Keeping the Doors Open

The doors to managers offices should be kept open. Well, not exactly literally.

Open door policy in an organization indicates that employees have access to managers or supervisors with their questions, suggestions, even complaints.

Business Dictionary defines it as a management practice whereby all employees have direct access to the senior executives without going through several gatekeepers or layers of bureaucracy.

The point of having open doors at the organization is for effective feedback, communication and discussion to improve the quality of work.

For effective communication in the workplace, it is important for employees to have access to their superiors to discuss issues affecting their work, instead of having to go through a bureaucratic process to have their voices heard.

Below are a few benefits of open doors at the workplace.

Benefits of Open Door Policy

Proper understanding: You can agree with me that if you play a game of whispering a sentence into someone’s ears and have them whisper to another and another person, the last person might most likely say something different from what the first person did.

The true information is usually lost when it goes from one person to another. For proper understanding of an information, it is important to remove the barriers and have the information go from the giver to receiver directly.

Having open doors in the workplace ensures that an employee can talk directly with the senior staff for proper information dissemination.

Better productivity: It is much easier to be productive when you have access to the necessary parties involved in a project, instead of communicating via third parties.

Open doors at the workplace help workflow to be faster as there are no lags in communication between employees and supervisors.

Better working relationships: When you have access to every team member, it is easier for individuals to have personal rapport, which enhances group cohesion and productivity ultimately.

It is important for members of an organization to have good relationships with each other, as it enhances the flow of work and makes everyone happy about the work they do.

Removes barriers: Having open doors removes communication barriers. And usually, communication can bring the biggest issues in an organization. When communication barriers are removed, it is easier for other issues to be resolved.

Organizations that operate an open door policy are observed to be more productive than those where the employees don’t have access to superiors to air their views, suggestions, etc.

Effective workplaces know that for things to work well, people should feel like their opinions matter. Even if of course, not all suggestions will be implemented, it is pivotal to leave room for people to bring suggestions.