Transparency within the Company - More than just a Trend

written by Bedih Adanur | June 19^th, 2024

Transparency – A term we often encounter in the business world these days. Legislation requires more transparency. Employees wish for more transparency. Entrepreneurs strive for ways to create more transparency. What exactly is transparency, and why is it so important for companies?

What does “Transparency” Mean?

Transparency is defined as the disclosure of information – either internally, within the company, or externally, to customers, partners, the public. Transparency may provide a general and clear understanding of the processes, decisions and objectives of a company. It is not only the mere presentation of facts and figures. Rather, it is a culture of openness, honesty and trust building.

Why is Transparency within the Company Important?

• Trust Building: Transparency is a key element of building a positive work working environment. If employees understand how decisions are made and what direction the business is headed, a feeling of being involved and valued is established. This strengthens employee loyalty and motivation. Employees further understand the goals and visions of the company, and they are able to identify themselves with these.
  
  
• Effective Communication: Transparent communication eases the flow of information within the company. Employees will understand what is expected of them. Managers and team leaders are able to collect feedback and ideas. This promotes a culture of open communication and collaboration.
  
  
• Motivation & Commitment: Once employees grasp how their own portion of work contributes to the overall success of the company, they feel more valued and motivated. Transparency in terms of goals, performance factors and business objectives help to enhance the commitment, and to create a constructive working environment.
  
  
• Crisis Management: Transparency is of crucial importance during a crisis. It avoids confusion and misjudgment. Open communication on challenges and possible solutions enables the business to maintain trust and to get back on track faster.

How to Promote Transparency within the Company

Regular meetings, a newsletter and transparent reporting are important tools to quickly spread information across a business. A further aspect is easy accessibility of relevant data and documents so that employees can quickly obtain information via internal networks or shared data storage. Openly communicating the reasoning behind big decisions with the employees and providing feedback opportunities and the possibility to ask questions.

innovaphone – more than communication

Transparency is more than just a catchy word or trend. Transparency is an integral part of the company’s philosophy “more than communication”. The transparency concept is a fundamental belief that deeply shapes the way we work and do business. It is our firm conviction that transparent communication strengthens the trust between coworkers, while it also enhances efficiency and productivity. We use self-developed software tools on a daily basis that reflect precisely this principle.

Connect 

A social platform for interactive and productive collaboration across the entire company
Our Connect App is a digital collaboration platform for communication within the business. Employees and managers can conveniently share information in a transparent fashion by writing posts and including hashtags to properly assign these posts to suitable topics.
The Connect App provides great flexibility since it also allows to create posts restricted only to certain user groups, for example if sensitive information is involved.
This easily accessible and transparent form of communication enables every employee to actively participate in discussions and to always remain up to date with projects and current business affairs.

Projects App 

Project management tool to organize one-off tasks as well as recurring processes within projects transparently, for the entire team to stay on top of things
The Projects App is another crucial productivity tool that significantly facilitates our day-to-day work. We currently use the app only within the company but the Projects App will soon also be available for our customers. Tasks and projects which may also arise from the communication within our Connect App can be created and edited within the Projects App. Projects are divided into smaller portions, and projects plus tasks are assigned a handler. Employees can conveniently check the current status of a project or of individual tasks. All projects and tasks with the respective status are thus transparently documented. Our Projects App and our Connect App are connected with each other. This provides a huge benefit. Activities, queries, notifications or tagged users in the Projects App will also be displayed in the Connect App.

Bedih Adanur shares his own experience with the new innovaphone tools:

“I started working as a legal counsel at innovaphone AG about two years ago. At first, I was a bit sceptical of the transparent way of working via the Connect App. As a lawyer, I had doubts whether my topics should be communicated so candidly. With my previous position at a renowned large law firm, communication was predominantly limited to e-mails. Task would be assigned to colleagues via e-mail. This often led to overlapping responses. Content-related issues remained in private, even if they would have been of relevance to others.

Today, I understand how day-to-day work can be organized much more effectively when using the Connect App. I follow all activity taking place under the hash tag “Agenda Legal”. Colleagues from all departments within the company use this hash tag if they have questions. In return, the responses can be viewed by all users. If there are confidential topics, I can keep control over who will be able to access and view my posts. E-mails are mostly unnecessary and are predominantly used only for external communication.

The Projects App is a fabulous tool for my day-to-day work. A well-structured organization of my tasks is essential since I regularly receive legal questions from various areas and departments. Once I get a request, I can decide whether to create a project in the Projects App on this matter. I can divide it into smaller steps and tag colleagues and departments. With this tool, I always have an overview over my to do list, while colleagues can make contributions and check the respective status of each project. It definitely increases efficiency and improves satisfaction within the team.”

My conclusion: Transparency is not a purpose in itself. Instead, it is one key component for long-term business success. Our solutions create more transparency – at every single workstation and in every team. This enables our employees and business partners to build up trust, to be committed and to identify with a culture of frankness and innovation.