Communication Training For Senior Managers Of Opal-Mart, Australia

Background of Research

Discuss about the Communication Culture At Opal-Mart.

The research proposal is designed to manage the communication culture change with the consideration of productive meetings for the managers of Opal-Mart, Australia. The communication culture is focused on, that motivated the proposal and the company shall be able to overcome the communication barriers and manage a communication audit too by involving focus groups, interviewing the managers and conducting employee surveys too. The lack of smooth flow of information and messages to the employees is one of the major barriers that is needed to be overcome by the senior managers. They also need to handle conflicts properly to maintain open communication and workforce efficiency all throughout (Martin and Nakayama 2013). The communication training will allow enhancing the workforce efficiency by improving the skills, knowledge and expertise along with good writing, reading, speaking and listening skills. The main aim of the communication training is to make the senior managers of Opal-Mart gain the relevant skills, learn to manage conflicts in meetings and maintain a stable communication culture.

The background of research is aimed at identifying the needs of communication training for the managers and how they can overcome the issues regarding communication within the workplace. The communication training can improve their vital skills, knowledge and expertise and at the same time, manage conflicts that may arise among the employees during meetings due to difference in opinions, views, ideas and opinions (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). The significance of communication training for the senior managers and how it can allow them to obtain relevant skills and knowledge for overcoming issues related to the culture and management of conflicts during meetings also represents the background of research.

The scope of communication training is immense, because it can enable the senior managers to learn some more skills including communication skills, negotiation skills, assertiveness skills, speaking and listening skills along with the ability to respond to conflicts in meetings, which has been the main focus of this research. The target audiences here are the senior management of Opal-Mart in Australia.  The areas of the organization that will be involved are the human resource department, operations department and finance department too. The employees will be involved to make them acknowledge the benefits of communication training for the senior managers and for them as well (Hickman and Silva 2016).

The research rationale demonstrates the problems of the research including the operational issues and communication issues faced due to lack of flow of information to the employees. At Opal-Mart, the rigid system of top down control by the management prevented proper flow of information to the employees and this caused problems while managing communication between individuals. There was lack of trust and loyalty among the employees, which is also one of the major causes of conflicts between the different groups and staffs. The cross-cultural communication issues further deteriorated the workforce efficiency and caused communication problems and the staff groups including the merchandisers and purchasers were constantly found to be involved in conflicts (Bell 2016). The rationale of research focuses of these kinds of issues and it shows that the communication training will enhance the potential of the senior managers and allow them to resolve the conflicts with ease and effectiveness. Often the culture consisting of ineffective meetings resulted in wasting lot of energy and the employees even failed to consider each other’s views and opinions. The rationale of research also demonstrates the huge numbers of customer complaints, resulting from lack of skills and experience, which increased level of dissatisfaction among the customers. It mainly happened due to the lack of communication training, because of which the staffs were not skilled enough to attract and retain customers properly (Martin and Nakayama 2013).

Scope of Communication Training

The aims of the communication training are to enhance the level of skills and knowledge of the senior management to deal with the conflicts and even maintain effective communication within the workplace of Opal-Mart, Australia.

The communication training philosophy can create scopes and opportunities for the senior managers of Opal-Mart to interact with the employees and make them learn about the management of conflicts during the meetings. The communication training philosophy is useful for making the homogenous group attain a wide range of skills including motivational skills, cognitive skills, assertiveness skills, skills to manage customers’ services and manage conflicts at meetings. The training philosophy is dynamic in nature and it can facilitate the management techniques, discussion skills, organizational capabilities, listening skills and learning styles among the senior managers who shall take part in the training (Miller et al. 2014).

By following this kind of philosophy, the individuals could learn about establishing a good culture at Opal-Mart and about the different concepts required to get involved in dialogues considered as experimental, synthesizing and non-judgmental. With the facilitation of the practical skills and knowledge, it should be much more convenient to maintain a safe and healthy environment with lesser conflicts and misunderstandings between the groups. It could even allow the senior managers to fulfill the needs and requirements of the staffs, bring creativity, innovation, self-confidence, and build trust (Choi and Rainey 2014). The training philosophy should enable development of highly skilled and competent workforce consisting of people from diverse backgrounds that should be effective for creating a business, social and professional environment (Cummings and Worley 2014). The training philosophy is based on the principles of learning including the active participation and practice, diagnostic assessment and criterion referenced. This kind of philosophy can provide quantitative as well as qualitative feedbacks on the speeches, dialogues and assignments right on time, which is needed to improve the functional skills of the senior managers (Stokoe 2013). This would also enhance the level of personal and professional interactions and allow the senior management to provide specific tasks to the managers and senior level staffs. To form a good communication culture to promote effective teamwork and coordination among individuals, the training philosophy is essential. It will create more scopes and opportunities for the productive training meeting and ensures that senior managers acquire improved skills and expertise to manage conflicts in meetings (Rispoli et al. 2014).

To deliver the production training to the senior management, investments must be done and that could cost around A$ 1200 to A$ 1800 or an entire package for the 5 trainees ranging around A$ 5000. The trainees must have enough knowledge and skills to train the senior levels and mangers about managing conflicts and presenting clear communication among the staffs to increase the production efficiency, which in turn, lead to enhanced profit level (Falcomata and Wacker 2013). The meetings were time consuming, though the senior managers and staffs participating in the meeting managed to acquire many skills, which should make them manage a diversified workforce with effective communication and resolve conflicts whenever there might be difference in views and opinions at meetings. It can result in the formation of a good culture as well.

Research Rationale

Specific tasks to the managers

Individuals involved	Tasks	Time taken
Senior Managers	Take part in the productive meeting and obtain relevant skills and knowledge to manage conflicts at meetings	2 weeks
Senior levels
HR manager	The HR manager, with the consultation of the General manager, manages the communication training and productive meetings.	1 week
Marketing director	The marketing director monitors the performances of the staffs after the productive meetings to check whether necessary skills have been achieved or not to handle the clients properly	1 week
Staffs	The staffs should consider the views and opinions of others too and interact with each other to form a positive culture and work collaboratively. To acquire the skills, they need to participate in the meetings and even learn to manage conflicts through consideration of each other’s ideas and opinions.	1 week

Benefits of giving specific tasks to the senior levels and managers

• The senior levels and managers will be able to manage the staffs properly and prevent conflicts from arising during meetings at Opal-Mart, Australia.
• With the conflicts being resolved, there would be more chances of creating a diverse workforce and an appropriate culture at Opal-Mart, Australia.
• The HR manager would manage productive communication training to improve the skills and knowledge among the staffs and make them learn to communicate with others, thereby consider their views and opinions too.
• The senior managers’ interacting skills, assertiveness skills and conflict resolution skills should help them to manage the staffs properly, motivate and influence them to understand the importance of communication culture change.

Due to top down approach, there was ineffective flow of information to the employees, lack of skills and knowledge among the employees to communicate with the clients properly and not being able to promote effective teamwork within the diversified workplace of Opal-Mart are some of the communication issues faced. The productive training meeting is aimed at the senior managers of the organization to make sure that they can manage the staffs properly and even engage them in meetings for resolving conflicts and misunderstanding during meetings (Murray 2014). During the meetings, the staffs were not much concerned about the views and opinions of others, which further created complexities while developing a good culture within the organization. The communication training philosophy  is effective not only for making the senior managers capable of managing a good workforce, but also resolve conflicts at meetings between the staffs to establish a positive work culture. The staffs groups, especially, the purchasers and merchandisers were found to be involved in conflicts within the diversified workforce, which deteriorated the business functioning and production, thereby resulting in complaints from the customers (Tjosvold, Wong and Feng Chen 2014). The clients, by participating in the communication-training meeting will learn about the good communication and interpersonal skills, speaking, listening and ability to respond to the conflicts. The targeted audiences are the senior managers who must take part in the communication training to make sure that the conflicts are managed wisely.

The senior management would be able to know about the concerns of the managers, staffs and create a diverse workforce. There were intercultural communication issues due to the presence of individuals from different backgrounds and cultures, which resulted in communication barriers and even lot of time and energy was wasted. The views and opinions were different, which was one of the major causes of degrading the customers’ services and this created tension between the purchasers and merchandisers (Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis 2015). The lack of skills among the staffs made them unable to carry out their roles and responsibilities properly, which further deteriorated the business performance. The productive training to the senior management could make the managers resolve conflicts among the staffs and groups at Opal-Mart and promote a communication culture (Schlaerth, Ensari and Christian 2013). It is necessary for establishing good relationships between the company and its customers and improve the collaborative work through retention of trust and loyalty. The views and opinions must be considered and the people from diverse backgrounds and cultures should work together, as an unit to achieve the shared goals and objectives. The senior management should provide feedbacks to the staffs and senior managers so that the areas of weaknesses could be resolved and there would be continuous improvement of the services (Folger, Poole and Stutman 2017).

Aims of Communication Training

Conclusion

As a member of a training company, the arrangements made by me  for the communicating training would not only engage the senior levels and managers, but should also identify the areas of weaknesses where improvements were to be done. The research proposal explained about the productive meetings where the senior managers were involved and took part in the communication training sessions as well for improving their skills and knowledge. The targeted audiences were the senior level managers who intended to acquire skills to manage communication between staffs and resolve conflicts during the meetings too. According to the training philosophy, the learning principles were facilitated through active engagement of the senior managers and diagnostic assessment. The benefits obtained were better communication, reduced conflicts among the group members at meetings and collaborative teamwork at Opal-Mart. It was important to achieve the highest quality standards and improved operations’ efficiency, which could lead to better customers’ services and higher profitability.

References

Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S., 2015. Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress.

Bell, A., 2016. Media (mis) communication on the science of climate change. Public understanding of science.

Choi, S. and Rainey, H.G., 2014. Organizational fairness and diversity management in public organizations: Does fairness matter in managing diversity?. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 34(4), pp.307-331.

Clegg, S.R., Kornberger, M. and Pitsis, T., 2015. Managing and organizations: An introduction to theory and practice. Sage.

Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

Falcomata, T.S. and Wacker, D.P., 2013. On the use of strategies for programming generalization during functional communication training: A review of the literature. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 25(1), pp.5-15.

Folger, J., Poole, M.S. and Stutman, R.K., 2017. Working through conflict: Strategies for relationships, groups, and organizations.

Hickman, C.R. and Silva, M.A., 2018. Creating excellence: Managing corporate culture, strategy, and change in the new age.

Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K., 2013. Experiencing intercultural communication. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K., 2013. Intercultural communication in contexts. New York: NY: McGraw-Hill.

Miller, S.C., Lepore, M., Lima, J.C., Shield, R. and Tyler, D.A., 2014. Does the introduction of nursing home culture change practices improve quality?. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 62(9), pp.1675-1682.

Murray, G., 2014, May. Learning how productive and unproductive meetings differ. In Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 191-202). Springer, Cham.

Rispoli, M., Camargo, S., Machalicek, W., Lang, R. and Sigafoos, J., 2014. Functional communication training in the treatment of problem behavior maintained by access to rituals. Journal of applied behavior analysis, 47(3), pp.580-593.

Schlaerth, A., Ensari, N. and Christian, J., 2013. A meta-analytical review of the relationship between emotional intelligence and leaders’ constructive conflict management. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 16(1), pp.126-136.

Stokoe, E., 2013. The (in) authenticity of simulated talk: comparing role-played and actual interaction and the implications for communication training. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 46(2), pp.165-185.

Tjosvold, D., Wong, A.S. and Feng Chen, N.Y., 2014. Constructively managing conflicts in organizations. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 1(1), pp.545-568.