Workplace Communication In A Large Supermarket - Essay Example

Workplace Communication in a large Supermarket Supermarkets are literally everywhere. These stores can be ified as retailers who sell a large variety of food and non-food items and employ from 10 to a hundred people. The assortment and depth of the variety of these products on offer depends mostly on size of the establishment. Being a business that has longer working hours than most, supermarkets employ job sharing and most of them have at least two shifts running, a morning and a night shift. These establishments usually have young to middle age people working for them with the highest number of people in the age bracket of 17-25. Most employees are students or other less skilled workers. These workers come from a diverse background, and mostly belong to different age groups, gender and races. The jobs that the employees of a supermarket generally perform, ranges from manual work, such as stocking shelves to management duties. A part of the on-floor employees work description is that they have to help the customer locate what they desire and provide them product information if required. Another form of on-floor activity is performed by the cashiers who man the POS. Apart from the shop floor, most supermarkets have at least one manager present at the store at all times. These are usually college graduates with experience and their job description involves keeping inventory controls to other management related issues. Rest of the work team at a supermarket consist of the office workers, the clerks, secretaries and the accountants. From the order filler to the stocker to the on-floor supervisor, how does the communication occur? And what are the rules and norm patterning that communication? As in all other organizations and businesses, effective workplace communication is among the most important factors that determine the success of a supermarket. Deal and Kennedy (1982, Cited in Gilsdorf, 1998) talk in their book about how a strong corporate culture, effective communication and cost saving are linked together. They say that by knowing exactly what their organization expects of them, employees will waste very little time trying to decide how to act in a particular situation. We can conclude from the above statement that people who know the ropes of their organization; those who know the rules are generally more effective in the work that they perform. The term rule here is used to denote the assumptions organizational members make about the right way to communicate in given situations in their particular organization (Gilsdorf, 1998). In her paper, Gilsdorf (1998) talks about how rules of communication within an organization, whether those rules are written ,unwritten, formal or informal instruct the employees on how to act and what is expected of them. She points out how it is essential for employees to be aware of ‘how things are done’ in their particular organization so as to maximize both their effectiveness and their organizations success. In a supermarket, the employees’ constant interaction with customers provides a rising challenge to the management. How does one chart out each and every situation and employees’ expected reaction? Do all of these rules have to be written down formally? In most instances, unwritten rules on how to communicate, both within an organization and outside of it tend to apply to more eventualities. (Gilsdorf, 1998). For the management of a large to medium-sized supermarket, it is essential to put down a set of rules regarding how their employees should react, and how they should communicate with their superiors, but what happens for instance when a situation arises of which there exists no prior record?. The biggest concern for an employee at that stage is to work the problem out in a way that is acceptable to him and both his organization. Alma Whiteley(2006), in her article about rules as received practice, observes the effects of rules on how to communicate and how what is written and what is not written effects the perception of employees on how they should act at work. She puts up a scenario where a disruption occurs while handling customer complaints and observes the input of people taking part in her study about their inferences of “WHO”( What happens officially) and “WRH”( What really happens). Her article explores the effectiveness and disambiguity of unwritten rules. Whitely(2006) concludes that in this particular case, whereas the official instruction in most organizations would be to immediately isolate the customer, what really happens is that the employee who is being yelled at lets the customer have a good yell and run out of steam in front of everyone. Here arises the biggest question. How to organizations build in their employees a sense of culture so strong that it wouldn’t matter whether the rules are written unwritten or merely implied? The answer to this comes in the form of a simple suggestion made by Kreps (n.d pp.243-256), who says that socializing employees to the organizations culture gives structure and predictability the new member’s perception of the organizations and helps them decide how they should respond appropriately to situations as representatives of that organization. Socialization is the process by which the new members of a company are introduced to the norms and culture of the organization. This process may be carried out through a combination of story-telling and other practices which tell the new comer about the legends, metaphors and rituals that are employed at their new workplace. The author suggests that by developing a proper Socialization process, organizations can map out the way they can instill the company’s values in each new member. This will ensure a harmony of understanding that each individual has about the various actions required by his/her organization in multiple situations. The author suggests that by spending substantial of money on developing an employee socialization process, organizations can save future millions on losses that occur due to communication errors. In order for companies to develop a socialization program that suits their particular needs, Antonacopoulou & Güttel (2010) suggest in their research paper “Staff Induction Practices and Organizational Socialization”, that it is essential to link Human resource activities with the socialization process. The article suggests that the basic 3 steps that all organizations should observe are that at first people in the HRM department should identify the corporate strategy that their organization is pursuing. After that is done, the type of employee behavior required has to be identified and in accordance with the set rules, the socialization program has to be developed. Their paper draws attention to the importance of exploring the connections between staff induction, socialization and organizational recreation (Antonacopoulou & Güttel, 2010). To put this concept in the context of a large supermarket, it is imperative that the HR department in these organizations pay close attention on developing a standardized socialization procedure that draws inspiration from the legends and history of their organization so as to set a standardized induction process that helps the new comers develop a sense of knowledge about what their organization expects of them. Having said that, it is also important to note, that even after all such measures are taken, it is difficult to ensure that each and every individual joining that organization understands the exact implication of the knowledge imparted on them. Supermarkets employ all kinds of people, from students to middle aged people who belong to wide variety of social and ethnic backgrounds. To say that each individual’s perception of the rules set out for them will be same is to make an impossible statement. Therefore, it is also safe to conclude that any level of rule making and all organizational communication practices are only workable as long as the organization understands the importance of handling their diverse work force properly. Authors, Sanders and Saee (2000), in their paper outline a study of Australian Hospitality industry and how it manages its culturally diverse workforce. Their study concludes that it is important for the managers of an organization to have competence over inter cultural communication and they should be experienced in handling uncertainty in daily encounters with their multi-cultural staff. They also suggest that training the management staff to deal with a multi cultural workforce, results in their better understanding of the people working for them and in turn provides maximum productivity of the employees. For managers of a large supermarket, it is important that they are not stereo-typed in their approach towards the people working under them. For the organization to work as a whole it is essential that communication exists on a plane where every individual is given equal opportunity to voice their concern and there is a general atmosphere that tells the employees that there are no pre-conceived notions about their abilities based on were they come from. According to Bakalis et al (2009), Australian workforce is among the most diverse in the world. Their inference says that not only is managing cultural diversity important, it is also very important for organizations to maintain a proper image of being able to handle cultural diversity for their employees. This paper studies the effect of this perception of employees about their organizations management of cultural diversity and talk about the positivism that results in employees inter communication when they know that their organization shows complete understanding of the different people who work for them. The authors suggest that there exists a direct relation between employee satisfaction and employee perception of how their organization manages cultural diversity (Bakalis et al, 2009). In other terms, when employees are aware that their organization encourages and understands the difference that exists in the backgrounds of their employees, their perception of the organizations support increases. For any business to succeed it is most crucial that the employers give the employees the sense of well being that will result in their increased productivity and affiliation with their company. In the long run all such actions result in better profits for the organization itself so it is imperative that such steps as deemed necessary are taken to ensure the employees perception of how much their organization cares about them. Another crucial part of maintaining a proper communication network at a supermarket is maintaining a sense in the communication proceedings. How employees perceive their workplace communication is the most important part of their sense making procedure. In her research paper, Mills (2000) concludes that there is a mutual interaction between employees sensemaking and workplace discourse. She points out that even though variance occurs in the employment of different modes of discourse in different situations, what is most important is that people derive sense through workplace communication and that sense is of course very important in paving a relationship with the employee that is based on trust and commitment. Bambacas & Patrickson (2008), in their paper, suggest that for a management to construct a relationship with its employees based on mutual trust and commitment, it is important they employ interpersonal communication skills that provide the employees empowerment along with motivation. They note that for managers in the supervisory positions, it is important to observe a stance in communication that is open and encourages the sub-ordinates to ask for help whenever required. It would be, in my opinion fairly safe to conclude that if supermarket management sets out a strategy of how to communicate with their employees and tell them what is expected of them and do so in a way that these employees are aware of the organizations stance on their rights, it would benefit both the management and the employees. Effective workplace communication will occur when the employees know the company they are working for, as well as its goals, desires and dreams, and it is only when the employees perceive their organization to be as living and breathing and aware of the life around them as they are, that they will truly work to their maximum potential. References Antonacopoulou, P. Elena & Wolfgang H. Güttel, 2010,”Staff Induction Practices and Organizational Socialization”, ‘Society and Business Review’, Vol.5, No.1, pp 22-47. Bakalis, Steve, Lynne Leveson & Theresa A. Joiner, 2009, “Managing Cultural Diversity and Perceived Organizational Support”, ‘International Journal of Manpower’, Vol. 30, no. 4, pp 377-392. Bambacas, Mary & Margaret Patrickson, 2008, “Interpersonal communication skills that enhance organizational commitment”, ‘Journal of Communication Management’, Vol. 12, no 1, pp 51-72. Gilsdorf W. Jeanette, 1998, “Organizational Rules on Communicating: How Employees Are- and Are Not- Learning the Ropes”. ‘The Journal of Business Communication’, Vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 173-201. Kreps, Gary L., n.d, “Using interpretive research: The development of a socialization program at RCA”, ‘Communication and Organizations: an interpretive approach’, Sage Publications, pp 243-256. Mills E. Colleen, 2000, “The interfaces of communication, Sensemaking, and Change”, ‘Australian Journal of Communication’, Vol 27, no. 1, pp95-110. Saee, John & Shirley Sanders, 2000, “Intercultural communication competence and managerial functions within the Australian hospitality industry”, ‘Australian Journal of Communication’, Vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 111-128. Whiteley, Alma, 2006, “Rules as received practice: Historical perspective and implication for managers”, ‘Journal of Management History’, Vol. 12, no. 1, pp53-71. Read More