It's a long-standing tenet of effective communication: To reach people—and motivate them to take action—you must first understand who they are and what they need.

This may sound fundamental, but assessing employees is a step that's often skipped in human resources (HR) communication. We plunge into creating communication without thinking about the people we're creating it for. We also make an assumption that employees are just like us.

By doing so, we fall prey to communication mistakes like these: Download PDF