Discuss about the Workplace Communication And Challenges.
The process in which the information is exchanged in an organization is termed as workplace communication. It could be both verbal and non-verbal. Sharing information may take place within as well as outside of an organization for commercial benefits to serve (Bull & Brown, 2012). An organization consisted of diverse employees from different language group and cultural background has necessity to communicate in a way that both the sender and the receiver are able to understand the meaning of a massage, thus able to fulfill the company’s objective. The effective workplace communication ensures this (Ulmer, Sellnow & Seeger, 2013).
Communication challenges may occur in a workplace when there are some barriers for effective communication (Modaff, Butler & DeWine, 2016). In a multinational organization of manufacturer and distributor of agricultural equipments, has eight thousand employees in total and operates in various counties of the world is facing number of communication challenges. However, it has both local and international clients. The communication challenges include lack of timely communication, communication breakdown from top management to stuffs and vice-versa, ineffective communication due to local languages and cross-cultural issues, limited development in digital literacy.
The purpose of this report is to investigate the above-mentioned challenges faced by this multinational company in the context of workplace communication and develop strategies to overcome such barriers, aiming on the strategies developed by other organizations to face similar challenges and improve workplace communication. This report will be presented to the manager of the company and helpful for developing an effective communication system at all level within the organization.
Efficient communication on time from the managers to staffs and clients in a workplace helps to increase the productivity of the organization. It influences directly the behavioral patterns of the staffs and clients and in return, the overall benefits of the organization will be increased (Williams, 2013). Efficient communication does not only include the clear instruction or proper explanation of the massage. Rather, if the massage is not delivered on time, the issue will directly reflect on the cooperative systems of the organization. In fact, it could create mess and inefficient productivity rate. Any organization works well with employees in a structure of mutual relation and cooperation. The information not only should pass through genuinely to all its employees, but it should be sent and received on time. The manager of any organization should take responsibility to deliver it in the hierarchical order and observe weather it has been delivered on time (Robles, 2012).
Due to lack of on time communication to all its stuffs and clients in the organization of agricultural equipment’s manufacturer and distributor, the organization is facing communication challenges. This organization has local and international clients and various offices in different parts of the world. However, the information in this case, should be delivered when exact time has arrived as different parts of the world bears different time zones. For example, it has offices in both India and Australia. India is four hours and thirty minutes behind Australia. However, the information delivery time in this case automatically will be different. The leaders or managers of the organization should consider precise timely communication at all level in the organization. Otherwise, if the employees and clients do not get information, where and when they need it; the decision-making procedure will be slowing down. It will directly affect the productivity of the organization, as projects will not be completed on time due to delay of information provided.
Successful organizations have challenged this problem by providing clear, honest and timely communication to all its stuffs and clients, keeping in mind the time zones and location (ARVANITIS & SAKELLARIOU, 2014). Even, the managers should ensure that if an employee is not present in the place and time of delivery, he is getting the massage later. In this situation, the information should always be available to all their employees and clients through emails (Cummings & Worley, 2014).
The multinational company in the case study should take strategies like what other successful organization have taken to overcome such problem. It is suggested to connect with all the stuffs and clients by emails all the time and management should strict about timely delivery of information.
Effective and clear communication with the employees from top management and vice-versa is one of the most important things that engage employees and management to work together for higher production. This is a part of internal workforce communication system in an organization (Lockwood, 2015). The more the rate of internal communication is higher, the more productivity is obtaining (Alexander, 2013). In situation when the information is not received given by top management system to all its employees and top management also not in a position of getting the feedback of the information given by the employees can be described as a horrible situation of communication breakdown in an organization. However, it is the responsibility of the management department to check whether the information is clearly reached with accuracy (Blyton et al., 2017). Any changes in plan or idea taken by the management should be communicated to all its employees and provided with upward communication system where employees have opportunities to share their thoughts to the management. The good leaders in organizations plan for both ways communication that is effective in nature (Eunson, 2012).
High-performing multinational companies like Philips used some strategies to overcome internal communication breakdown. The leaders in the company always use simple languages clearly and avoid ambiguous words. The management should ensure that the massage is understood with the same intention the speaker is indented for. It could be done by asking questions or active listening. Another way to overcome communication breakdown is keeping the organizational structure as simple as possible (Blyton et al., 2017). The optimum level of number of hierarchies in an organization, the less the number of communication breakdown occurs. The managers also should select proper medium of communication. Simple information should be given orally otherwise, memos, notice, emails or other written means of communication could be used. Internal communication from management to employees and vice-versa in top ranking companies helps to both parties to understand its business, its culture and values, progress towards the goals and the way in which employees can improve their performances.
The multinational company in the case study is facing problems related to internal communication breakdown. It is suggested to the leaders to use simple and clear languages in case of communication and they have to sure about a fact that the meaning of the massage is communicated precisely and timely.
Feedback is the basic and spontaneous response of the receiver. It informs the sender about how the communication is accepted. Feedback from clients about a product is taken as valuable information as important decisions in the organization could take place based upon feedback. Effective feedback helps the giver, receiver and the organization (Quintanilla & Wahl 2015).
In this case study, communication challenges occur for receiving feedbacks from clients regarding improvement in product quality and service delivery. The clients are local and international and their feedback plays an important role to ensure improvement. Their valuable outcomes about a product contribute in making the most important decisions and changes within an organization. Due to diversification in clients, it is important to understand the communication languages the clients are delivering (Blyton et al., 2017). Email could be the best method of receiving feedback in this scenario. It is suggested to improve the technological structure and routes of the company for getting feedback at right time.
Top-ranking multinational companies impose great importance about client’s feedback. They maintain a kind of open communication system where the organization is selling the product and in response, the clients are giving feedbacks about the product. It is the responsibility of the company to provide a clear system of open communication to ensure the clients feedback is received on time (Modaff, Butler & DeWine, 2016). The feedback about the product quality and service delivery of an organization plays a crucial role to ensure improvement and progression of that organization. The organization with lack of this facility has chance to lose its important clients and clients will be offensive as they are unable to communicate what they want.
In an organization, employees come from different language group. Not every employee in the organization can be comfortable about what the other person is saying in native languages (Tenzer, Pudelko & Harzing, 2014). Language can be acted as a barrier in effective communication in an organization. In this case, as the organization consisted of almost eight thousand employees in five countries worldwide including India, Nigeria, Oman the language difference exists within the organization. However, as the different countries have different languages it is the responsibility of the management to provide instructions according to the specific languages of a country (Rana, 2013).
The top ranking companies use different strategies to overcome language barriers within the organization. It is not even always possible to provide trainings to overcome language barriers to the local employees. It is the responsibility of the manager to determine whether the language differences will be accommodated in a workplace or not rather, it is a common problem in an multicultural organization to have employees of different languages group (Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013).
The company could do number of things for the employees who are not interested to pick up dominant languages in the workplace. The managers could translate all the relevant documents into a language of the employee (Jandt, 2012). The manager could use interpreter when he gives instruction or receives feedback. Even some of the company provides basic language classes to their employees to fulfill their business requirement. Sometimes companies use strategies such as providing crash course to all its employees in the primary language of the workplace. The managers try to use simple words with less syllable and repetition method in the communication in a diversified working culture (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014).
It is suggested to the company portrayed in the case study to follow any one or two strategies like, translation and interpretation or training method to overcome local language barriers in the workplace. The managers of this company should be sure about the understanding is correct what the employees have after any method of communication. The managers could ask for the demonstration from its employees ensuring the communication occurred effectively.
In an organization, employees work from different cultural background and shares different values and believe within the organization. The organization holds them together in spite of diversity in culture. However, this cultural diversity could work as a barrier in effective communication in workplace. The problem occurs in case of massage transmission in a diversified cultural workplace (Moran, Abramson & Moran, 2014). When the values and believes of a employee can be coordinated with the similar value system of another there is absolutely no problem. When there is a difference in cultural systems, the meaning and interpretation of the massage could be different as different cultures carry different expectation for behavior (Kawar, 2012).
Cultural barriers could be resolved by developing cultural sensitivity in an organization, careful encoding and decoding of massages and building relationships among employees of different culture (Deresky, 2017). Top organization such as MacDonald adapts co-cultural theory to erase the cultural barriers. In this theory, communication involves the different people of diverse group with difference in color, gender, sexual orientation and sexual abilities. Mark P. Orbe developed this theory, which is now followed by different multinational organizations. It seems that with the help of this strategy, different cultural groups are able to communicate with each other effectively and efficiently (Conrad, 2014).
In this multinational company, as the cultural barrier exists in different level such as intercultural or external barrier, it is recommended to remove such barriers ensuring all the information is transmitted thoroughly and clearly in all the members and clients of the organization (Patrick & Kumar, 2012). The organization has clients from different parts of the world and share different cultural views. However, if the company accepts the co-cultural theory model, accommodating all the culturally diversified members of the organization under a securing umbrella provided by the organization the barriers could be removed.
In modern technological world, digital and social media could be used as a tool to facilitate the communication within the workplace (Leonardi, Huysman & Steinfield, 2013). Digital media includes email, blogs, quick delivery massage system and social media incorporates different social media sites such as twitter, facebook and even instagram (Bucher, Fieseler & Suphan, 2013). Using digital platform helps to send massage as quick as possible but the responsibility of the company does not end in sending the massage. It is also the part of responsibility of the company to ensure whether the data has been received and understood properly (Williams et al., 2012).
The organization in the case study is facing challenges regarding low literacy rate in digital media in some countries. The company is also looking for the ways in which social media platform could be incorporated to overcome communication challenges. As the company has different branches in different countries and the digital media literacy rate varies from country to country, it is suggested to train the employees, which are less known about digital media. The training program could help the employees to learn new and modern things as well as it would contribute to the nation. The training program could be based on basic of computer training and internet using (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2012).
The social media is as important part of communication even with an organization (Couldry, 2012). Overcoming the barriers in social media communication, employees knowledgeable of digital media marketing could be engaged. Top-ranking companies use social media plat form to communicate with diverse clients around the world. They have employees who are accustomed in social media marketing (Varnelis, 2012).
Conclusion:
It can be concluded by analyzing different types of communication barriers in a company that if communication problem occurs at any level within the organization, it will decrease the productivity rate of that organization. In effect to that, the overall business goal and profits will be diminished. It is suggested to improve the communication system in an organization and remove the barriers as soon as possible.
In the above-mentioned case study, the multinational organization is facing various types of communication challenges, which include internal, external, local language, cultural and social media communication. The challenges should be removed bench marking the similar challenges faced by other top-ranking companies.
It is recommended to follow those examples and way outs of the top-ranking company, which are successful in removing communication challenges. The recommendation also includes the removal of any types of communication challenges in this multinational company. The managers as well as the leaders of this company should be careful and aware about the communication barriers and the ways in which it could be removed.
References
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