1. Does your organization have a defined communications strategy for communicating important information and for ‘listening’ to organizational members? If so, describe the communications strategy. If not, describe the emergent communications strategy, i.e. how messages are typically communicated in your organization?
2. Describe the culture of the organization. How has this culture emerged and what kind of work climate has it created? If you had the chance, how would you change the culture of the organization?
1. Communication Strategy can be defined as a process that has the objective to achieve long term strategic goals of an organization ensuring effective planning of the message and allowing communication over long distances to reach a global network. Strategic communication also relates to internal and external communication processes in a work environment.
Writing down an effective communication strategy is very useful for listening to organizational members because it helps to achieve overall organizational objectives. The process also helps to demonstrate the success of our work. Any communication strategy should match with the overall organizational plan and look for the aims and objectives stating the overall vision of organization (Bhattacharya, Sarkar and Bhattacharya, 2010).
Due to lack of poor communication strategy the SMRT train services disrupted on 15 December 2011 (Burrus, 2010). Such a crisis led to anger and resentment among employees and commuters. This led to mismanagement of working conditions and since then there had been an increase in taxi fares. This incident increased the dependency on train services. There was no plan initiated in the organization to create awareness in the social networking sites as well. But the company had strong relations with government authorities and got strong support from Land and transport Authority. These incidents can depict the level of unsatisfactory management responses and lack of media support as well. This should clearly highlight that SMRT lack about managing relations and how to focus on strategies at the time of crisis (Jones, 2008). There was a need of integrating the ticketing system in the form of a common Transit Link Pte Ltd to develop other aspects of the system as well including fare integration, network integration and information integration as well. It was also seen that a common ticketing system was developed for use to entertain cashless transactions. The network integration required improvement in productivity from all the operators resulting in better service of commuters.
The communication strategy that needs to be implemented by the company is The Command, Control and Communication (C3) system for the railway extension under supervisory control systems. The C3 system allows a complete integration of the operation system and also facilitates a system of Decision support system in the organization.
This system enables a modular software integrated operation that allows a complete operational structure. The C3 system runs on a software application program that helps to minimize life cycle cost as well.
The C3 system has the following added advantages as well. The system ensures a friendly interface and secured system of work. It also helps to take necessary decisions and runs over a standard COTS hardware and software so that all the necessary data can be maintained easily. The system also supports cost effective solution from operational perspective. This system runs on Integrated Automatic train supervision (Pal Singh Toor, 2008).
Other communication systems that SMRT should initiate to enhance the system configuration are:
Transmission systems: this acts like a backbone of any communication channel so that data can be shared from one point to other.
CCTV system: This is a type of optical fiber network that helps to monitor and control the various activities through a camera.
Radio communication systems: these help to coordinate and communicate with the personnel and train drivers working and various other control positions are controlled.
2. SMRT lack organizational excellence and there was no work standards and culture maintained. Therefore the company lacked how to manage risks and minimize costs so that they can maintain higher level of security and safety. Therefore it was necessary for SMRT to take strategic initiatives in four main areas that could help them to reorganize their structure. The areas are strategic planning, productivity and effectivity, risk management and processes and structures.
SMRT should build and develop a corporate strategy map in place to clearly identify and define strategic objectives and align work plans according to it. This helps employees to acknowledge themselves with more responsibilities (Parente, 2006). The company is also trying to improve and achieve international standards to enrich stakeholder’s performances. SMRT is also initiating a service excellence framework that can help to enhance productivity and efficiency. This framework will help to contribute in ensuring high level of customer experience and quality of services given to them that would strengthen organizational resilience and ensure effective service culture of SMRT.
SMRT works with a vision of ‘moving people, enhancing lives’. This statement signifies that to work according to customer centric approach by winning the hearts and minds of its customers. The company aimed to adhere by the people’s choice by providing three important elements to the customers:
The company should launch organization wide campaign in Service Excellence. It was necessary to build trust and bring smiles to every passenger who travels along with them. The work climate should also ensure to provide effective training modules and reward them with incentives. Service excellence awards should be developed to acknowledge those workers as outstanding role models.
The company also aims to improve all the service touch points to engage more number of passengers; this can be enhanced by improving the design and layout of the stations. Also social media can be utilized in this segment to obtain feedback directly and so that the company can develop working on it (Stampley, 2008).
The work climate at SMRT provided a good career path for its employees. The company provided the new employees with lots of opportunities that helped them to develop themselves with more advance prospects of career and development. There was availability of good pay package and bonus. Incentives added the scale those who performed well. There was a lot of trust in the employees and other staff that enabled employees to give more flexibility to work and delegated higher authority at supervisory level also. A part that was lacking was outdated HR policies being maintained by the company. Therefore it was the sole responsibility to update that along with network system prevailing in Singapore.
Changing an organization’s culture is very difficult to be implemented in an organization. Because it is comprised of integrated set of processes, roles, objectives, practices and other valued assumptions added to act as a mutual reinforcing system. This part acts as a strong organizational tool to integrate and enhance the level of productivity and results as well.
The present work culture can be improved and enhanced by following few simple steps:
Evaluating current culture and performance: This is mainly done by focusing on critical performance priorities like growth, customer satisfaction. It is also important to identify behavioral strengths which can provide full potential to the organization.
Clarifying initial vision: to improve results it is important to define vision and this can help to build an effective work culture that helps to define values strengths and eradicate weaknesses.
Clarifying strategic priorities: the strategic priorities must be effectively shared by the organization so that the initial steps are identified and can be critically evaluated.
Engage employees with SMART goals: the company must use smart goals to utilize extensive feedback and define necessary objectives required to build strategic priorities (Chan, Fung and Yau, 2009).
To maintain a management system for goals and priorities: this system enables to focus on additional priorities as well and results can be withdrawn from it.
To manage communication habits and routines: there should be two way communications maintained to clarify plans, answer questions and stop rumors being spread in the organization.
References
Aurand, H. (2003). Coalcracker culture. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press.
Bhattacharya, A., Sarkar, S. and Bhattacharya, R. (2010). An alternative search strategy for interstellar communication. Indian Journal of Physics, 84(5), pp.511-515.
Burrus, D. (2010). Collaboration and communication tools to implement radical management. Strategy & Leadership, 38(6).
Chan, K., Fung, H. and Yau, J. (2009). Business Ethics Research: A Global Perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 95(1), pp.39-53.
Ip, P. (2009). Business Ethics and the Well-Being of Nations – Is There a Connection?. Journal of Business Ethics, 95(1), pp.97-110.
Jones, P. (2008). Communicating strategy. Aldershot: Gower.
Krajicek, J. (2008). Effective Communication Is “Hitched to Everything in the (Business) Universe”.Business Communication Quarterly, 71(3), pp.369-373.
Pal Singh Toor, T. (2008). Building effective service management system. Business Strategy Series, 10(1), pp.61-67.
Parente, D. (2006). Advertising campaign strategy. Mason, Ohio: Thomson/South-Western.
Paris, T. (2007). Organisation, processus et structures de la création. Culture prospective, 5(5), p.1.
Smrt.com.sg, (2015). Home. [online] Available at: https://www.smrt.com.sg/ [Accessed 3 Mar. 2015].
Stampley, C. (2008). Social Workers’ Culture-Based Countertransferences. Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 17(1), pp.37-59.
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