Communicating with a Diverse Audience - Essay Example

By diversity we are not only referring to ethnic differences but also other demographic factors such as age, gender, social class and religious beliefs. Therefore in our firm, we never use language that seems to target any particular group nor do we allow jokes that might accidentally offend someone's religious or cultural beliefs. Communicating with our employees and other stakeholders is however extremely important and critical to company's success. Over the years, we have learned that the more the communication, the better the understanding people have and the less confusion and conflict we face.

Communication is regular done in form of both internal and external messages. We have an intranet that allows horizontal as well as vertical communication. The company website has a bulletin board where important messages are placed and there is a forum that allows for comments on new happenings. Change is the essence of business success today but it is change that generates most resistance. In our organization, we know that whenever any change is being introduced, people refuse to accept it readily at first if they fail to understand its significance.

Thus, we have developed a culture of communicating about change before it is brought into the organization. To communicate after change has been introduced can often backfire. It is important to prepare the employees and others for change when it is being anticipated. This helps in reducing resistance, which can make the change process easier. We realize that whenever change is to be introduced, people must be taken into confidence not only so they can be informed but also to tell me how they can benefit from this change.

Audience benefits are very critical to success of communication and thus we keep that in mind every time our organization is planning change.One key example of our organization's commitment to its employees is the time when we were planning to introduce robotic technology in our production unit. Organization understood that this was a big change and could result in serious resistance. But it also meant improving productivity by 65%, which could lead to lower costs in the long run. The firm however refused to let this change affect employees in a negative manner.

We were more concerned about our employees' welfare than anything else. We knew that we had to improve productivity and our plan for introduction of robots could bring in serious improvements but we didn't want this to affect our employees. The organization first identified the way in which this change could affect our people. We realize that some people in the production department will have to be moved. We also knew that many people might not know how to adopt the new technology so training had to be arranged.

Third, we had to find way to convince the audience of the benefits of adopting this new technology. But these benefits had to be audience benefits not organizational benefits. This was a critical task and failure to communicate properly could produce negative consequences.The first important step we took was identifying the ways in which we could accommodate the surplus staff. We didn't want them to leave but some of them had to be moved to other departments. We looked at the strengths and weaknesses of our staff and then decided what would the next most suitable position for them.