Retail Internal Communications
According to Gatehouse’s latest edition of the State of the Sector report, one of the main barriers to successful internal communications is connecting hard-to-reach employees. Over 40% of global respondents say that they find difficulties sharing information with non-desk-based or non-wired staff. In the retail industry, this barrier is even more noticeable considering the increased number of frontline and in-store workers.
Internal communication can be very straightforward for employees working at the office. They sit down, check their emails, read the headlines and the news board; they are often one click away from their source of information. However, it’s often more difficult for frontline workers. They mostly rely on face-to-face communication with their manager, colleagues, suppliers, and clients.
In retail top-down and cross-channel communications, messages can be easily misinterpreted due to the increased number of stops from origin to destination. Information gets lost, added, and lost again until you end up with a message totally unrelated to the original. This creates the perfect circumstances for broken telephone-like communications. You remember playing this whisper game as a kid, right?
Retail Internal comms can easily turn into a game of broken telephone, but organizations can’t risk breaking information flow.
So, we identified 10 ideas to help you improve internal communications within your organization.