Improving Employee Communication Skills - Coit Organization - Case Study Example

Improving Employee Communication Skills (School) (Name) (Student I.D) Contents Conclusion 7 Recommendation 8 Introduction The end objective of designing and implementing Coit employees training program is to basically improve on the company Coit competitive advantage. In this context, the training program will focus on Coit ability to maintain and gain the market share in its activities such as tours of the outback. Additionally, the training program will enable Coit company to grow while improving on the customer services by simply providing knowledge and skills to employees that are essential towards the success of the company. In Australia, training of employees is presumed to be very important because it attracts and retain talent in the current competitive labor market (Harris, 2014). (See Appendix A) Conflict is presumed to be lifeblood of high performing companies. In Australia, 70 % of the employees indicate that management of conflict is a critical leadership skill while 54% of the employees advocate that managers should be able address disputes before things go wrong (Bass 2013). In this retrospect, employee conflict management training program is essential because it will help in forming strongly bonded team members in full alignment, stimulate creativity and creating new energy that will improve on the organization productivity due to newer innovations and new goals. Human interpersonal skills have showcased to have greater influence towards organization functional efficiency. Varied training is imposed to spearhead certain personalities that would result towards certain positive outcomes in employee personality. As such, the main objective of this training program in Coit organization is to remove the obstructions that pose negative outcomes on how employees need to express their interpersonal skills. Generally, this report seeks to give an insightful training report in improving employee communication skills from Coit organization. The training report entails conflict management aspects and development of employee interpersonal skills geared towards improving employee communication skills. Conflict Management Lack of, solving conflict across the organization negatively impact employee’s work performance and productivity rate (Karimi, 2012). Some of the associated symptoms of unresolved conflict includes employee’s irritability, poor team work, stress, and, low productivity. In this context, it is essential to train Coit employees on determining the core sources of conflict across the organization (See Appendix B). Basically, conflict tends to arise due to different perceptions, personalities, communication styles, interests, assumptions, biasness and prejudice. It is worth noting that individuals have different preferences regarding the approaches of resolving conflict. In this context, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model suits each employee in Coit company during conflict management. By using Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model, employees need to be informed that conflict basically arises due to individual assertiveness, cooperative and assertive and, cooperatives (both combined). In this model, employees need to be informed that conflict can easily be managed by using five styles within Thomas-Kilmann model (Kilmann, 2010). The styles include avoiding, accommodating, competing, compromising and collaborating. The below diagram showcases the five styles of conflict management based on behavior, assertiveness and cooperativeness. The below diagram showcases the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. Across the organizations, the instrument is used in support of conflict management, team-building, leadership management and attaining of employee retention goals (CPP, 2011). Assertive Unassertive Uncoperativeness Cooperativeness Cooperativeness Figure 1. (CPP, 2011). Competing From the above diagram, employees need to know that competing in conflict management showcases assertive and uncooperative mode hence a power oriented model in problem solving. Through competing, employees are presumed to basically pursue personal interests at an expense of other employees. Contrarily, competing might be essential for Coit organization especially when a quick and decisive action is needed, employees protecting themselves from noncompetitive behavior and when unpopular course of action is needed purposefully for implementation. Competing in unpopular action during decision making process needs to greatly focus on cost cutting, enforcing newer rules and newer discipline towards employees. Accommodating In conflict management, accommodating basically implies unassertiveness and cooperative. In this context, employees tend to ignore personal concerns purposefully to satisfy the interest of the team. Accommodating should be applicable in Coits organization especially when majority of employees tend to realize that they are wrong purposefully to allow better solutions. Secondly, accommodating should be applicable to satisfy the need the need of others especially to maintain and stimulate cooperative relationship across employees. Thirdly, accommodating technique will enable the Coit employees to experiment and learn from their mistakes. Lastly, accommodating technique should be applied to build social credit that is very important to the employees and the organization. Avoiding Avoiding in conflict management, acts as unassertive and uncooperative. Through avoidance, the organization basically ignores conflict resolutions among employees. Consequently, Coit organization might apply the technique especially if the issue can be postponed until better time, diplomatically sidestepping the conflict or basically ignoring due to threaten situation to the organization. Compromising Compromising falls under both the assertiveness and the cooperativeness. In this context, the solution both satisfies the interest of the involved parties. It is important to note that through compromising, Coit employees will address the conflict more directly in comparison to avoiding, though the solution isn’t detailed in comparison to the collaborative technique. As such, compromising should be applicable to Coit employees when both collaborative and competition fails, employees time pressure to attain expedient solutions, when the expected goals are moderately important to both employees and the organization and lastly, when the involved parties need a temporarily solution from a technical issue. Collaborating Collaborating entails both the assertive and cooperative. When collaborating, employees tend to work together in an attempt to find solutions that basically satisfy the interest of both the employees and the organization. Coit employees should basically engage into collaborating technique in problem solving especially when employees require integrative solutions that are too important to be compromised. Secondly, collaborative technique need to be applied when Coit organization need to merge insightful thoughts from employees purposefully to understand the different perspectives of the existing conflict. Lastly, the technique works best when the involved parties want to gain commitment by embedding majority of the employee concerns into consensual decision. Interpersonal Skills Across organization, employees interact with each other purposefully to satisfy and achieve both personal needs and organizational goals. Through interactions, Coit employees tend to communicate with people of different sexes, varied education levels, skills and temperaments. The ability of the employees to understand the expected dynamics of interactions with others will help each employee to become an effective communicator towards Coit customers. Basically, the effective communication is geared by exceptional performance in employee’s self-awareness, effective listening, and the oral communication, and the non-verbal communication, employee’s level of facilitating, reflecting and assertiveness. Employability It is important to train employees to have good interpersonal skills because it enhances employability. Based on finding in United Kingdom, employability has been spearheaded over the past decade simply because good interpersonal skills are highly valued in the modern working places (Bassou, 2016). As such, the Coit organization need to train its employees by implementing three set of interpersonal skills, thus cognitive skills, technical skills and communication skills. The ability of employees grasping the three sets of interpersonal skills within the field of oral communication, the employees tend to have a good listening skills and conversational skills that are very essential in business operating environment. Additionally, good interpersonal skills through employability tend to increase employee’s competencies. Research indicates that employees having greater competencies have higher job levels showcase great upward promotions while they continue to earn high salaries (Hellwig, 2006). The analyzed finding proves to be a workable ingredient that can easily motivate employees to focus on the success of their careers by showcasing outstanding performances in their area of work. Effective learning Formal lecture and technical practices are the common methods used in employee trainings. Good interpersonal skills are attributed towards effective learning which basically improves the performances of the employees. In this context, employees that tend to learn and grasp content during training are much more likely to showcase good interpersonal while engaging with the customers. For example, Coit employees are expected to grasp non-verbal communication skills across the different cultures of their consumers. This includes the expected facial expressions, how to give a gaze, posture and the paralinguistic cues. Basically, it is through interpersonal skills that employees can easily be trained and acquire skills that satisfy varied customers from different cultural setting. Conclusion Conclusively, the report showcases an in depth analysis on how to improve employee communication skills in Coit organization. The assessed techniques from this report includes conflict management and developing of employee’s interpersonal skills that are geared towards improving employee communication skills. Although the report list only two domains of improving employee communication skills, there exist techniques such as developing of organizational culture, delivering effective oral presentation and effective team communication. Recommendation Training needs to be a periodical due to an increasingly organizational changes in culture, technology and economic (Imran, 2013) In this context, employees will be conversant with the newer techniques that are geared towards improving communication skills. Additionally, gradual technological changes might also have an impact towards communication skills, especially when Coit employees engage with customers of different cultural setting by using online platform. Appendix A Companies such as US Airways, Starbucks and Seattle showcases that employee trainings have increased retention in Organization of which turnover can approach 300 percent (Noe 2012). Appendix B Resolved conflicts within organization increases employee social integration and greater mental well-being through positive psychology hence spearheading employee productivity level (Ahrens, 2011). Reference Ahrens, J. (2011). Understanding Employee Well-Being Practices in Australia Organizations. International Journal of Health, Wellness and Society, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 181. Bass, J. (2013). Fight, Flight or Face It Cont. Dispute Resolution in Australia: Cases, Commentary and Materials. Chapter 10, p. 588. Bassou, M. (2016). Employability Skills as Perceived by Employers and University Faculty in the Fields of Human Resource Development for Entry Level Graduate Jobs. Australian Journal of Human Resource and Sustainable Studies, vol. 4, p. 39-49. CPP. (2011). Introduction to the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument. Available at https://www.cpp.com/pdfs/Introduction_to_the_TKI_Assessment.pdf. [Retrieved on 18th/January/2017] Harris, R. (2014). Workforce Development Perspective Issues. XVIII(Eds.), p. 327, Hardcover, Springer. Imran, A. (2013). The Effect of Training on Employee Performance. European Journal of Business and Management, vol. 5, no. 4, p. 140-141. Hellwig, S. (2006). Competency-Based Training: Different Perceptions in Australia and Germany. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, vol. 6, no. 1, p. 55. Karimi, L. (2013). Supervisor Behavior and Employee Presenteeism. International Journal of Leadership Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 114-131. Kilmann, T. (2010) Conflict Mode Instrument. Available at https://www.cpp.com/pdfs/smp248248.pdf. [Retrieved on 8th/ January/2017]. Noe, R. (2012) Employee Training and Development. McGraw-Hill Irwin, Fifth Edition. p. 2. Read More