Saturday, February 19th, 2011
Yesterday, I overheard one of my managers comment to another, “How did we ever function without BRACpet Connect?” She was referring to our intranet which I built on a Ning platform approximately 18 months ago. With this platform, we are able to communicate to the entire team in a single place that is searchable and dynamic. This is important to us because we now work out of five buildings spread out over a one mile radius in Indianapolis.
Verbal, non-verbal and written communications are equally important within any organization. I have found that there can never be “too much” communication, or “too many” ways to communicate with a team of more than 50 employees. So, how do we communicate?
- Weekly staff meetings: we close every Wednesday for an hour and 15 minutes. We alternate weeks between meeting as a “full staff” and as departments, breaking into teams to discuss key issues relevant to our specific work areas.
- Intranet: we use this daily! Employees are required to log-in a minimum of twice a day (beginning and end of shift), but most find themselves logging-in more frequently to find specific information throughout the day.
- Email: every team member is given a company email address. They are required to check this twice a day, as well.
- Staff Stuff: our Human Resources Director publishes a monthly team newsletter called “Staff Stuff”. This is an internal newsletter that celebrates birthdays, and anniversaries, but the cover story is always a “getting to know you” piece about one of the team members.
- Communication boards: you can find at least half a dozen dry erase boards in our organization. These boards are crucial to shift changes, pet updates, weekly goals, and inventory messages.
- Pagers: are used to alert team members that a client has arrived with their pet for an appointment. Rather than using the telephone system to intercom throughout the hospital until you find who you are looking for, these pagers allow us to subtly communicate directly with one another, quietly and efficiently.
- Instant Messaging: is used to communicate with team members who are working n a computer in another area of the hospital. This is especially handy for communicating with technicians in the pharmacy, or getting a message to a team member in an exam room without interrupting the flow of the appointment.
In addition to all of these tools, we recently started using Chatter for our Management team. We’ve only been using this private, Twitter-like feed for about two weeks, but find it very useful as many of us have a smartphone. Chatter is available as an iPhone or iPad app, and has a downloadable desktop app for PCs. Similar to an instant message, the biggest difference is that all conversations occur for all members of the management team to read and comment on, rather than one-on-one IM chat messages.
Are you communicating enough with your team? Don’t stop at one method of communication. The more ways you can find to open up the lines of communication, the more bonded your team will be to one another and the practice.
Tags: chatter, communication, internal communication, messages, non-verbal communication, staff meetings, team communication, verbal communication, written communication
