How to Communicate with Your Team Using Homebase

Strong communication is a driver of business success. You can draw a clear line between unhappy customers, mistakes, dissatisfied employees, and ineffective communication. But with open lines of communication between you and your team, the opposite is true—you’ll have happy customers and productive, satisfied team members who are happy to come to work each day. Homebase helps you get your team in sync with an all-in-one team communication app. In this article, we’re breaking down how to avoid misunderstandings using Homebase to communicate with your team.

Why effective team communication matters for your new business

When starting a new business, it’s important to start with a strong foundation that you can build on when you grow and expand your business. A pillar of that foundation? Effective team communication. Without strong team communication, teams will have misunderstandings, which result in incomplete, delayed, or even overlooked tasks. This leads to unhappy customers, a drop in productivity, and an unhappy team. Scary, isn't it? Team communication is essential for new and established businesses, as it allows you to:

• Foster a culture of collaboration: When you encourage employees to communicate with each other, they can work together to solve problems and find new ways to complete their tasks effectively.
• Boost employee morale: Who doesn’t love coming to a workplace where they feel supported? When employees can ask for help and communicate with their peers and management, they’ll be happier at work.
• Set your business up for success: When employees have all the information they need to do their jobs well, they can carry out their day-to-day tasks efficiently. And when they're thrown a curveball, they can better manage it when they clearly understand business operations.

Make staying connected simple

It’s extremely frustrating when you’re trying to get a hold of an employee, but you can’t. Maybe you need to send an update about the schedule or deliver a shift-specific message. It takes time to look up emails or phone numbers, and if a team member has changed their information without updating, it can leave you in a real pinch. That’s why a team messenger tool you use specifically for work is a game changer. It moves from device to device, so you don’t need to worry about updating information. Homebase's free mobile app has a built-in messenger tool, making staying connected with your team easy. You can send messages to individuals, your entire team, or instantly create groups for specific teams like bartenders, delivery drivers, or your closing crew. Homebase keeps everyone in the loop when onboarding new employees by automatically adding them to your team. No need to share phone numbers or update the group chat—they’ll be added immediately and never miss an important message.

Reach your team members where they are

There are so many ways to communicate with people, from emails to text messages and phone calls to group chats. While seemingly helpful, checking all of those locations can become overwhelming for your team, and it’s easy for things to get missed. With a dedicated communication app like Homebase, your team will always know where to go when they need to look up work information or check in for updates on their next shift. And because we’re all already glued to our mobile devices, your employees are more likely to see messages and updates when they’re sent directly to their phones. The Homebase messenger tool helps keep your team connected on or off the clock.

Say goodbye to sticky notes and hello to read-receipts

In years past, the sticky note or whiteboard message was the key to communicating with shift teams—you finished your shift and left a note to give the next team any important updates. But there was no way to know if they got the information they needed. There’s good news, though. Gone are the days when you needed to rely on sticky notes and whiteboard messages to communicate effectively with your employees. With the Homebase messenger app, you can quickly share important information with team members in just a few clicks. Efficiently onboard new employees by sending the employee handbook and any documents that need signatures in the app. Add shift notes with specific instructions and send them to the team members who need them for the next day. You can even send announcements, shift reminders, clock outs, and schedule updates from one easy-to-access location. And, to make it even better, Homebase has read receipts, so you can know when your team has seen your messages. Talk about accountability!

Set your management team up for success

As your business grows, you’ll need communication systems extending beyond employees and including your management team. A manager log book is a great way to share critical information from shift to shift. A manager log book is convenient for business owners to stay updated on daily operations. Managers or employees fill it in at any given shift to ensure you know how things are going from shift to shift. While a pen-and-paper solution can be functional, Homebase’s online manager log book gives you access to even more benefits. Homebase lets you streamline communication across shifts and managers by putting shift notes online where everyone can access them wherever they are. It also integrates alongside your sales data so managers can provide insights into your daily sales results. This helps you stay informed of what’s happening on-site, even if you aren’t there.

Build a connected team

Teamwork makes the dream work. And if the dream is your business, this should ring true for you. A company is more likely to run smoothly when a team works well together. People are more productive, satisfied, and generally happier at work. Team building activities are an excellent way to bring team members together. But when you scale back, the first step in building a connected team is making sure employees communicate well with each other. Finding ways to improve employee communication should be an ongoing process in your business, but with Homebase, you'll have a strong communication foundation to build on. The Homebase team communication app allows you to introduce new hires to the whole team and collect shift feedback to stay informed about how your team members feel. Take it a step further and use Homebase to shout out team members for a job well done—and let team members shout out their peers, too.

Keep your team’s privacy in mind

Data security is something business owners need to think about more than ever before. And while we all know how important it is to keep data stored securely, logistics can be complicated. But don't worry, you don't need a dedicated IT team to make sure your communications with employees are secure. Homebase is a secure messaging app—you never have to worry about the safety of you or your employees' potentially sensitive information. You can rest easy knowing that Homebase is prioritizing your team's privacy.

One platform to manage your new business

Business solutions that help you manage multiple areas of your business are invaluable—they help streamline processes and make it easier to run your business. That's exactly what Homebase does. With the functionality to help you manage scheduling, payroll, communication, hiring and onboarding, HR, and more, Homebase is the all-in-one solution that helps new businesses take control of everyday work.

Run a better team with Homebase

When your team effectively communicates, you'll be able to run fewer in-person meetings, reduce the miscommunications that lead to errors, and give your team members room to collaborate creatively. Homebase is the business communication tool to help new businesses effectively communicate with their teams. Start your business off on the right foot with Homebase. Get started.