Corporate Communication And PR System: A Discussion

Organization Culture

Discuss about the Corporate Communication and PR System.

Every business has an established and desired culture and management strive to improve communication teams working on particular projects.  Culture is viewed in the scope of how the workers in the organization interact, communicate and how decisions are made regarding various events taking place in the agency (Gover & Duxbury, 2015). One of the key aspect of organizational culture includes excellent communication and information exchange between different stakeholders of the organization. The role of effective communication is to help all the internal and external processes to run smoothly and cultivating positive relations between all the stakeholders. To this regard, the company culture and effective team communication is an essential medium where exchange of ideas and information takes place. The management has a role in the creation of culture and improving communication between teams in the organization (Fullan, 2014).

The focus of the report includes corporate communication and PR issues affecting John’s Outback Adventures Tours operates from Sydney, Australia. The issues pointed includes developing an effective organizational culture and effective team communication in the organization. The rationale for choosing the effective way of promoting active culture is because it will help the management understand the influence of company culture and the strategies of aligning it the business goals and avoiding the making of decisions which does not respond to set values, missions, and vision (Fullan, 2014).  Effective team communication is important because it reduces the time wasted due to signs misinterpretation and improve the outcomes of the projects undertaken by the firm, increase the level of productivity, cooperation, and increase revenue on the part of the company (Samovar, et al., 2015).

Every company operates under the influence of its established culture. Many employees spend ample and considerable time at their workplace, and thus the firm’s culture has a significant impact on their personal life and works lives (Samovar, et al., 2015). The term organizational culture is defined as the principles, values, beliefs, and ideologies shared by the individuals in the organization (Hogan & Coote, 2014). The culture is created and maintained by the management and leaders have to ensure it is imparted to all the employees and this accounts for the difference between various organizations (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015).

It is hard to statistically explain and prove the impact generated by culture in the organization. However, there is a general belief that workers in corporations with established culture have a strong sense of engagement, belonging and commitment towards the overall goals. Therefore, the culture developed by the management plays a major role in determining the level of success of the organization (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015). If workers share similar beliefs and ideas on how the group needs to function, there is a high level of unity among the staff and agreement on the way forward. This is because many employees working in the same space come from different cultural, ethnic and traditions backgrounds which reflects the diversity of cultures.

Effective Team Communication in the Organization

Therefore the only thing which can give them a sense of unity is having a shared culture and having an understanding of each other variations. As such, culture plays a significant role in ensuring and enhancing better communication and reducing the level of conflict among workers. The aspect of shared culture improves quality level since no employee is neglected and there is equality. Organizational culture helps build the degree of loyalty and motivate all the staff. When employees are treated as central part of the firm’s culture, they develop desire and work hard toward achieving particular goals and this enhances success of the entity (Hogan & Coote, 2014).

A healthy competition among the workers mostly results due to a shared culture in the workplace. For instance, it motivates employees to work hard to earn appreciation and recognition from the senior management. Therefore, this is one of the ways of improving the quality of output, prosperity, and flourishing of the organization. Besides, the culture acts as guidelines because it provides employees with a sense of expectations and direction that always keeps them at the task. When employees understand their direction, they understand the roles, responsibilities and work hard toward accomplishing the allocated tasks before set deadlines (Fullan, 2014). The firm’s culture creates the required identity of the organization and further understand the way agency conduct its business. For instance, the ways in which the clients and consumers of the company are handled is determined by its culture.

Employees at all level must ensure communication with others through various means such as e-mail, face-to-face, phone conversation to facilitate the exchange of ideas on projects being undertaken. Each mean has its set of rules and skills required to execute a proper communication. Proper training is essential in improving communication techniques and expertise of all employees across all platforms (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015).

Many managers in the organization require employees to handle work related projects as a team for better outcomes.  The benefits of working together include improved employee’s relationship, high level of tasks accomplishment and distribution of the work responsibilities based on competence and capability. However, the opposite can be achieved owing to high level of anxiety, tension and poor communication among employees. Adequate disclosure of information in the team plays a significant roles in eliminating negative feelings and stress due to a close working relationship which characterizes the team (Grunig, 2013). It is important for the leaders in the organization to encourage the workers to work in a team and cultivate successful communication when working as a group.

There are various characteristics of a teamwork driven by effective communication between members. For the team to communicate effectively in the workplace, the members need to be open minded and actively listen to each other and have an understanding of the set goals and objectives of the projects (Kuehn, 2016). One can argue that effective communication during teamwork is core and essential in attaining the set goals. Effective communication involves attention to details, listening to others, understanding their concepts, clarifying areas where there are poor understanding and sharing of the ideas concerning the project.

Based on the information provided by scholars above, effective team communication plays a role in determining the level of success and failure of work related tasks that requires the effort of teamwork. When team members initiate communication with open minds, where all members seek clarification and share the ideas as opposed to making general assumptions, the results includes harmony and trust between the team. The management, on the other hand, must ensure that the employees have skills and capability to communicate effectively by initiating training programs and seminars where communication experts take the employees through rigorous training to create understanding on the issues at hand. 

Executives in the organization must be aware of indicators of poor communication in the team. For instance, missed project deadlines, delayed project completion is a sign of poor communication among members of the team. Besides, teams which consume a lot of time on one issue rather than implementing the plans lacks communication skills required by the team to delegate responsibilities and tasks to make the job done. Other indications of such problems include loss of focus and direction, dissension and endless argument amongst the team members. As such, there is need to take necessary steps to implement programs meant to train workers on the active styles of communicating in a bid to change the work environment and eventually increase the level of productivity and increased revenue (Grunig, 2013).

There are various ways in which Outback Adventures Tours can develop an effective team culture for its workers in Sydney, Australia. The processes of implementing active organization culture include teaching it, defining it, living it, measuring it and reward it.  The management needs to teach employees on the desired of the group and make it a reality. In the process, the administration should talk about the kind of culture to be achieved (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015). For example, describing the ways in which things will be done, telling the team on how they need to communicate and how to deal with colleagues and consumers.  It is essential for the program to highlight the kind of culture and communication aspects to be changed and one to be incorporated.

The problem arises because people do not understand the particular culture of the organization and what is expected from them. Therefore, putting the company mission and vision in essential to making the employees know the culture. During the training program, there is a need to define the culture as this makes people understand what the culture is and what to do. Besides, documenting it is far more likely to help you get where you want to go (Gover & Duxbury, 2015).

What employees say has got little to do with the company’s culture but what they do make the have an understanding of it. Therefore, to develop an effective culture, the management has to ensure the staff lives it, as this help comprehensively built it over time (Gover & Duxbury, 2015). As such, it is the role of the management to ensure that the actions of the employees in a way creates the organizational culture because the influence of organization leaders plays a substantial role to shape the culture.  To this regard, it is the systems, processes, recipes put in place and the styles of handling failure. Meaningful ways to impact the company’s culture is through matching the words with the actions, using culture to deal with situations, explaining the values to employees, systems of rewards and recruiting based on skills needed.

Once the management has identified the desired culture and the key elements to be imparted to employees, it is necessary to make it a reality and then assess what has been achieved. In the context of the organization, there is various ways management can evaluate the culture and determine what has been achieved and the gap to be filled.  Methods of evaluating include the styles employees have learned on how to handle conflict when they emerge, the level of coordination among employees, identification of problems and skills of addressing them (Fullan, 2014). It also includes measuring how the values have been incorporated into the culture, system of employees rewarded, how the company deals with new ideas and the process of hiring and firing employees. This can be done using The Organizational Culture Assessment questionnaire to measure these aspects. If the evaluation determines the culture is less than the expected, the management can work toward improving the culture (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015). One way of evaluating and correcting the culture is by reviewing the vision, mission, and values to see how they aligned to the overall culture, how the values are mirrored and how to integrate the mission, vision and values effectively

Many organizations faces a common problem due to mismatches between the elements communicated and the reward system. In some cases, it is the issue of the absence of rewards for employees. Companies can achieve the exact opposite of the cultural behavior being promoted (Martinez & Wang, 2015). For example, the firm can seek to develop a culture of teamwork but reward employees based on individual performance instead of recognizing the team. This is not to say there are organizations that can correctly reward the workers, but the management should be cognizant of the elements incorporated in the mission, vision, and values and ensuring they are rewarded when necessary. The emphasis is not on reward based on money, but several methods in various settings because building a positive takes a lot of time, recognition and range of rewards.

To ensure effective team communication, the management of John’s Outback Adventures Tours needs to implement some measures such as implementing open door policy, encouraging a two-way feedback, clarification of roles, build team spirit, training and using appropriate forms of communication (Beebe & Masterson, 2014).

Lack of open door policy encourages an atmosphere of secrecy between employees which affects the communication between employees. When the management offers a platform of transparency for the team, it supports the level of interaction between colleagues, and regular communication (Grunig, 2013). For instance, when there is open door policy, the team members can discuss the progress, problems and issues can be resolved immediately. Teams would not wait until the leaders call for a weekly meeting to discuss the problems and look for solutions. Besides, this encourages two-way feedback between the leaders and the team that increases team communications. Feedback is essential as it opens the boundaries that affect any form of communication, promote self-evaluation and encourages the levels of interactions.

When there is no clear roles and responsibility among the team members, it leads to miscommunications, and this causes many problems in the team. If the management is yet to allocate members their roles and responsibilities, them member are not sure of what the team requires them to do. Therefore when the administration clarifies the functions and responsibilities, there is increasing the effectiveness of group communications (Grunig, 2013)

For every project the team is working on, there are some aspects which are handled individually and therefore the need for effective communication to enable the team to report the progress. Also, there is a work environment where team members can work in different locations and the report the progress. In such a case, then it is essential for the management to consider the best form of communication such as video conferencing where the team can hold conversations (Beebe & Masterson, 2014). To this effect, there is need to find the appropriate form of communication to make communication between members comfortable and where all the information is accessible to anyone. For instance, a software can be employed to store information in a central place and streamline the information to the extent that all employees understand which responsibility and tasks they require to handle at a particular time or any given point.

Training employees is an important means of developing effective team communication between members. The management should understand the virtues of training in improving team communication. Although training requires a lot of time, money and continuous effort, it is an effective way of ensuring improved interactions between teams (Grunig, 2013). The role of training is for the purpose of improving communication and building the ability to skillfully deliver the information and persuade others on the course to take. In the training process, the focus should be verbal, face-to-face, giving presentations, written, building relationships on the team, and presenting feedback and others (Beebe & Masterson, 2014).

The advent of technology and emergence of social communication tools makes them vital for disseminating information between groups. The average team member spends a lot of time online chasing information and seeking help on how to complete specific tasks in case of any problem. Owing to this information, the organization should invest in cloud-based software to be used for communication in the workplace. The technology allows the organization to centralize the projects in progress in a single place which mean all the members of the group can have instant and quick access to information (Samovar, et al., 2015). Such platform eliminates decreases the amount spend to searching for information and face to face meeting that requires a lot of time to monitor. On the other hand, the manager can evaluate the progress of the projects and detect any issues which can arise, monitor team communication and guide where necessary (Schippers, et al., 2015).

Conclusion

Effective team communication and general organization culture are important aspects of the organization. These elements ensure unity among employees because of sharing the same beliefs and values. On the other hand, effective team communication is paramount to ensuring coordination between team members in completing assigned roles and responsibilities. Therefore it is paramount for the organization to ensure effective culture is developed by teaching it, living it, rewarding it and assessing the progress. On the other hand, effective team communication can be achieved through ensuring two-way feedback, incorporating the appropriate means of communication and training the employees.

The report recommends the leaders to embrace diversity when developing effective culture and communication in the organization. Concerning the team culture, it is important to consider the mission and vision to ensure the development of culture which reflects the actions of the company. It is essential to be aware of the actions required to achieve the envisioned culture and considering the elements which are most important to implement. Because there are no quick fix and shortcut to cultural change, the management should consider gradually building the culture by imparting desired elements and aligning it to the changing environment. 

On the other hand, the management should ensure organization culture and corporate culture does not hinder effective communication between the team. For instance, the structure should not impede upward and downward communication between employees and senior employees. The channels used must be effective and that effective technology must be put in place. For instance, the technology implemented must help the team members communicate efficiently and manage long-term projects without many challenges. Further, it should be secure, easy to share files, facilitate discussions and easy allocation of tasks, and check the progress of the projects. Also, the technology should not only enable sharing of data and facilitate reviewing and provision of constructive feedback irrespective of the geographical location and distance.

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Beebe, S. & Masterson, J., 2014. Communicating in small groups: Principles and practices. London: Pearson Higher Education.

Fullan, M., 2014. Leading in a culture of change personal action guide and workbook.. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons..

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Grunig, J., 2013. Excellence in public relations and communication management. London : Routledge.

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Kuehn, S., 2016. Exploring US Business Leaders’ Strategies for Enhancing Team Communication. Minneapolis: Walden University.

Martinez, E. & Wang, T., 2015. Organizational culture and performance. The American Economic Review, 5(105), pp. 331-335.

Samovar, L., Porter, R., McDaniel, E. & Roy, C., 2015. Communication between cultures. Ontario: Nelson Education.

Schippers, M., West, M. & Dawson, J., 2015. Team reflexivity and innovation: The moderating role of team context. Journal of Management, 3(41), pp. 769-788.