Good and effective communication plays an inevitable role in a care home driving both employee and organisational success.  With the emergence of remote working and distributed teams, many social care organisations are striving to revamp their communication strategies.

Proper communication ensures a diverse range of benefits to your workplace. More specifically, it enables care homes to eliminate unnecessary problems and promote a better work culture. Having a systematic and strong communication strategy can increase the overall efficiency, productivity and it also helps in creating a strong team.

The ability to communicate effectively in the workplace can increase overall productivity, and create a strong team. If employees consult with each other and consider the views of others, they will be interested in cooperating more and finding the best solution together. It also improves some of the significant factors such as employee retention, engagement, motivation and talent attraction.

Managers can better comprehend their employees' strengths and skillsets by establishing good communication, and then giving clear instructions to the people who are best suited for the job, increasing the overall effectiveness of each task.

Let’s now take a deeper dive into how care homes and healthcare organisations can promote effective communication.

1. Evaluate your current communication strategy

Before you contemplate making improvements to your internal communication efforts, it is essential to assess your existing methods and efforts. For the healthcare and social care sector, it is important to establish effective communication methods to avoid making costly and even potentially fatal mistakes.

Evaluating the current methods and tools would help in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Do make sure to solicit feedback from your employees as it can give you a better idea about their concerns and issues about communication methods.

Following the assessment, speak with your team and ask for their input in developing an effective internal communication strategy.  This is also a great opportunity to be a good listener while working with your team and gathering their feedback. And according to their responses, you can tailor your care home’s communication strategy to what works best for them. Giving your employees the opportunity to express themselves can help to build a positive working relationship.

2. Streamline your communication channels

In any care home or nursing home, there are set of standard protocols to ensure the quality of care and services. That is why it is important to streamline your communication methods within teams, patients and management to negate delays and errors.

Replacing traditional paper-based communication with digital solutions improves the overall efficiency and transparency to a greater extent. For instance, JMS One offers an easy to use platform and feature-rich mobile application for care homes, which can be used as your primary communication resource.

As long as your communication remains confidential and safe, you may be able to skip some unnecessary steps that often lead to confusion or take too much time to complete.

3. Adopt a mobile app for team communication

In this age of technology, where people heavily rely on mobile phones, it makes complete sense to encourage its use for professional purposes. Adopting a mobile app for real-time communication among your team members and across the organisation is the most effective and practical choice to conduct a two-way conversation.

JMS One mobile applications are developed to provide your workforce with real-time access to their timesheets, rota, leaves, job bookings, and more. Using mobile phones for communication and collaboration reduces the time spent on administrative tasks and documentation processes.

4. Give your employees a voice

Communication should be a two-way street, isn’t it? As a care home manager, you would be providing feedback to your team members. But does your care home have a system to gather feedback from your employees?  Encourage your employees to provide feedback so that you and the organisation can improve.

Whether you see your employees a few times a day or occasionally, they should all have the same opportunity to express their concerns, needs, and aspirations. when employees don't feel like their voices are being heard, good communication grinds to a halt.

5. Focus on consistency

Everyone in an organisation contributes to its success. So why not form a unified front that brings everyone together? Identifying your care home’s common goal and everyone's role in achieving it is one option.

Align your messages with the mission, vision, and values of your care home or social care organisation. Sharing the "why" behind a decision or a shift in focus helps your employees understand why the decision was made. This fosters trust and a strong sense of teamwork.

Are you ready to revamp your care home’s communication strategy now? Let us help you out. Our team of experts can guide you in implementing the most effective workforce management solutions for your organisation that promotes communication, collaboration and productivity.