free trial.

preloader