Effective communication goals and how to achieve them in 2022

Effective communication is critical for the success of any organisation or individual. You may think communication goals are just goals for improving the way you speak to and approach your team, but it’s actually a bit more complex and involves some strategic thinking and even behavioural science! 

What are communication goals?

Communication goals are specific strategic methods for successfully delivering and drawing information, accessing and evoking emotion. The right communication motivates employees, helps them to feel comfortable and confident to use their voice, and helps them to engage and perform, amongst others. 

Communication goals in the workplace are always goal-oriented. What is your vision or end goal? Do you want a more transparent relationship with your people? Want them to respect you and your advice and decisions? Do you want your people to feel motivated to perform? 

The four types of communication

• Verbal
• Nonverbal
• Written
• Visual

One of the many benefits for setting communication goals is that you’ll have to review and consider your current methods of communicating and if they’ve worked. And then you’ll have to consider why, and then how to improve it. You’ll almost always find areas for improvement! You may even discover why areas like employee engagement have been a struggle. 

Examples of communication goals for employees may look like:

Engage with employees for enhanced decision making 

Recommended communication method: Verbal, non-verbal, written and visual communication will help you to engage with employees. For decision-making, however, it’s always best to engage non-verbally through channels such as pulse surveys. Why? Because data is collected from a host of specific curated questions (a communication method that targets exact topics and concerns), which can then be analysed and thought through and used for historical analysis to observe the success of your decisions. 

Access employee emotion 

Recommended communication method: Inpulse’s pulse surveys measure employee emotion through emotional analytics. The answers categorised and results can be viewed from a holistic, emotional point of view. The results, for example, can tell you how many employees feel undervalued and why.

Deliver messages charismatically for enhanced motivation and engagement

Recommended communication method: Verbal communication is absolutely best for this kind of goal. Employees feed off of their leaders’ energies and seeing/hearing how passionate, excited and driven you are to achieve team and organisational goals, will ignite motivation and engagement in them. Engagement and motivation are emotions best evoked through verbal, in-person communication, but remember, engagement cannot be improved by communication alone – it’s also about the actions you take to hear your people and make decisions that benefit them. 

Establish transparency between people and management 

Recommended communication method: All types of communication can help to achieve transparency, however, we believe one of the most effective methods is visual communication. We at Inpulse have seen how effective it is showing employees their organisation’s pulse survey results, for example, and discussing the action plans with them. This builds transparency because they see their organisation is taking accountability and is committed to making better decisions. 

Give and receive measurable feedback with employees

Recommended communication method: Communicating verbally and in written format isn’t great for measuring feedback. What we mean is – no-one can remember all the conversations they had so for team leaders review historical and current feedback is impossible, and employees aren’t able to be reminded of what their concerns were then and what they are now. Pulse surveys help to collect meaningful, measurable data to help leaders better understand their people, what matters to them and what they need, while helping to guide decision-making for enhanced employee engagement, recruitment and retention of talent, and productivity and performance.