Effective communication is essential for every type of organization. With the technological advancements of the last few decades, companywide communication has improved dramatically. More employees can gain more information than they could ever gain before. There are multiple ways of facilitating effective communication. This paper will cover three of these ways, and it will discuss the role of technology in the workplace.
Discussion
One of the most important practices in the communication of new ideas to the organization is practicing those ideas. Often, managers and leaders state a new vision but either forget to act on it or deliberately avoid acting on it. In my experience, I have seen managers both act and not act according to their new vision. When a new etiquette for phone greetings was introduced in one of my former workplaces, the manager quickly adopted it. After seeing how serious she was about this practice, the team put aside their complaints about the inconvenience of the new etiquette and started following it. In contrast, at a different organization, new rules were implemented regarding lunch breaks. After stating the new timeframes for lunch breaks, the manager did not follow them and was absent when he was supposed to be present in his office. This not only caused numerous problems but also created a negative atmosphere in the office (Keyton et al., 2013).
Another common communication practice is the use of stories, images, analogies and other mediums to convey a new vision or communicate with the team. Personally, I found this to be an effective tactic of communicating information. In my organization, it is much easier to show an example of an action than to describe it verbally. Real life stories let people move the abstract concepts into the practical world. When my organization changed its security procedures, it was much easier to understand the reasons why it was important to change them, when the team was presented with a real life scenario of information theft (Keyton et al., 2013).
Keeping the message fresh is also important. People tend to become cynical when the same ideas are repeated to them over and over again. To avoid this, new forums should be used whenever the message is repeated. To remind people about the new security procedures, my organization chose to create a short educational video. Then a week later the team was presented with a brief questionnaire. The week after that, a contest was organized where members of the team could win prizes for coming up with scenarios where new security protocols would be useful (Keyton et al., 2013).
Technology is invaluable in for communication systems within organizations. E-Mails and databases have long been the standard inside most organizations. They bring efficiency, availability, and cost savings on complicated mailing systems. However, with technology always come a few negative aspects. The first is the issue of training. Whenever a new technology is introduced into the communication system, every member of the team has to be familiarized with it. The second issue is that technology can be exploited, so more stringent security practices are required from the organization. These issues aside, technology made communication within organizations much easier and faster (Zhang, & Venkatesh, 2013).
Conclusion
Communication is an essential part of life. Clarity of communication should not be underestimated. Utilizing various techniques and technologies, a successful manager can streamline the communication process, while avoiding issues along the way.
References
Keyton, J., Caputo, J., Ford, E., Fu, R., Leibowitz, S., Liu, T.,… Wu, C. (2013). Investigating verbal workplace communication behaviors. International Journal of Business Communication, 50(2), 152-169.
Zhang, X., & Venkatesh, V. (2013). Explaining employee job performance: The role of online and offline workplace communication networks. MIS Quarterly, 37(3), 695-722.