COMMUNICATION

AT WORK
Strategies for Cultivating Relationships
and Driving Business Results

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 Introduction

The way we work has changed, not just

because of rapid advancements in
technology, but also because new
generations entering the workforce are
demanding change.
By 2025, millennials are set to
represent about 75% of the
workforce.

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A Changing Business Landscape Requires a Focus
on Communication

Today Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials each make
up about a ⅓ of the workforce. But in the next 5 years that
will change dramatically as Baby Boomers retire. By 2020,
Millennials are set to represent about 75% of the
workforce.
This demographic change will be accompanied by a change
in workplace values. Millennials put extra emphasis on
corporate social responsibility and want to be highly
engaged with what they do. Even more, they want to feel
connected to the greater organization and are demanding
that companies think about relationships and social
camaraderie at work.
In order to attract millennials, leaders must harness this
sense of mission and truly prioritize effective top-down,
peer to peer, and bottoms up communication.
In doing this, companies will ensure that they secure top
talent as well as drive business results. From employee
engagement and productivity to shareholder returns and
market premiums, companies with highly effective internal
communication strategies score higher across the board.

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Communication Preferences Among Generations
This influx of younger generations also means that in many
companies, three to six generations of workers will be
working under the same roof, so to speak. Each of these
generations has different communication preferences and
technology comfort levels, which must be proactively
managed so that companies can reduce friction and
capitalize on the best of all generations.
In many companies, three to six generations of
workers will be working under the same roof.
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Baby Boomers often prefer face-to-face or phone
communication and tend to be more formal in their
correspondence. Many provide thorough background and
context when communicating and because they didn’t grow
up with much technology, adoption rates can vary.
Generation X exhibits a broader spectrum of
communication styles. They are comfortable with formal
and face-to-face communication as well as digital
communication like Slack/Text/IM channels. They tend to
be big users of social modes because social media came
about in this generation. They also grew up with early
technology, making them adaptable in their communication
style and use of technology.
Communication Preferences Among Generations
Millennials are digital natives that tend to prefer digital
communication. They are more informal and brief when
communicating and often use abbreviations or emoji’s
which are convenient in digital communication. Some
Millennials get uncomfortable with in-person and phone
communication while others are comfortable with it.
Navigating these differences requires companies to educate
employees about different communication biases and
implement team norms and standards across the company.
Employees should have guidelines that explain when to use
more formal communication, how much context to provide
in different situations, and what mode of communication is
appropriate for each situation.
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With these upcoming shifts in the workforce, it’s more
important than ever for companies to find effective ways
for Baby Boomers to share their wealth of knowledge and
information with younger generations.
Equipping employees with all modes of communication is a
crucial step so that each employee can communicate in a
way that is comfortable for them, while having an easy way
to switch modes when the situation requires it.
So with that in mind, how should companies go about
building relationships at work, for the benefit of both
employees and company revenue? Erica Keswin, a leading
workplace strategist, author, and Zinc webcast guest, has a
3 part plan that any company can follow.
 Find
Finding the the ‘Sweet
‘Sweet Spot’ Spot’
with the 3 P’s
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also
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Communication Communication
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By following Erica’s 3 part plan - what she calls the 3 P’s; Prioritize, Position & Protocols, leaders can successfully find the
By following Erica’s 3 part plan—what she calls the 3 P’s: Prioritize, Position & Protocols—leaders can successfully
technology sweet spot at their companies.
find the technology sweet spot at their companies.

PRIORITIZE POSITION PROTOCOLS

Prioritize Position Define Protocols

Relationships Technology to for Effective
Strengthen Technology Use
Relationships

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 “Prioritize Relationships”, the first step in this plan, has to come from the
top down. Leadership must prioritize relationship building at work.
Whether that is having lunch brought in so employees can sit down and
eat together or holding a company retreat, leaders should intentionally
create opportunities for relationship building.

Secondly, leaders must emulate this culture themselves. As Erica says,

your schedule must reflect your values. So if it’s important that your
company has lunch together on Fridays, leadership better be there too,
making connections with their employees.

Prioritize For remote or deskless teams, this can be a little more challenging, but
Relationships there is the ability to conduct regional meetings that cover what is
happening at headquarters. Additionally, smaller groups can share lunch
together and at a minimum, join company-wide conference calls where
everyone has a chance to hear and be heard.

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 The second step, positioning technology to strengthen relationships,
requires companies to closely evaluate their employees’ communication
needs. Technology has created a number of ways for people to
communicate and connect with each other. It can be thought of as a
continuum, with sending a text message on one end and flying across
the country for an in person meeting on the other.

Position Technology
With so many options, and recognizing that some are easier to do than
to Strengthen others, it becomes increasingly important for companies to be strategic

Relationships in their use of technology. This means providing employees with the
right platform or apps that allow them to communicate efficiently and
effectively.

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 For employees who work in an office this might mean providing them
with desktop tools for real-time communication, conference calling,
messaging, project management, and so on. For deskless and field-
based workers such as those in logistics, manufacturing or hospitality
industries, mobile-first solutions are a must for enabling real-time
communication and problem solving.

An important caveat here is that the communication technology your

company uses must be widely adopted by everyone, whether the

Position Technology
employee is deskless or in an office. The reality is that most remote
workers feel left out from conversations in comparison to their office
to Strengthen counterparts, and communication is the key to correcting this.

Relationships With the right technology implemented, communicating and

collaborating with colleagues and across teams becomes fast and easy,
rather than something that makes you want to pull your hair out.

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 The final P, “Protocols,” refers to specifying best practices for using
technology to communicate with coworkers. Due to the mix of
generations and their varying communication preferences, there is a lot
of friction around workplace communication, which directly impacts
performance and productivity. In order to prevent productivity and job
satisfaction losses, companies must set protocols for what modes of
communication to use in different situations, how much detail and
context to provide, and what level of formality is appropriate.

Define Protocols Sometimes a quick instant message is appropriate, but in others a phone
call or in-person meeting is a better choice. Erica Keswin calls this
for Effective “making your message match the medium.” Does telling your manager

Technology Use that you’ll be in the office in 10 minutes require a phone call? Probably
not.

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 Creating and socializing these guidelines could take the form of a change
management effort that brings awareness and adoption of the different
modes of communication. And while companies should provide these
best practices for technology use, employees should also be thinking
strategically about what type of communication is the best choice for a
certain interaction and goal.

When employees know the rules of the road and are given the right

Define Protocols tools, they can start communicating with ease and confidence. Once
these effective communication practices are in place, embodied from
for Effective the top down, better business outcomes follow.

Technology Use

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Reap the Rewards
Research and personal experience prove that the
quality of communication within an organization
directly impacts its ability to succeed.
When companies have effective internal communication
practices in place, employee satisfaction and engagement
increase, which translates to increases in productivity,
performance and ultimately customer satisfaction. This is
true no matter what industry.
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In the 90’s, the National Transportation Safety Board found
that 73% of the incidents in its database occurred on a
crew’s first day of flying together, before they had the
chance to get acquainted and learn how best to work
together. Additionally, a NASA study found that fatigued
crews who had a history of working together made about
half as many errors as crews that were made up of rested
pilots who had not flown together before.
Another well known study conducted by Cornell in 2015
found that firefighters who ate together got higher marks
for their team performance (i.e. saved more lives) than
those who did not eat together. No matter the job title,
effective communication and good working relationships
benefit the business.
Customer Case Study Vivint, a smart home services provider with thousands of field
technicians, was struggling with very low employee retention and
and first time fix rates. To find the root cause, Vivint conducted an
employee survey, and to their surprise, communication came back
as the number one problem. The issue was that corporate sent
updates through email, a medium that none of the techs working
out in the field used.

In Erica’s words, Vivint was not making the message match the
medium. Instead they were using a single mode for all
Zinc Captures Field Techs’ Attention
communications, and worse yet, that mode had zero adoption
Today it has become easier (there’s so many options) yet
among field teams. Because of this, technicians felt completely
more complex (there’s so many options!) to connect
disconnected from the organization and didn’t have the
disparate teams with each other and their office
information they needed to do their jobs effectively. Armed with
counterparts. One company, Vivint Smart Home, overcame
this understanding, Vivint rolled out Zinc as a solution that drives
this obstacle after prioritizing communication and adopting
high adoption and provides all the modes of communication that
the best-fit technology.
both field and desk-based workers need.

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Analytics Help Sustain a Global Company Culture
Customer Case Study
BioTek Instruments, Inc., is a global leader in the
development, manufacture, and sale of microplate
instrumentation and software. With teams spread across
the globe, the need for real-time communication and
insights into how teams communicate led them to
deploying Zinc’s All Mode Communication Platform.

After rolling out Zinc, BioTek was able to resolve critical
issues faster, connect office-based workers with the field-
based workers, and increase efficiency by having all
knowledge and information accessible from one place.
But that wasn’t all. Using Zinc’s Communication Analytics,
BioTek’s Service Director, Sean Jordan, finally had insight
into how to sustain the company culture across a global
workforce and optimize communications to keep everyone
engaged and productive.
Sean uncovered:
• Who communicates with whom
• What grass roots conversations employees find helpful
• The most popular topics
• How frequently employees talk
• How many employees engage with top-down communication
• How employees use communication to strengthen relationships
• Generational differences in technology adoption and ways of
communicating

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 These insights meant Sean could isolate problems and
commonly asked questions that field technicians brought
up through Ad Hoc Group creation. Using this knowledge
he was able to find solutions and incorporate common
questions and issues into service training, giving everyone
at the company much needed information.

Additionally, he found that social groups were being

created where employees talked about non-work topics
such as Game of Thrones or the Harvey Hurricane. These
groups were where BioTek employees, no matter the
location, came together to bond and talk about shared
interests. Sean realized that the ability of his workforce to
create group messaging threads on the fly was crucial not
just for job-related troubleshooting, but also for building
relationships and strengthening BioTek’s culture.

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Summary

Communication is critical for business success and
shouldn’t be brushed aside or treated as an afterthought.
With a demographic shift taking place in the workforce, it is
even more important to prioritize communication and
create strategies that reduce the natural communication
friction among different generations.
Without easy-to-use technology and proper guidelines for
communication, this friction can spread, leaving costly
consequences in its wake. Combating this means striking
the balance between “tech and connect” where technology
is used to strengthen relationships and improve employee
engagement.
Companies can do this by sharing communication best
practices, supplying a robust yet intuitive communication
solution that everyone can adopt, and emphasizing
relationship building at work. With this strategic
communication plan, companies will benefit from impressive
business results — whether that’s firemen saving more lives
or field service technicians finishing more jobs in a day.
With a demographic shift taking place in the
workforce, it is even more important to prioritize
communication.

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 Additional Resources

WEBINARS
Want to learn more Connecting Deskless Workers for Business
about how communication Impact
drives business results?
Connecting the Dots between
Communication and Business Results
Check out the complete
Communication is Elemental
How Zinc Improves Engagement at BioTek
Series from Zinc.

EBOOK
Communication is Elemental; Deskless
Workers Depend On It

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 DEFINING
DESKLESS COMMUNICATION

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