More often than you’d think, the answer isn’t about salary or perks, but about how well people communicate with their managers.

When skilled people are hard to find and harder to keep, companies can’t afford for their best employees to feel like just another cog in the machine.

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A common misunderstanding

Only 7% of employees truly understand what their company is trying to achieve and what’s expected of them day to day.

Meanwhile, nearly 80% of leaders believe they’re communicating clearly and effectively. That’s almost all of them!

Leaders assume they’ve made the goals clear, but most employees don’t feel that way at all.

So poor transparency is a common issue. Leaders think everything’s under control while employees are sitting there feeling like they can’t speak up. Or maybe not that they can’t, but more that they... don’t want to?

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The biggest blocker to transparency? A bad manager.

Leaders can kill open communication without even realizing it. Usually, it comes down to one of two things.

1. Micromanagement

The manager constantly hovers over the employee, asking for updates every 15 minutes. How is that person supposed to be effective? No matter what they’re doing, the manager needs to know and steer it. It’s hard to talk about trust here. If the leader is controlling everything anyway, then what’s the point of being open?

When someone feels every decision they make gets questioned, they stop seeing any reason to be transparent.

2. Creating fear of criticism

Technically, people can speak openly. But in reality, if you criticize something or say it’s not working, things suddenly feel weird. The vibe changes, people start dodging topics, you stop getting invited to meetings. No one says it’s because of what you said, but you feel something has shifted.

And that’s when you start wondering whether it was worth speaking up. And even more, whether it’s worth doing it again.

So what can you do about it?

You might think the problem is so common there’s no way out. But if you’ve already realized you might be part of the problem, you’re ahead of most leaders who never do. So first, credit where it’s due – Congrats! You’re already on the right track.

But now what?

At Rocksoft, we’ve been focusing on clear communication across all levels of the company for years. So here’s what’s actually worked for us.

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Tips on how to get people to be more open

1-on-1s

People won’t be transparent if they don’t have the chance. Team meetings aren’t great for that. No one wants to be the complainer in front of everyone.

That’s why one-on-ones are often the only safe space where someone can say “honestly, this isn’t working, I’m lost.”

But it won’t work if you treat it like an inspection. If people know they can say things openly and not get punished for it, they’ll talk.

Let people shine

If someone feels like their role is just to do what they’re told, they won’t speak honestly. Why would they? Better to keep your head down and get the job done. Why bring up ideas or point out problems if the decisions are already made somewhere higher up?

But when you give someone a task and say “handle it how you think is best, then show me how it went” it sends a different message.

They know they can experiment, try things out, even make a mistake, and that their thinking matters.

And suddenly, you hear things like

“What if we tried doing it differently?“

“This process isn’t working, can I try to simplify it?“

“This task keeps breaking, maybe something’s off in the way it was set up?“

Not because you told them to be honest. But because they saw they could actually change something (and they grow a lot faster too). We know this from experience.

Swap scolding for real feedback

This is a game changer.

If someone messes up and immediately gets slammed, they learn one thing fast - Stay quiet. Don’t raise issues, don’t admit anything went wrong, just keep your head down and wait it out.

But if after a mistake they hear something like, “OK, what went wrong here, how do we fix it next time”, then they see it’s safe to be honest, even when things don’t go as planned.

And that’s when real transparency kicks in.

Because it’s not just about sharing wins. It’s also about saying, this isn’t working.

And the best part? It comes back around.

You stay calm and open in tough moments, and people give you the same in return. Clear signals, honest feedback, straight talk.

And those small things. That’s what actually makes a company transparent.

We’d know. At Rocksoft, we really value transparency.