Communicating with Front-Line Employees

Imagine you have spent months preparing an event for your team. The room is set, the prizes are on display, the cake is cut, and, when party time rolls around, only 40 percent of your team attends.

Clearly, there must have been a breakdown in communication, but what could have been done to bridge the gap? When you look around the room, who is not there? If I had to guess, many of your missing guests would be your front-line employees.

Think about it. Your landscaping, maintenance, custodial, etc. employees are not spending their workday behind a desk where email is directly in front of them. They have tasks to accomplish, and, on most campuses, the to-do list per employee outweighs the number of hours in a workday. While there are locations where your front-line staff can likely access a computer, it is not a priority. They may or may not have their email on their phones, but there is little downtime to catch up on communications. As a result, they miss out on email after email about events, important deadlines, policy and procedure changes, and all manner of information sharing.

But does good communication really matter?

In short, the answer is a resounding “yes!” Frequent, transparent communication is integral to any successful facilities management organization. Informed employees are better equipped to perform their job duties and participate in activities that add value to their lives and careers.

Good communication can also combat burnout while bad communication only fuels the fire. A recent study from Forbes says 43 percent of on-site employees agree that poor communication reduces their trust in leadership. That is a staggering percentage when you think of your own campuses where every single individual team member is needed to serve your institution well. If we are choosing good workers to become leaders, we must train them to become effective communicators too.

Good communication builds better teams. Open, two-way communication helps information flow freely and ensures that everyone has the information needed to set and accomplish goals in a safe working environment. When team members feel like they have the information they need, they are more confident in their work, their team, and their leadership. They can trust that nothing is withheld that could affect them personally or professionally.

While email is the most efficient form of communication for large teams, it is not always the most effective as demonstrated in our event scenario initially. Many likely rely on word of mouth, trusting that supervisors and managers are checking their email and relaying information to their teams during face-to-face team huddles and meetings. While there is nothing wrong with this strategy, it is a good practice to set aside time to evaluate the effectiveness of your communication strategy on a regular basis.

There are several real-world ways to assess whether your communication strategy for front-line employees is working.

1. The first is to simply just talk to them. Make sure you are spending time engaging in face-to-face conversations with front-line employees. Build relationships so they feel comfortable sharing their honest feedback. Ask questions about their preferred communication methods, what is/is not working, and what ideas they have to improve communications. Once you ask the questions, make a concerted effort to really listen. Make sure you are hearing their frustrations, thoughts, and ideas. Allow your team to be a part of the solution instead of immediately shutting them down because you have always communicated in a certain way. Fresh eyes and opinions can be the catalyst for needed change.

2. Ask industry peers how they are communicating with their respective staff. The APPAconnect listserv is a great opportunity to seek out feedback from other facilities management departments across the country. I recently had the opportunity to utilize APPAconnect for this very topic, and the feedback I received helped spark discussion and innovation as I work to strengthen my department’s internal communications strategy.

The responses received provided a mix of reassurance and creativity. It is clear that front-line communication is a topic of interest for many facilities management teams, but hearing from departments who are doing things differently gave us a lot of ideas to test with our own team. Some respondents are using similar tactics to us through email, radio, Microsoft Teams, and text messaging, while others are focused more on face-to-face interaction through frequent team meetings. There’s no clear right or wrong way to communicate, as long as you do it frequently and transparently.

“Listening and trying to understand the needs of those we would communicate with seems to me to be the essential prerequisite of any real communication. And we might as well aim for real communication.” —Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers)

3. Do not be afraid to try new tactics. From text messages to video announcements, we have tried a little bit of everything. Some things were great in theory but didn’t pan out, and that’s okay! Just make sure you maintain the flexibility to brush it off, go back to your team, and continue asking good questions.

Finding a communications strategy that works for your entire team is an ever-moving target in a world that is rapidly changing. Do not be afraid to try new things but do not discount options that are already working for you. The more effort you put into reaching your team at all levels, the stronger your department will be in supporting your campus.

My team at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, knows that I have a deep love for Fred Rogers and the work he did as Mr. Rogers. I often quote him in departmental communications, and I would like to do the same here. To sum it all up, “Listening and trying to understand the needs of those we would communicate with seems to me to be the essential prerequisite of any real communication. And we might as well aim for real communication.”

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Sam Ledford is the communications manager at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She can be reached at [email protected].