Communication is Key

This week, I have been very frustrated by the lack of quality communication between leadership and employees at Lewis Ginter. This has led to confusion in the virtual workplace and has negatively affected the work being produced. During the COVID-19 era, communication has naturally become more difficult, but it is more important than ever. Leaders should prioritize clear and efficient communication between themselves and their employees, especially when everyone is working from home.

Usually, the four of us working in the public relations and marketing department have a staff meeting over Zoom every Monday. However, because of Memorial Day, the staff meeting was canceled. I was surprised that it was not rescheduled for another day, and I think that the absence of the staff meeting contributed to the how frazzled the week felt for everyone. The staff meeting establishes the projects that everyone will be working on during the week and creates a sense of direction. Additionally, I did not receive a single email from the director of public relations and marketing throughout the course of the week, which was unusual.

I am usually more directly supervised by the digital content manager. However, even our communication was off this week. We had a lot of confusion over the distribution of work, and a hard time explaining to each other what was going on. If we were working together in the same office space, most of this confusion would be eliminated, but right now that is not possible.

I felt stressed and worried this week that my supervisors were unsatisfied with the work I had been doing. I think a lot of this is due to the fact that most of my communication with my supervisors is via email. Although email is a useful workplace tool, it is difficult to convey everything in written form. This is compounded by the fact that I have never actually met any of the people I am working with in person. We don’t know each other, which makes digital communication difficult. I would recommend that Zoom meetings become a more regular part of our workplace communication. Although I think meeting once a week is helpful, I think bumping that up to twice a week or even daily would greatly improve the small issues. Discussing a game plan in “person” at the beginning of the workday would establish clarity from the get-go, and therefore improve email communications that follow throughout the day.