"You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, they won't get you anywhere" (Seldes) Lee Iacocca, former president of Chrysler
Internal communication is a subset of effective business communication. In a business context, is the dialogic process between employees and employer, and employees and employee. Communication is vital in an organization because it not only connects members within a specific department but also connects them to members from other departments, from other branches, and, in today's global economy, from around the world. Moreover, communication can make the difference between success and failure for a company.
Most organizations, public or private need to understand the importance of strategic communication with customers and employees. Determining what should be communicated to staff, when it should be communicated, and how it should be communicated is often considered an importnatn for any organisation which solely depend on the induvidual facing the situation. Internal communication strategies are developed, reactively, when there is a crisis or major event that clearly requires addressing communication issues. Communication is rarely planned out around major corporate or organization change, layoffs and downsizing, and other technological changes.
Good communication helps ensure the efficient operation of all levels of an organization, from lowest to highest. Speaking is important because members must be able to express ideas verbally in a way that will both clearly get points across and hold the interest of listeners. Additionally, members might be called upon to conduct.
In the given scenario, the COO of the company needs to take the responsibility to announce the employees about the shifting of the customer support and IT department to a new country. Though the company has been working well, it needs to be shifted due to maintain a competetive edge over other companies and also to reduce the costs that occur. This scensrio involves passing such a message to the employees who would really create a grevience among the employees and no person would be geared up to make a sudden move to a new country. This would create a sudden fuss among the employees as it would be tough to accept the situation and make a sudden shift altogether.
There are many issues emerging due to this relocation of the company. Considering the personal view of employees, it would be very difficult for the employees to plan out whether to move their entire family of shift himself/herself alone. There is a risk involved in this that the employee could even leave the company if he is not ready to move to the new country. Thus would push him into dilemma whether to continue the job in a new country or drop it. In such a typical situatoin, the COO of the company needs to take many precautions to pass the message in a proper way to the employees. The message should be understood as it.is described.
Thus a positive look towards management, as well as a different approach towards communication is required to confirm that the employee gets the message clealry from the supervisor. The message has to be effectively delivered at the organisation which helps the employee to get a clear understanding of what is demanded from them, with knowledge of what to do andwhat to expect. This creates effective performance of the staff, and, consequently, increases customer loyalty and profit.
Lack of effective communication may lead to:
Misunderstandings
Lack of information
Decrease in employees' performance
Decrease in company's turnover, as a result
Ineffective or poor communication is frustrating for employees, and becomes a source of a conflict. Managers' inability to clearly express their thoughts, ideas and demands leads to employees' inability to perform work well, according to the company's demands.
The best communication strategies for the organisation should incorporate the following:
Address the Target: The audience are to be segmented need to target the message according to the requirements of each group of employees.
Integration: Connecting the present communication with what is happening in the company and the other modifications that employees are being affected by is to be done.
Keeping it Succinct: Making sure that the message is not overcomplicated. Keeping it simple makes for clarity.
Being Straightforward: One should not be ambiguous about what you want to convey. Honesty is really often the best policy to adopt.
Makeing it Memorable: Ensure that the message is striking enough to stand out from the many communications employees receive every day.
Making it Personal: Helping employees to understand how they are affected personally. When people know exactly what's in it for them, they respond more effectively.
Use of Multimedia: Utilize various media and methods to get your message across. Take the help of your marketing department to learn about the various means you can employ.
Focus on Being Results-Oriented: Make an assessment of how effective the communications are and devise follow-up strategies according to the results. Incorporate your successful measures as a part of the overall strategies of communication.
Making it Inspiring: The speech or the message should be more inspring and encouraging especially in a scenario like this where the company has to shift to a new country and the employees are to be mentally prepared to take up the new task.
Making things easy: The shifting of the company is considered a bad situation since the company though working well had to be shifted some where else and it would create a disturbence in the life of employees. Hence the things are to be made much simpler to the employees to get them away from the feleing of worry.
When responding to a business crisis, it demands to make a responsible and effective communicatin which can be far-reached and also can help to take emotionally difficult decisions while under pressure and thus lacking from having completed or fully accurate information. Therefore a proper crisis planning is inevitable which generally includes the necessary organizational structure, processes and tools in place before a crisis hits. The organisation should always strive to develop, implement and continuously improve a crisis communication strategy and match the crisis communication plan which can be tailored exactyly to the company's needs. It also requires assigning certain responsibilities and also to thoroughly train the entire team of designated employees and thus provide back-ups.
Talking to the Employees:
An internal crisis communication should always precede the external crisis communication whenever possible. It is very vital that the employees don't hear negative news relayed to crisis from outside sources first, as it may alienate them in this situation and also hinder the successful crisis response and the recovery. An honest dialogue with as many employees as possible can also foster the understanding and employee support for possibly new steps, company leadership may have to take to manage the crisis and secure the future of the business.
Eradicating the uncertainty:
An affective employee communication during a crisis can never be underestimated which may lead to sufferings in significant economic damage. These factors may include a lack of trust, low morale and the subsequent loss of trained and dedicated employees. It is very important to increase the internal communication frequency in a crisis situation as the employees have a demand for frequent information updation as well as their desire to provide continuous feedback.
The issue is thus considerd very important since shifting of a company to a new country would involve many problems which are to be planned properly to deal them. The managers have a central role in any communications strategy; the good intentions of communication specialists can be ruined and mutual trust damaged by managers who do not pass messages on, who distort the messages they are entrusted with, or who do not provide feedback from what they have been told by their staff. This may imply training for managers at all levels in communication skills and ensuring that communication is seen as a core part of their jobs. Managers are going to need to communicate downwards to their own teams and others, with peers at the same or similar levels, and upwards to their bosses. To do this effectively they need a range of communication skills. The managers or the COO of the company must always be prepared to address such critical situations. Training is needed to be provided to the managers and other senior officials of the organisation to deal especially with such situations. A perfect communication plan is to be prepared by the managers to deal with situations like financial crisis, natural calamities, internal disturbances etc. The manager should understand and analyse the situation keenly and then prepare a strategy to address the employees about the situation. He should be able to deliver the message is such a way that the employees take this sitation in an easier way.
A manager should confirm their communication style to be more positive and effective. The employees should communicate the problem to the supervisor or to the higher management if they have a clear idea of the situation, which may result in the company to take certain measures for solving the problem. All the problems should be clearly didcussed and communicated between the employees and up to supervisors. The atmosphere In the organisation should be made encouraging and inpsiring for effective communication.
When a bad news has to be communicated to the employees or the members of the organisation, extreme care should be taken to deliver the message because any minor mistakes in communicaiton of a communication gap created between the manager and the employees would make the situation even worse. Here, the employees may not understand the seriousness of the situation if it is not delivered properly. The main reason for shifting the company to a new country should be delicately handled and explained to them. Some of the employees may not be ready to accept a change since they may find it very difficult to shift suddenly.They may not be aware of the new enviroonment and the day to day activities that may involve after they shift to the new country. A poor communication of such bad news may result in a bigger crisis and the employees may not support the organisation in this context. The employees may lose their job if they are not willing to move away. The management cannot lose their experienced employees as they would be of great support and help when they are shifted to the new place.
Losing the current employees during this situation would be a serious blow to the management. Hence the manager should carefully deal with the experienced employees. The group which the company is going to retain should comprise of all the experienced people of the company. However this would result in most of the people losing their jobs. This has to be considered as the most sensitive matter in this scenario. There may be many challenges and obstacles which may arise due to this reason. The employees who have worked hard for long time and who have brought goodwill to the company have to leave the job for no sin and mistake from them. They may find this very difficult and may not go in hand with the management. It would be another challenge to shift the entire operations to the new country. The entire customer support team and it department has to be set up at the new place and this would be a very difficult task altogether. As seen and studied from most scenarios and case studies, an organisation can deal a crisis and bad situation properly when its senior members and managers deal the situation sensibly, This is because employees are the most important asset of any organisation and they are to be dealt very carefully.
Thus the organisation can come out of the bad situation and effectively implement its shifting by following the above designed communication plan.Crisis communication team members act as a part of it. The communication group should thank all the members those who acted is the crisis.
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