We ran across a couple of interesting surveys at internalcommshub.com recently. The Watson Wyatt's WorkUSA® 2006/2007 survey of 12,205 full-time U.S. workers showed that highly engaged employees are much more likely to receive communication from senior managers at least once a month.

In the other survey, more than 2,000 U.S. and Canadian human resources practitioners said that nearly half of all senior manages would earn a grade of C or below for how well they communicate with employees. The survey was conducted by a professional-services firm, Novations Group, in 2007.

Hmmmmmmm. Connecting the dots between good communication and employee engagement definitely wouldn’t dull a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil.

Many other studies have shown a strong link between engaged employees and good business results, and frequent communication at work is one of the essential methods for engaging employees.

We would also encourage managers to think about the quality of communication. In the Novations Group survey, one of the complaints was that managers are too addicted to email. Frequent face-to-face conversations, where the expectations are to tell the truth with goodwill and to be open to others' points of view, would go a long way to helping senior managers bring up the grades on their communication report cards.