Internal communication is the process of sharing the business-related information in all units of an organization. A business uses internal communication to set up strategies, meetings and to handle corporate affairs. It could be done by various media such as face to face interaction, email, and others (Ver?i?, Ver?i? & Sriramesh, 2012). The present report is based on several internal communication challenges faced by Coles Group of company in reaching and engaging with their employees. Furthermore, this report also provides a solution about the improvement of the internal communication in the organization.
Coles is an Australian based retail organization which has several retail stores which deal in varied types of products and services. It is known for the continuous delivery of quality products, outstanding customer services to millions of Australians (Inside retail contributor, 2011).
Large businesses affected by inefficient communication and business cannot operate efficiently. An efficient communication platform is crucial for the smooth running of such a large corporation. However, companies which are working at large scale may usually face the issue related to communication; engaging or approaching their employees. At this juncture, the problems in the engagement of employees may result in lower motivation and might lead the employee turnover. On the other hand, communication-related issues may negatively influence the overall outcome of the business because the chances to contact customers can reduce, ultimately, profitability may hamper.
The primary objective is to discover the current state of internal communication and information flow and its obstacle in the Coles Company and creating a feasible solution to have better communication.
The internal communication challenge as a result of increasing globalization and the millennial workforce is engaging and reaching their employees.
In speed up the business communication and information flow, technology plays a crucial role. In this context, online media and mobile technology can be helpful to reduce communication barriers and increase productivity (Smith & Mounter, 2008). Further, the cultural environment of the company can also be improved. However, these communication tools significantly enhanced collaboration and communication, but there are a few cons as well. As it made possible to get a response from your correspondent within minutes, but it is not essential that if the server goes down, the employees are unable to access the information (Sultan, 2013).
These technological transformations become a significant challenge for Coles’s internal communication process. For instance, as emails made many things possible and faster but in Coles, more and more email was sent internally for improving low engagement ( Cameron, 2014). However, employees have too many emails that they took it for granted even though some of them are essential. Along with this, due to network issues or various technical errors employees could not revert on these emails. This negligence leads to loss of relevant information and affects corporation operational efficiency (Manoj & Baker, 2007).
Furthermore, that prior communication between management and employees conduct on face to face meeting in office but now as the company adopts platforms like Slack, Skype and another interface medium due to which real communication and bonding within the office are depleting (Manoj & Baker, 2007). Owing to this, the issue of engaging with employees generated in the company. Therefore, the company needs to address these challenges to obtain and maintain positive internal communication.
An authentic leadership has a significant contribution to the development of team members because group members come close to each other and communicate the issues. However, ineffective leader affects the team in a negative manner which cultivates the quality of employee–organization relationships. The internal communication effectiveness depends on the leadership quality of an organization (Men, 2014). However, in Coles, lack of authentic leadership became a barrier in internal communication. In this regard, for effective communication to take place, it is necessary that message must be transformed adequately so that the meaning of the message may not change. More often, top management of the company makes a mistake for assuming that employees know what the leaders require (Karanges, Johnston, Beatson & Lings, 2015). However, this is not right most of the time unless management deliberately releases information. This miscommunication creates barriers to achieve desirable message and especially occurs within a highly diverse workforce like that of Coles organization. This misinterpreted information affects the morale of employees as their performance cannot be improved. This poor leadership leads to a lack of transparency and freedom of expression between top to bottom line of human resources (Men & Stacks, 2014). Here, manager of Coles Corporation needs to encourage their employee to speak up and share their ideas. In this regard, the company needs to hire a manager who has better communication skills and create the management of value system (Luthra & Dahiya, 2015).
Globalization is the process of integration, compression and convergence of the world. In the current competitive business environment, most of the companies deal with the issues related to the development of flexible and appropriate interaction environment inside the organization (Pieterse, 2015). There are 16 general managers in Coles operations management structure; however, out of the eight are associated with retail operations and remaining eight are related to store support center. Furthermore, the company is having 66 regional managers and 742 store managers and store department managers. By considering this, the departmental managers demanded a strong communication among all the departments for regular running of business activities ( Blake, 2018). These growing presence of workers from different areas and culture generated several communication issues in Coles.
Customer service department is one of the areas where effective communication is crucial. For instance, the language of different people who comes from different environment-initiated communication challenges. Further, people from different background have different understandings regarding their words and expression. In the context, it might not be possible for the company to collaborate with all its employees and reach out to them to boost their motivation level and clarify all related tasks to them (Guffey & Loewy, 2010). This cultural diversity leads obstacle in the way of effective communication, which causes dissatisfaction among workforce who are from different regions (Martin, & Nakayama, 2013).
In every organization employee feedback is a vital part of the communication process. It enhances the employee experiences and helps the company to reach the employees. (Ruck & Welch, 2012). The management of Coles facing the issues related to feedback from the employees. In this regard, employees often feel that although there is various communication medium in spite of that, it is not necessarily that anyone is listening regarding their feedback.
Along with this, due to complex management structure and work pressure in the company, the workforce do not get time to place their feedback and get them resolved. It creates a negative feeling among the workforce because it is the tendency of millennials to get distracted from their targets if they are not communicated timely. This further increases their tension at the workplace and they do not find any interests in the workplace.
It is essential that employees provide feedback regarding the training, learning, performance evaluation, etc. to get the clarification as per their expectations. This facilitates to increase their interest towards the work as Coles operated on the large-scale and consists of 800 supermarkets and multiple numbers of convenience stores (Inside retail contributor, 2011). Thus, it is necessary that the company needs to engage with employees and get feedback about their work experience and problem faces by them.
Moreover, it is helpful to assess the personal issues and challenges of the employees. However, employee’s information may not be obtained because some employees get scared to disclose information to others. Feedback is vital on many levels because it helps to determine how well employees have met the goals, but it also shows how well they collaborate with their teams (Mishra, Boynton & Mishra,2014).
Conclusion
From the report above, it has been concluded that the poor leadership and cultural difference are the significant communication challenges faced by an organization in internal communication. However, if the internal communication is ineffective, then the organization will fail or confront the issues which are related to an interruption in business operations. Also, it concluded that every employee of Coles organization needs to understand and ready to follow the instruction to improve the internal communication. According to the report, it can also be concluded that the effectiveness of internal communication affects the image of the organization in a competitive environment.
From the above analysis, it recommends Coles to avoid several internal issues which occur in the future in the context of communication. For example, since the company operates on a large scale so it should ensure cultural diversity so that cultural barrier can be resolved quickly. Furthermore, management should create honest communication growth culture through which each employee can share their issues and can understand the future vision of the organization. In addition to this, for smooth operations of the organization, internal communication should be well implemented. In this context, the company should appropriately explain values and mission with the help of corporate training. Also, regular reminders can also be used to enhance the activeness among employees. Apart from this, departmental meetings of employees should be carried out through which it becomes easy to interact with the workforce and get timely feedback.
References
Blake, D., (2018). Coles bolsters management team [Online]. Available at:< https://www.insideretail.com.au/news/coles-bolsters-management-team-201807>. [Aaccessed on 20 November 2018].
Cameron, N., (CIO). (2014). Inside Coles’ technology transformation. [Online]. Available at:< https://www.cio.com.au/article/549604/inside_coles_technology_transformation/ >. [Aaccessed on 20 November 2018].
Guffey, M. E., & Loewy, D. (2010). Business communication: Process and product. Cengage Learning.
Inside retail contributor, (2011). Coles’ comeback: how the company got everyone singing in tune [online]. Available at:< https://www.insideretail.com.au/news/coles-comeback-how-the-company-got-everyone-singing-in-tune-201104>. [Accessed on 20 November 2018].
Karanges, E., Johnston, K., Beatson, A., & Lings, I. (2015). The influence of internal communication on employee engagement: A pilot study. Public Relations Review, 41(1), 129-131.
Manoj, B. S., & Baker, A. H. (2007). Communication challenges in emergency response. Communications of the ACM, 50(3), 51-53.
Martin, J., & Nakayama, T. (2013). Experiencing intercultural communication: An introduction. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Men, L. R. (2014). Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership, communication channels, and employee satisfaction. Management Communication Quarterly, 28(2), 264-284.
Men, L. R., & Stacks, D. (2014). The effects of authentic leadership on strategic internal communication and employee-organization relationships. Journal of Public Relations Research, 26(4), 301-324.
Mishra, K., Boynton, L., & Mishra, A. (2014). Driving employee engagement: The expanded role of internal communications. International Journal of Business Communication, 51(2), 183-202.
Pieterse, J. N. (2015). Globalization and culture: Global mélange. Rowman & Littlefield.
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Smith, L., & Mounter, P. (2008). Effective internal communication. Kogan Page Publishers.
Sultan, N. (2013). Knowledge management in the age of cloud computing and Web 2.0: Experiencing the power of disruptive innovations. International journal of information management, 33(1), 160-165.
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