The company has decided that it will be hiring 20 new clients every month, which means that employees will be expected to be more productive than they currently are. It is important to find a way of passing this important message to the employees in a way that will not make them react negatively. The employees should not view the new strategy as a deliberate attempt to exploit them. The following are the objectives that I as the communicator will have when developing a strategy to pass this message.
General objectives
The general objective will be to convince the employees that the new policy is designed to help all the stakeholders grow within this firm.
Action objectives
The action objective will be to find effective ways of passing this message in a conscious and clear manner, and in a way that is very convincing to the entire audience.
Communication objectives
The communication strategy is to be as convincing as possible to ensure that the message is bought by the audience.
Audience Strategy
When developing audience strategy, it becomes necessary to understand their needs and expectations. When presenting this message, they must see the benefits that they shall get from the new arrangement. The message should focus more on the benefits of the audience than the responsibility that is expected of the audience. As Hynes (2015) says, the audience should feel that the new strategy is meant to create a better working environment to them and eliminate the possibility of any of them being laid off.
Message Strategy direct / indirect
The strategy of delivering the message is also very important. Information that has serious impacts to the audience cannot be passed using indirect means (Jones, 2008). In this case, the employees will be directly affected because they will be expected to deliver more than they were used to in the past. As such, the message must be passed to them directly. As the manager in this company, I will personally meet the employees and pass the message to them directly. I will ensure that any question that they may have is answered properly.
Channel Choice
The channel of delivering the message is also very important. As stated in the section above, I will meet the employees personally, which means that oral delivery of the message will be necessary. However, it is also true that employees often consider written messages as more official and binding. I will, therefore, use a blend of both oral and written message delivery strategy. The oral method will come first to prepare the employees for the expected change. They get to ask questions and receive immediate answers. Their fears get to be effectively addressed. After that, there will be a written letter that will reiterate the message that had been passed to them orally.
Culture Strategy
It is clear from the case that the employees come from a diverse background. The message must, therefore, be sensitive of this cultural diversity. I will try as much as possible to avoid instances where the message is seen to target a certain group of employees based on their age, race, religion, or gender. The aim will be to ensure that the message is received positively by people across all the ages, gender, race, and religion. No single group will be let to feel intimidated when this policy is initiated.
References
Hynes, G. E. (2015). Managerial communication: Strategies and applications. New York, NY: Cengage.
Jones, P. (2008). Communicating strategy. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Publishers.