How to Improve Upward Communication to Make Employee Concerns More Visible

The rise of remote working is reshaping workplace communications. For many, working from home brings benefits including flexibility and no commute. Others, meanwhile, find hybrid working models work best and hot desking right for their office. That way, employees can come and go as they please while enjoying some healthy in-person face time with one another.

Given that these trends are here to stay, businesses are having to find new ways to support their staff. Fortunately, new tools such as applications for business allow companies and remote teams to increase productivity while retaining the flexibility of fitting around other commitments.

One of the most important factors in employee engagement is what's known as employee voice. Does their voice matter? Absolutely. And employee-centric organizations that take their internal communications seriously are switching from traditionally hierarchical models of interactions to one where information flows more freely across all levels in the organization.

In this post, we'll unpack what upward communication is, why it's important, and how businesses can ultimately make employee concerns more visible.
What is upward communication?
Upward communication is essentially when lower-level employees communicate with management. Downward communication flows from superiors to subordinates in a directive manner, the purpose of which is to give instructions and assign responsibilities.

Upward communication, in contrast, lets employees voice their own opinions, provide feedback, and raise concerns about their day-to-day work experience.

And companies that actively encourage upward communication stand to benefit in significant ways.


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Examples of upward communication
First, let's run over some examples.

Manager feedback survey
These surveys let employees rate the performance of their managers. Ideally, managers can solicit feedback when employee performance reviews are due. It's a great way of making sure constructive feedback gets divided equally.

Employee satisfaction polls
Beyond managerial performance, companies need to gather feedback on the extent to which employees feel included in important company decisions. And how they feel about their workplace culture overall. Employee polls or surveys can be conducted in-person during meetings or via emojis on your channels for digital teams.

Suggestion boxes
To encourage uninhibited upward communication, you can pin anonymous suggestion boxes online. Some companies ensure an old-school suggestion box greets every employee coming in the door. It's an excellent way of communicating the strong message that their input matters.

What are the benefits of upward communication?
Collecting employee feedback on employee satisfaction not only increases upward communication. It can also help businesses make better decisions. Consider an ecommerce business that uses Amazon brand analytics. They use this tool to derive insights about shopping behaviors and customer data to make more informed decisions with their marketing spend.

Likewise, the only way you'll know where you're getting internal communications right or wrong is by measuring it. The benefits of such upward communication are undeniable.

Employee benefits

Job satisfaction
Upward communication is intrinsic to keeping employees engaged. It follows, therefore, that employees who don't feel empowered to give upward feedback are 16% less likely to stay on at that company. Open communication environments with systems of upward evaluation make for more satisfied employees who feel heard.

Inclusivity
Upward communication helps to create a sense of meaning, purpose, and greater belonging among employees. When employees feel included, they feel valued, and it only brings out the best in them.

Decreases stress
Many workers report a stressful workplace environment as causing difficulties and major effects on their well-being. Let's say you manage a remote sales team, asking your team for regular feedback through a quarterly survey, for example.

Manager benefits

Opportunities to improve
In the same way that feedback can help employees grow and develop in their roles, upward communication allows leaders to recognize opportunities for improvement in their own performance. It encourages a growth mindset.

Organizational benefits

Better collaboration
While traditional hierarchical methods are necessary, organizations can complement these with new communicative techniques to build a strong team culture in which knowledge gets shared more freely, driving operational efficiency.

Organizational alignment
Without upward communication, senior management teams risk falling out of touch with the mood of their employees, leading to strategies that are misaligned with how their employees feel about the company's goals.

Innovation
Without the SEO SaaS software companies need - good specialist SEO - B2B SaaS companies, for example, aren't likely to reach their full potential. But without upward communication, no business is tapping the full potential of its employees. After all, their front-line employees can bring back insights about the soundness of their plans, or flag any bottlenecks in the workflow.

The good thing is that by elevating your flow of bottom-up communication, you can simultaneously lift employee engagement and remove a cap on innovations that drive business performance.

What are some barriers to upward communication?
So much for the benefits. What are some of the pitfalls that stand in the way of a healthy open flow of information?

Fear can prevent staff from speaking up
In the prehistoric environment of evolutionary adaptiveness, the cost of challenging the high-status individuals who held significant sway over resources could range from ostracism from the clan to being killed. Employees today can be reluctant to speak up in organizations due to a deeply-rooted evolutionary fear of approaching bosses.

Autocratic leadership
This said, in some workplaces, the angst lower-level employees have of sharing feedback is grounded in reality. Autocratic leadership can stifle upward communication when intimidating leaders dismiss honest employee input and trigger fear in lower-level employees (the case of Enron was a principal example of this dynamic).

Manager resistance
One survey discovered that modern leaders often respond to negative feedback in maladaptive ways. Some overreact, some look for reasons to dismiss critical feedback, and others use business priorities as an excuse to ignore it.

Ingratiation effect
Let's face it - most of us are sensitive to negative input. Unfortunately, it seems we're instinctively on guard against transmitting any critical information that might paint us in an unflattering light. Which habitually leads to us exaggerating the extent to which we agree with those of a higher status. If most team members censor what they really think, such kissing up can produce excessive self-confidence in supervisors that distorts their decision-making.

How to improve upward communication to make employee concerns more visible?

Foster a culture of open communication.
Management sets the tone in driving workplace upward communication. The first step is recognizing that a culture of openness and transparency starts with managerial buy-in. From there, create an open-door policy such that employees know that your literal or virtual door is always open for them to approach you with ideas, problems, and questions.

Create channels that enable upward communication
Also essential to making employee concerns visible is having an internal communication policy that designates separate channels for different messages. Whether they want to discuss a potential promotion or ask a quick question, they'll know the relevant team channel.

Having such systems enables employees to understand that you're doing your best to create a genuinely supportive culture. Having a specific channel on your internal comms platform where leaders can engage and reassure employees is, again, ever more vital in a time of increasing remote work.

Take software development companies. To support their dispersed workforces, such companies have invested in tools such as remote work software that frees developers up from spending time on menial tasks to focus on creating excellent software.

Businesses have started to reconsider the systems and communication channels they use every day. Old, slow processes such as one-way communications have been cast out - in favor of channels that promote efficiency and allow employees to share their thoughts.

Institutionalize feedback
One of the best ways to make employee concerns more visible is by embedding two-way dialogue throughout your organization. As well as encouraging staff to reach out informally with any problems, you should solicit formal feedback routinely. This way, you're letting employees know that you're serious about reorienting your organization in line with their voice.

Having the right tools
New versatile tools can supercharge digital open-door policies. Take, as an example, a remote call center business.

This business can invest in unified communication platforms that don't merely come with additional functionality - such as machine learning in sales that helps managers use sentiment analysis to oversee teams and save deals. Such communication tools also support inclusive two-way communication through new channels and features.

Encourage employee participation
Rather than having the suits upstairs dictating workplace communication solutions, invite regular employees to take part in conversations about projects via brainstorming sessions or dedicated channels in the team chat app. It shows that you value their input.

Encourage managers to be approachable
Instead of becoming defensive, managers should improve their communication skills and master the art of responding constructively to contrary opinions. Managers should model open communication from the top, handling employee concerns with the grace they deserve.

Wrapping up
In an increasingly competitive market, companies need to make better decisions and, at the same time, drive upward communication to make their employee concerns more visible. Opening a space for people at all levels of the organization to speak up is also an opportunity for businesses to build team trust and gain invaluable new insights.

Leaders must take communication seriously - and communicate more effectively - if the organizations they lead are to succeed. Employees need to be heard. Leaders need to know what's real.

We hope this post motivates you to do what you need to do; pay attention, and pass it on.

Opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of WITI.