How to simplify communication in a complex organisation
According to research, 86% of employees blame poor communication for most workplace failures. In our experience, many such failures (breakdowns in company strategy, process or culture etc) can be cured within a few months when a motivated leadership team, who are willing to step up and lead their people clearly and calmly out of the prior confusion, implement a Social Leadership platform and simply use it each day to reach every employee.
However, as Yapster has grown and we have earned the privilege of working with increasingly complex organisations, we have seen that some companies require advanced configurations and significantly more advisory support in order to unleash their potential through Social Leadership. In complex organisations, in the absence of such support, clear communication and digital presence from management can be drowned out by the volume of other content and number of rival voices within the platform.
What is a “complex organisation”?
Anyone with a few years of varied work experience will know that companies of all sizes have problems and all leaders wrestle to some extent with issues of strategy, hiring, management, sales, service, costs, and profit. So what additional characteristics does an organisation need to have to qualify as ‘Complex’?
The primary characteristics of a complex organisation are:
Size: are there several layers of management between the Executive and local teams (area, regional and divisional management for example)?
Diversity of proposition: does the organisation operate different brands or operating formats (drive through vs dine in or retail vs distribution, for example)?
In such organisations, struggles beyond the ‘normal’ difficulties of running a business might include:
Accidental disempowerment of mid-level leaders, due to competition from Executive and Frontline colleague content within the platform (ie an Area Manager’s weekly update is lost due to subsequent traffic in a local Yap or on the all-company newsfeed)
Excessive peer content might bore or disengage frontline colleagues (is an assistant in Birmingham interested in the 20th recognition post this month by an assistant in Glasgow?)
Content relating to divisional initiatives can be irrelevant or, at worst, confusing if visible to colleagues in neighbouring parts of the organisation
It may be difficult to find or reach relevant groups of colleagues in the company directory if data is not presented in a way that reflects the company org chart (searchable and addressable by region, for example)
What configuration is available within Yapster to simplify the complex organisation?
In order to address the unique issues faced by Complex Organisations, we have 3 special features within the Yapster platform:
Hierarchical directory structure - even if your HR system lacks hierarchical associations (i.e it doesn’t record which sites roll into which areas and regions), Yapster can now add a hierarchical structure over the top to make your Yapster directory searchable and addressable by division and area groupings.
Divisional and area-level news feeds - rather than having all employees across your organisation posting and reading a single company newsfeed, you can set up brand, area and divisional feeds to create a more targeted communication experience for relevant colleagues (whilst still maintaining an all-company feed for permitted users to post to all, such as Senior Management and Corporate Communications)
Divisional dashboard filters - when you create subsidiary newsfeeds, your most senior employees within those areas will need to step up as Social Leaders for those audiences (because there will no longer be so much cross-functional ‘noise’ to cover them). Yapster has created dashboard filters and advanced Social Leadership reporting so that you can see which parts of your Complex Organisation are engaged and well communicated with - and where you have local Social Leadership deficiencies, if any.
Hierarchical directory structure
We are fascinated by the challenge of making big, complex organisations feel connected and straightforward, so please do get in touch if you would like to discuss configuring Yapster for your complex organisation.
