Remote Work Destroys Communication — A Simple Comms Plan Template That Works for Your Distributed Workforce
Article 9 of 10
Effective communication in a distributed workforce has a rhythm. There is a beat to it.
You’ve come all of this way. It would be a shame to do all of the hard work and then fail because you couldn’t be bothered to define the minimum standards. Whatever your definition of effective communication ends up looking like at your company it needs to be defined. Everyone should know what “right” looks like.
No storytelling in this article. My purpose here is to give you a very practical framework to design your communications standard. This is the easy part.
The least exciting and most practically useful article I have ever written.
Establish a rhythm to your communications -> Engineer your flow
A little initial thought and planning will yield some simple standards that are easy to understand and give your employees the clarity and comfort they desire.
I recommend thinking about your communications plan across three axes: People, Frequency, and Mode
People: Who are the participants in the communication?
We’ll use people as our anchor to keep the groupings simple:
- Everyone (the whole company)
- Department
- Division
- Individual
Frequency: How often do planned communications occur?
Again, these are minimum standards, so keep it simple. You don’t need to cover every possible scenario.
- Annually
- Quarterly
- Monthly
- Weekly
- Daily
Mode: How will we communicate?
The delivery mechanisms are important.
- In-person
- Video Conference
- Public Board
I recommend avoiding the inclusion of email and phone in your engineered standards. Those are inefficient and closed by design. Email is especially dangerous. According to Cal Newport email destroys productivity by replacing high-value work with near-constant email management. “Today we send and receive an estimated 126 messages, checking our inboxes once every 6 minutes on average.” You should actively push communications out of email whenever possible.
Now that we have defined the axis we’ll use them to create a simple internal communications plan. Start with your people groups. For each grouping,
- Define the content that needs to be communicated regularly.
- Assign it a frequency.
- Assign it a mode.
Let’s go through a few quick examples:
Everyone:
#1
Content: CEO State of the Union
Frequency: Annual
Mode: In person
#2
Content: Company Goals Update and Review
Frequency: Quarterly
Mode: Public Board Post
#3
Content: COO Progress Report and Employee Recognition
Frequency: Monthly
Mode: Public Board Post
#4
Content: Employee Presentations
Frequency: Weekly
Mode: Video Conference
Department:
#1
Content: Service Project
Frequency: Annual
Mode: In Person
#2
Content: Lessons Learned Review
Frequency: Monthly
Mode: Video Conference
#3
Content: Departmental Goals
Frequency: Monthly
Mode: Public Board Post
Division:
#1
Content: Project Review
Frequency: Monthly and as required
Mode: Video Conference
#2
Content: Progress and planning standup
Frequency: Daily
Mode: Video Conference
#3
Content: Training
Frequency: Weekly
Mode: Video Conference
Individual:
#1
Content: Performance Review
Frequency: Annual
Mode: In Person
#2
Content: Salary Review
Frequency: Annual
Mode: In Person
#3
Content: 1 on 1 Manager Coaching
Frequency: Monthly and as required
Mode: Video Conference
In 15 minutes and less than one page, we have defined our minimum communications standards and given our managers a tool to establish a rhythm in their communications with their employees. We have given our employees the clarity they need to feel the beat. No more wondering when they will hear something or worrying they missed some critical piece of information flow. It’s all defined right there in the standards.
We’re so close! In the final article, we’ll talk about the tools we’ll need to make it work.
