Tuesday, February 02, 2016

The 15-Minute Internal Communication Tactic That Also Could Save Your Life

By Gina Rubel

One of the most frequent concerns we hear from clients during assessments for practice management is that the organization lacks effective internal communications. Often, management fails to tell the rest of the staff what is going on on a day-to-day basis, contributing to frustration and resentment and resulting in a wide variety of missed opportunities to grow and improve the business.

Thankfully, we have an easy solution to this problem that costs nothing and takes no more than 15 minutes of staff time: daily “stand-up” meetings.

A few years ago at Furia Rubel, we implemented daily stand-up meetings where we would all stop what we were doing and gather in the center of the office to reconnect and refocus. They began as two per day one at 9 a.m. and the other at 4 p.m. Over time, our daily stand-ups have changed a bit. Rather than the whole office meeting in the morning, only those who need to check in with one another do so. In the afternoon, a reminder pops up at 4 p.m. for the entire available staff to meet.

What I like about these brief stand-ups is that they force all members of the Furia Rubel team to connect with one another and highlight only the most pressing and important issues of the day. It also helps us to know what is going on with our clients and who on the team is responsible for what. It is important to us to foster a culture of inclusion.

When we asked our colleagues to tell us what they felt was most valuable as it relates to internal communications, everyone mentioned daily stand-up meetings as one of the valuable tools.

Heather Truitt, our senior graphic designer said, “Before coming to Furia Rubel Communications, I worked at small agencies and larger, in-house agencies. Some places had email distributions, which were great, when everyone remembers to reply to the email distribution list, or reply to all on emails. But in a day and age when you send an email instead of picking up the phone, and communications can get so misconstrued, our daily, in-person stand-up meetings promote regular interaction with everyone on the team.”

Heather said, “Being able to stand up and move around a bit and interact with the team is a great exercise towards the end of the day. We interact with each other in person and talk about projects, ask what people need help with for the rest of the day, or just receive a daily reminder that a team stands ready to support each and every person.”

On top of the communication and productivity benefits, there are inherent health benefits to standing up and moving away from the computer. We don’t call them “stand-ups” for nothing.

1 comment:

the pr lawyer said...

So happy to hear that Grace.