How to Over-Communicate Wisely and Engage Employees

Communication is the umbrella under which all of the most important actions a manager can take to engage their essential workforce live. Talking and listening are the bones of building a work environment where employees feel cared for and motivated to be productive, especially in uncertain times.Incorporate communication into your management style and engage your employees with these 5 tips:

1. 1. Share contact channels. Tell your team members where they can actually reach you when they need you. Give them this information and set the process up to work for you, too. If you prefer texts to phone calls, make that clear.

1. 2. Automate feedback. Open another line of communication, and make it easy to manage. An engagement tool like Butterfly can automatically send pulse surveys as often as daily, encouraging employees to share their feedback and ask for support regularly.

1. 3. Give regular updates. Set a day and time to send a text or email to your team. If you’re still working together in person, this could also be a meeting. This sets their expectations and becomes a third channel for communication.

1. 4. Check in each shift. Any time that an employee is working, you should let them know that you are there to support them. If they have concerns, are feeling overwhelmed, have a solution to a roadblock, let them know you’re around to listen.

1. 5. Be there. Non-verbal communication matters, too. Tell your team that you’re with them, you understand and you’re listening simply by showing up. Only do this, of course, if it is safe and recommended.

More than sending millions of messages that could interrupt the flow of their day, over-communicating is about establishing multiple effective channels and keeping them open. If your employees see this and know it, they can better engage with their job. Butterfly was built for the frontline workforce, offering deskless teams a way to check in and share actionable feedback with ease. We want to help you engage your essential workforce so that they can work effectively and safely, today and in the future.To do that, we are offering access to our industry-leading engagement and communication tools, built especially for the frontline workforce, totally free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.