NewAgeSys Solutions

What Is Upward Communication?

Upward communication is a process that lets employees communicate directly with their superiors or upper management. The employees working at NewAgeSys uses upward communication for mainly three major reasons, and they are:

• Provide feedback to the administration.
• Share ideas that can benefit the team/project.
• Raise concerns regarding any work-related issues.

For years, companies have always relied on downward communication in the workplace, but it is no longer an efficient method for business management. Today, the most productive business organizations are the ones that are employee-centric with excellent upward communication.

Upward communication is essential if you want to set up a productive work environment that benefits your company and its employees. But what can you do as a company to encourage upward communication? 

Here are some of the methods that we follow to encourage upward communication for the employees working at NewAgeSys.

#1 Get The Support Of Your Managers

Managers play a vital role in encouraging upward communication in your workplace. They are the first contact to all your ground-level employees. Unfortunately, many managers either don’t know or don’t want to encourage upward communication even today. 

The fact that now most of the communications inside a team or organization happen online does not help bridge this communication gap. However, you can consider using an advanced software solution that enables employees to freely share their ideas, concerns, or questions. It can help to make your communication more accessible and frictionless. 

#2 Grow An Open Communication Culture

Upward communication is closely related to the open communication culture of your workplace. You can start cultivating an open communication culture by focusing on the Mid-management and supervisors. 

They are the key to opening a good communication culture because they interact with both the ow and mid-level employees. Additionally, the managers should encourage and support more open-door policies, resulting in the pro-active participation of all the employees.

#3 Understand Your Employees And Personalize Your Communication

You can not hope to encourage upward communication in your company without understanding your employees and their mind. Hence, if yours is a company with a presence all over the country or beyond, you need to understand the cultural difference for each place. 

Cultural differences or diversities must be celebrated so that everyone feels appreciated at the workplace. Adapting a communication style that suits the work environment is one way we ensure that the employees working at NewAgeSys feel comfortable communicating inside the organization.

You must understand that cultural differences can influence the language used inside the company, including the messaging in upward communication. Hence, you should try to make your communication inside the organization personal and localized if you want it to be effective.

#4 Select Suitable Communication Mediums

The communication mediums you employ in your workplace can make or break your upward communication efforts. It is not rare for the managers or directors to use multiple communication channels that do not allow access to the lower-level employees.

However, using such inaccessible tools for communication by the upper-level employees can be a big hurdle for implementing upward communication. Instead, you should use more inclusive communication channels that all your employees can access.

#5 Provide Channels For Sharing Employee Ideas/Concerns

One of the best strategies that significantly helped us implement upward communication is creating designated communication channels for the employees. These channels allowed our employees to ask questions, raise concerns, and share ideas with the company.

People tend to communicate better through online feedbacks rather than doing it in person because those interactions sometimes tend to be awkward to some extent. Hence it is ideal for getting feedback about the leadership and management of senior employees.

Conclusion

Upward communication is necessary for today’s business because it is the only way you can ensure the sustainable growth of your company. However, it can be tough to implement upward communication if you don’t already have an open communication culture. 

Thankfully, advanced software solutions can help you get the push in the right direction. However, you would still need the active participation of all you employees, including the managers, directors, and most importantly, ground-level employees.