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The Communicator’s Role for Reducing Information Overload

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With so many office staff today spending hours on a daily basis sifting through e-mails, letters, reports, fielding numerous phone calls, not to mention the increase of personal communications devices such as Blackberry’s and PDA’s, it is therefore becoming noticeable that many of them are struggling to manage effectively the constantly growing daily information flow. Research from the Health and Safety Executive has highlighted this growing concern demonstrating that information overload can lead to stress induced illness. The research showed that more than 25% of managers polled cited information overload as their main cause of stress in the workplace. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) stated that in 2004-2005 each case of stress-related ill health led to an average of 30.9 working days lost, with almost 13 million working days lost due to stress, depression and anxiety.

Internal communications specialists are increasingly being asked by clients how to reduce information overload to enable them to convey their messages in a simple, straightforward manner and to create two way communication with their colleagues on a strictly need-to-know basis, using the most appropriate communications channels available to them.

As communicators, the ultimate objective is to maximise people’s creativity and productivity. So what can an individual do - and how can they be supported by their organisation to reduce the impact that communication overload has on their ability to be productive?

Know your communication channels
Understanding communication channels available to you and making them more focused is essential if you are to assess the suitability of information and the channels it flows through for communication in the workplace.

Simplify communication
Making life easier by simplifying, personalising and tailoring communications by understanding and identifying the key audiences within an organisation.

Manage the information pool more closely
Learning how to best manage the information that floods into the office. Ask the question: do I need to pass this information on? To who is it important and why?

Ensuring separation of essential & non-essential information
Learn to better process information before it is dispersed. If the essential isn’t broken down from the non-essential when communicating it, the information forwarded will take the recipient far longer to digest, often leading to crossed and misunderstood communications.

Re-introduce basic communications
Trying to merge the best of the old with the best of the new. Balance e-mail usage with speaking to people on the telephone, or holding face-to-face meetings, and using the office intranet to answer questions. Also utilise the weekly departmental or office briefing session as a perfect face-to-face two-way communication opportunity.

Return to face-to-face communications
Get back into the habit of using face-to-face communication to help prevent overload. Face-to-face communication gives you the advantage of being able to read body language, allowing you to pick up on misunderstood communications, confusion and misinterpretation. Briefing sessions facilitate this physical interaction and allow the chance to gain a clear indication of what confuses employees and, more importantly, just lets them talk to one another, providing insight into what is happening in the business on an operational level.

Use communications devices to your advantage
With communications devices such as Blackberry’s and PDA’s becoming ever more readily available and more up to date with the latest technology there is no getting away from the constant bombardment of information. Be sure to use your device to your advantage, to help create a more efficient and effective flow of information.

Focus your emails
Separate the valuable from the invaluable and irrelevant when sending e-mails. Failure to summarise adequately can result in communications appearing confused and lacking focus.

Seek varied communications for different types of Information
Try to be creative with the various communication channels to your disposal. Try using new internet-based forums such as blogs to load social and informal information. Unnecessary e-mails cause distraction and affect concentration. For instance, take the Christmas party – is there really a need to tell colleagues about the Christmas party via e-mail? Would not a team meeting, newsletter or blog be a more suitable channel for such informal information?

Businesses can generally benefit from using various different internal communications channels. Really drilling down on the two-way communication needs of a business can reap great rewards. One example is Severn Trent Water which has a three tier approach to dispersing news. Under its internal communications umbrella brand Talk, the following different channels are utilised:

Team Talk is a monthly manager’s briefing presentation which is downloaded from the intranet and which features important business news and health and safety information via a management team of 800 to all colleagues.
Streamline is a three times a week on-line news service loaded on the company intranet
Talk About is a monthly 16-page magazine delivered to all sites and received by all 6,000 colleagues. The magazine covers business and industry news and links directly into the company goal of Being the Best. The magazine is used to breakdown a hierarchical culture and creates two-way open and honest communication. With the company suffering in the past with SCO and OFWAT investigations the magazine is seen as the best tool to communicate a new culture, enthuse colleagues in the direction of the company, inform them of important new developments and generate a new team feeling when the company is currently going through a period of change and cost cutting.

So in conclusion, in the world of information overload, one of the simplest solutions to overcoming this increasing strain on employees time is for staff to ask themselves a number of important questions before they engage in passing information on. These should include - do I really need to pass this on and who might this information be important to and why? Businesses should also look at utilising more traditional forms of one-to-one communication that tend to lead to less information overload such as telephone calls and more importantly face-to-face meetings. It is also essential that clear communication channels are established to cut through the white noise of the business. This can be done through the numerous filtration processes available to businesses to enable the separation of both useful information from invaluable information, which will in the long run help establish excellent internal communications and, more importantly, the integrated channels to just let you talk, something that is immeasurably important if you are to overcome information overload.

Summersault Communications
Gail Franks is managing director of Summersault Communications an employee, customer and business communications company, which works for top FTSE 500 and public sector clients across the UK. Summersault’s clients include: AstraZeneca, Birmingham Midshires, Booker Cash & Carry, Greencore, National Grid plc, Danone UK, G4S, McDonald’s Restaurants Limited, MITIE Group plc, E.ON UK, Welsh Assembly Government, TUI UK (includes Thomson Holidays), Norbert Dentressangle, Siemens UK and Severn Trent Water Limited.

For more information, please visit www.summersault.co.uk