Communication as the Lifeblood of an Organisation - Essay Example

PDAS 301 Part 2 Explain: Communication is the lifeblood of an organisation. Without effective communication, any organisation cannot function efficiently. Introduction Communication is considered a vital part of an organisation, the catalyst that spurs growth and productivity and the bond that hold the components of the organisation together. A significant number of studies and researches all point to the fact that effective organisational communication underpins organisational growth, productivity and industrial peace. Communication however is a highly intangible activity which accounts for the fact that many people in organisations are not conscious or aware of it which therefore makes acquisition of communication skills doubly hard. This paper highlights the importance of communication in organisations by presenting the various studies conducted by renown and reputable researchers and authors which all bolster to the statement that indeed “communication is the lifeblood of an organisation.” In addition, communication and the different forms of communication are explained to fully comprehend the importance and functions of the activity within the organisation as well as the different forms of communication that frequently take place in an organisation. Finally, as a fitting end to this paper, the principles of effective organisational communications are enumerated and explained to complete the picture of communication as a significant aspect of organisational life. The Importance of Effective Organisational Communication The presence of communication in an organisational set-up is a complex one although there is an unequivocal acknowledgement of its ultimate importance to an organisation’s progress. It is the force that consolidates all the different aspects of organisational components together and its extent of effectiveness the barometer that measures the organisation’s ultimate success. Unless communication is a planned one, like advertising or the corporate website, it is often invisible and intangible which makes individuals in organisations more often unaware of it (Barker & Angelopulo 2005). This complicates matter because as earlier stated, communication impacts greatly on an organisation’s future. Thus, high-performing organisations, according to author David Clutterback, are most likely engage in extensive and effective communication programmes than low performance ones like formal communication strategies and a way of assessing the success of those strategies, have more strategic communication managers, pointedly explain changes to employees and staff more than adequately, places a great importance on educating and communicating with employees, and offer effective and constantly increasing communications channels (Turner 2003). A growing trend in management studies is the view that the success of an organisation is underpinned by collaborative efforts or coalition building which makes it thus important for all members of an organisation to completely comprehend organisational ideologies and goals. In this respect, communication becomes an indispensable tool in propagating and disseminating these goals and ideas. This view is bolstered by a study which reveals that a person cannot give his hundred per cent commitment to an enterprise to which he did not share in the decision-making process and without commitment it is difficult for an employee to transact with customers in business negotiations which could secure repeat business (Hargie & Tourish 2000). Thus, communication plays a pivotal role in management activities and effective communication ensures that the manager, who according to a study is involved in communication 60 to 80 per cent of his time, has done his job right. A landmark study by Kotter in 1982 showed the falsity of the claim that managers spent most of their time holed up in their offices planning and organising through a pile of paperwork. By following 15 executives in their daily work routines, he concluded that the most successful chief executives spent most of their time in face-to-face-with-people activities where they employed various communication strategies to persuade and influence people and business agenda. A parallel study was conducted by Mintzberg in 1973 where he revealed that chief executives spent less than half of their time interacting inside their offices than outside. Most of these interactions took less than 9 minutes whilst 93% of their verbal activities were in the nature of ad hoc meetings. These findings were reinforced by recent studies which showed that “effective leadership in the workplace requires a constant use of tool of communication to create meaning, share visions and build a common focus on the agenda for change” (Hargie & Tourish 2000). The implication of these studies for managers in organisations is that the acquisition of good communication skills as well as knowledge of effective communication strategies is critical to their job. The process of communication, however, is a complex one and unless one realises the subtleties involved and become communication-conscious then they may never even begin to learn to understand it (Rees & Porter 2003). Various studies have likewise revealed the link between improved communication and organisational effectiveness. In 1986, Hanson conducted a research involving 40 major companies, in which he concluded that effective communication between management and staff leading to good interpersonal relations is three times more an effective predictor of profitability over a five-year period vis-à-vis the combination of market share, capital intensity, firm size and sales growth rate. From the same study, Clampitt and Downs drew the conclusion that aside from the broad idea of organisational effectiveness, effective communication can give the following specific benefits: “improved productivity; reduced absenteeism; higher quality of services and products; increased level of innovation; fewer strikes, and; reduced costs (Hargie & Tourish 2000). The team of Snyder and Morris in 1984 likewise found a link between supervisory communication and revenue and other measures of workload performance as well as between an employee’s perception of communication and job satisfaction. The similarity of conclusions in all these studies which showed a tendency for organisational effectiveness as an offshoot of effective communication made Tjosvold remarked in 1991 that “communication within and between groups is needed for innovation in organisations. Continuous improvement occurs when people within teams and across them are identifying issues, sharing information, influencing each other, and putting ideas together” (qtd Hargie & Tourish 2000). The reason behind the positive results that effective communication has on organisational growth can perhaps be traced to the fact that effective communication encourages organisational participation of employees. When employees are kept informed of the he goals of the organisation and are encouraged to participate in decision-making, the employees are inspired to commit themselves in helping build its success. In 1999, Miller surveyed 700 employees of a large organisation and discovered that participation of these employees in decision-makings of and the existence of social support within the organisation, worked to help reduce the pressure of workload and eliminate burnout and at the same time increasing levels of satisfaction and commitment. The increase in the levels of satisfaction and commitment, on the other hand, impacts on productivity by palpably increasing it (Hargie & Tourish 2000). Another study, this time conducted by the Institute of directors in Britain on companies with employee communication policies programmes, supported the theory of the link between effective communication and increased productivity. The study showed: 65.1 per cent of the companies attributed the programmes to increased productivity; 68.1 per cent believed they were the reasons for fewer disputes, and; 80.3 per cent pointed to these programmes as the cause of the improved loyalty of employees. In 1999, 293 UK communications professionals were asked to classify their organisations into high performing and low performing. It was noted that more than half of those organisations which were classified as high-performing had established communications programmes whilst only 25 per cent of the same kind were low performing. A parallel study was conducted in the US of 135 high performing organisations where it was noted that many of these companies exhibited strong tendencies to seek suggestions and feedbacks from their employees (Hargie & Tourish 2000). What Is Communication? To fully comprehend the role of communication in an organisational set-up it is vital to understand what communication is. Communication, from an organisational point of view, may either be viewed as mechanistic or interactional in which the distinction between the two being the former focuses on the structural view of communication and the latter on the process. Approaches to Communication. As a mechanism, communication is simply the transmission of a signal from a source to a destination. In other words, communication in its simplest form occurs when a communicator sends a message to a recipient through a channel which may be the air or a technological medium like a radio or telephone. The recipient may react to the message by giving feedback to the communicator (see Fig 1) in which case a two-way communication occurs. This simple process however, may be complicated when interferences occur during the encoding of the message by the communicator, the transmission of the message itself or the decoding of the message by the recipient. The disruption of the communication at any of these stages may cause the failure of the communication, thus highlighting the need for efficiency of all the parts and in every stage of the communication. This simple concept of communication forms the basis of more complicated forms of communications. In organisations, this approach is useful because of the importance of “time, cost and the quantification of processes and activities” (Barker & Angelopulo 2005). The interactional view of communication subscribes to the idea that communication can only be defined and seen in human interactions and is therefore incapable of being divided into parts. Communication, along with interaction and transactions of individuals, form the basic component of society which determines the shape, nature and characteristics of basic social structures. Whilst the mechanistic view focuses on parts and structures, the interactional view focuses on processes of sharing meanings. Humans are able to share meanings with other through a process called mapping. Mapping involves the creation of order out of the random external stimuli that besieged a person by creating objects that would constitute his reality. In using objects in communication, a person views it from his listener’s point of view to make it understandable. Since objects are seen subjectively, effective communication necessitates a constant realignment of the meaning of symbols with others perception of it. Thus, the final meaning of an object is created through a series of interaction with others and the mutuality of the meaning of objects creates the foundation of associations (Barker & Angelopulo 2005). Channel A good and effective organisational communication employs a mixture of both mechanistic and interactional approaches and domination by either one renders the communication flawed and therefore ineffective. A too mechanistic approach will make the communication too rigid whilst an over-interactional will make it unmanageable (Barker and Angelopulo 2005). Forms of Communication in Organisations Generally, there are three types of communication being used in organisational set-ups, the most commonly used being management communication which as the term implies is the communication used by management whether for internal or external targets. The two other are organisational and marketing communication. Management Communication. This type of communication as used within the organisational setting is geared to transmit to others the organisation’s vision and goals as well as to serve as a tool in the supervisory and motivational aspects of a manager’s functions. According to Van Riel, management communication must be characterised by the elements of consistency, compassion, selectivity and organisation. Figure 3 summarises Van Riel’s communication strategy for CEO communication which could be applicable as well to lower management level (Turner 2003). The first element, consistency, simply stresses that there is a need for all messages coming from management to be non-contradictory to avoid confusion and misinterpretation. On the other hand, the element of compassion requires that management communication to subordinates be characterised, among others, by compassion taking into consideration the human factor. A balancing act between hard and soft issues must therefore exemplify management communication. The element of selectivity means that management communication must be crafted in such a way that people issues must have priority over other issues implying that certain issues which management think should be included in the communication will not necessarily find itself on the text of the messages as they take a backseat to issues that employees find more important. Finally, management must be organised in a way that will effectively integrate people issues to business issues “in the right organisational context” to ensure greater acceptability of the message (Turner 2003). Organisational Communication. Organisational communication is equated with “public relations, public affairs, investor relations, labour market communication, corporate advertising, environmental communication, and internal communication” (qtd Turner 2003). The relationship between the organisation and the public is something considered vital to the former because public perception can make or break an organisation’s reputation. Proper and effective communication strategies can help strengthen an organisation’s public relations. Today, one aspect which organisations are fast recognising as vital to PR is cases stemming from public employment tribunals widely publicised in newspapers and tabloids because they tend to put the organisations in bad light. Some of these cases are: unfair dismissal, sexual harassment and equal pay (Turner 2003). Investor relations are likewise very vital to organisations because nervous stockholders may become fatal to its life and finances and therefore effective communication with them is important. In connection with this, organisations now deem it wise to include the media in their communication recipient list because this sector is always seeking corporate stories to satisfy their readers. On the other hand, organisations are constantly competing with each other to attract the best and the brightest for employment which makes the maintenance of good image among potential employees one of top organisational goals. Organisations must be able to communicate to the labour market the best of its features that would make it an ideal potential employer. One of the most important uses of communication however, is the fortification of an organisation’s internal relations and activities, with its already existing employees. “Internal communication is the lifeblood of an organisation” and the creation and the maintenance of the organisation can all be traced back to effective communication. Today, the role of effective communication in an organisation’s internal affairs has never been more important because of the conflicting messages that it may generate: “corporate success and job reductions; simultaneous recruitment and news of redundancy, and; pay increases in some areas and pay reduction in others” (Turner 2003). Marketing Communication. The oldest and most developed form of communication of an organisation is usually in the field of marketing communication as classical 4 Ps of marketing includes “promotion” together with product, price and place. Thus, advertising, sales promotion, publicity and personal selling had always been part and parcel of company marketing strategies which extensively use communication (Turner 2003). Principles of a Good Organisational Communication An effective organisational communication system is one which meets all the requirements of the purposes and the destinations of the communicated information. The system must be well-crafted to adapt to the needs of the various directional types of communication. Thus, it must sufficiently have the proper mechanism to ensure the free flow of communication in upward, downward and lateral directions of communication (Saiyadain 2003). Downward Communication. Obviously, this type of flow of communication is one that originates from top level management down to the rank-and-file like the chain type earlier discussed in this paper. The forms of communication under the downward flow sent by top level management to subordinates are: job instructions informing or outlining them the job to be done; job rationale which are explanations of why certain tasks are to be done and the overall role of the task to company goals; feedback which can be positive or negative appraising subordinates of their performance; organisational policies and practises to inform employees of the dos and the don’ts of the company, and; identification with organisation which are information disseminated for the purpose of building commitment of employees to the organisation. Communication sent in a downward direction should be kept simple and to the point because “people vary in their capabilities and willingness to receive and act upon downward communication” and keeping such communication simple and short would ensure that there is no place for misinterpretation and give then greater chances of acceptability and may be done in oral or written form (Saiyadain 2003). Upward Communication. As the term implies the direction of this kind of communication originates from the rank-and-file level to management and may take the form of messages in suggestion boxes, opinion surveys, grievance machinery and the like. This kind of communication takes place when subordinates communicate for the purpose of giving feedbacks on how they feel in re their jobs, their co-employees and the organisations, or the employees give their periodic reports on the progress and status of certain company projects, or when they inform management on how they feel regarding certain company policies and rules, or grievances they have against fellow employees or the management itself, or when the employees make their suggestions to improve organisational efficiency. A study of this type of communication revealed that employees tend to leave many details out. The reason for this inadvertence is that there are elements that implicitly inhibit open and honest communication by employees to management like the requirement for the written form and the tendency by management to enforce this kind of communication rather than encourage is another factor (Saiyadain 2003). Lateral Communication. This horizontal type of communication is best illustrated by activities like inter-departmental coordination, sharing information, problem solving, conflict resolution and sense of belongingness. It takes the form of regular meetings, social events, even written communication and all other forms in which the goal is the flow of communication within the same departmental level (Saiyadain 2003). Aside from taking into consideration the directional type of the communication, the general principles of organisational communication include: understanding the precise content of the message and agreeing to it; ensuring that the message was crafted with an underpinning objective or objectives; dividing the recipient of the message into identifiable sections to hit on the “right spot”; agree whose signature should appear as the sender of the message; decide on the type of medium to use for the message, and; include an in-built mechanism for feedbacks to the message (see Fig 4) (Turner 2003). . Conclusion The importance of communication in an organisational set up cannot be gainsaid and overvalued. As supported by the numerous studies conducted by well known researchers and authors, organisational communication underpins many of the aspects vital to organisations like productivity, industrial peace, growth, employee satisfaction and many other vital to the progress and well-being of the organisation. It is therefore a must that organisations establish effective communication policies that will take into account the kind of communication systems adapted top the organisations’ set up. In addition, there must be well-defined efforts to advance the communication skills of those especially in the hierarchical levels whose duties and functions necessarily require their constant communication with the rest of the employees. As discussed in the body of the paper, an effective communication system is one that allows a mechanism for feedback. Allowing the employees to give their comments and response to all communication transmitted to them elevate the communication to a two-way communication. The importance of giving employees the opportunity to communicate their feelings and input on matters that affect them as employees of the organisation and encouraging them to participate in decision-making have been found not only to involve their commitment to organisational goals but also decrease their susceptibility to burnout and pressure from workload. The bottom line in all these is increase organisational productivity and profitability. References: Barker, R Angelopulo, G C 2005, Integrated Organisational Communication, Edition: illustrated Juta and Company Limited, pp 3, 7-11. Hargie, O and Tourish, D 2000, Handbook of communication audits for organisations, Edition: illustrated, Psychology Press, pp 4-8. Rees, W and Porter, C 2001, The skills of management, Edition: 5, illustrated, Cengage Learning EMEA, pp 163. Saiyadain, M 2003, Organisational Behaviour, Tata McGraw-Hill, pp 83-85 Spiegel, J & Torres, C.1994, Effective team communication, in Managers Official Guide to Team Working, Pfeiffer & Co, USA, pp. 39-54. Turner, P and Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2003, Organisational Communication: The Role of the HR Professional, Edition: illustrated, CIPD Publishing, pp 53, 57-65. Read More