(3)SharePoint can help you beat the statistics

Posted by on January 26, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized

The big picture of meetings involves communication. Companies have a long way to go in improving internal communications and collaboration. Meetings play a vital part in communication .A survey was conducted that took a look at 1,168 adults who are not the only person who works at their company/organization, and showed that communication bottlenecks impact productivity, as well as morale. Here are some of the major findings of a Harris Interactive Survey:

22% said that long ineffective meetings negatively impact their productivity

34% said that communication bottlenecks impact their productivity;

  • 30% said they don’t have the necessary information to do their jobs;
  • Ineffective internal communications negatively impact employee morale:
    19% feel that their organizations are not effective at recognizing and rewarding highly productive, collaborative and contributing employees;
    By comparison, only 8% feel that their company was effective
  • Interacting with colleagues is preferred to interacting with senior managers (60% vs. 35%), and impersonal communication like email (74%) and phone (61%) are much preferred to scheduled in-person meetings (31%). Most do not feel comfortable sharing ideas and feedback with managers and executives.  It’s also very interesting to note that 52% of respondents respect coworkers, while only 39% respect their managers; 29% learn from coworkers, while 19% learn from managers.
  • only 7% of respondents feel that their coworkers know the range of their skills

 

Communication can boost morale and reduce productivity bottlenecks described above.  Furthermore, creating the culture in which open communication thrives, can foster better dialogue between employees and managers, while also helping everyone get to know other people’s unique skills.

If you don’t have the right organizational culture in place, you can spend a considerable amount of resources on designing programs and investing in wrong technology tools, with meager results. A culture that supports inter- and intra-department collaboration is needed? SharePoint Meeting technology can aid organizations in this objective.

SharePoint can aid one in the following areas:

  1. Compensation and incentive programs. Are you actually measuring the right things? Do you understand who your employees are and what they value? Get to know their skills and value systems.
  2. Training and development. Are you actually allowing people to invest in deepening and broadening their professional knowledge? Is your company set up to allow key  people with various backgrounds who do seemingly different jobs share ideas and learn from each other?
  3. Innovation process. How do you handle innovation? How do you monitor and process ideas? How can external ideas (from the market areas, from customers and partners) get socialized on the inside?
  4. Encouraging participation. Does everyone have a place to post ideas, ask and answer questions?  What do they get out of it?
  5. Cross-silo communication. Productivity waste occurs often in most organizations. The culprit can be communication between team members, as well as cross-silo communication. You need to establish a process by which people share information, while setting guidelines that keep the communication useful for all stakeholders.
  6. Communication up and down the “corporate ladder”. Culture is going to play a key role in encouraging management to communicate openly with employees of all kinds of levels. The survey shows that employees don’t like sharing feedback and ideas with management. Management needs to institute a way for employees to reach them directly and openly, without immediate judgment. It’s up to everyone, at every level of the organization, to foster this type of participation. Executive sponsorship of a communication channel is extremely vital, because it sends the right message of “We’re here to listen and collaborate with you always.”
  7. Measurement. One of the objectives of open collaboration and communication is big productivity gains; another is increased morale. SharePoint can help you measure productivity and morale gains in your organization.