Communication is interaction that is made between 2 parties or more a sender and receivers through different mediums in order to convey thoughts and ideas, communications is a key part to our every day lives and is essential to progress. Communication isn't just talking it can also involves writing, body language, touching, gestures and eye contact. As we wake up we communicate with people in our households, make phone calls etc.
In the work place environment we spend most of our time communicating with line managers, co workers and clients face to face, via the telephone, sending emails back and forth. Line managers need to communicate and exchange information to the company's expectations to his/her subordinates, the subordinates then go off and do their communication of their own to get their job done. For communications to be successful the receiver has to fully understand the sender's messages and has responded accordingly.
Carol M Lehman describes Communication as an exchange of information which involves a sender and a receiver of information through common systems of symbols and signs and behaviours. There words for describing the communication process includes listening, expressing feeling, corresponding, speckling, writing and exchange of general information. (BUSINESS COMUNICATIONS, CAROL M LEHMAN, DEBBIE. DUFRENE PAGE 4).
BELOW I HAVE CREATED A SWOT ANALYSIS TO ASSESS MY OWN COMMUNICATION SKILLS.
Strengths
Delegating
Love Interacting
Team Player
Assertive communicator
Listening
Negotiating
Questioning
Reporting
Weaknesses
Report writing/ Assignments
Hasty decision making
Presenting
Time Management
Opportunity
Completing HND
Applying for jobs
Starting my business
Going to the gym
Spend more time with my loved ones
Threats
Not enough time in a day
Not having enough time for assignments
Evaluation
Looking at my own swot analysis starting with my with my strengths, it indicated that I am an excellent assertive communicator that enjoys interacting with others, I enjoying working as part of a team and on my own initiative. I work well as a leader delegating duties, I regard myself as a person that is always open to questioning and able to ask probing questions to ensure the communication objectives are fulfilled and if necessary developed and reported to line managers.
Looking at my weaknesses, it is indicating that I need to develop my essay writing and assignment skills; I need to spend more time managing my tasks to enable me to spend more time in making the right decisions which will prevent me from having hasty decisions. My weaknesses column also indicates I need to become better at present ideas in meetings/ lectures.
Now looking into my opportunities its evident I am looking forward to completing my HND Business course and looking forward to gaining employment and starting my own business on the side in the near future. I have also added going to the gym as one of my opportunities because when I go to the gym I feel good about myself which makes me more patient in dealing with others.
Now looking at my threats, I have al these plans and need to organise my time to effectively use all the time in the day to do my assignments and deal with life's challenges.
Summary
For Task 1 I have looked into communication skills and how it is used in the work place and everyday business. I've done a swot analysis to review my strengths weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the swot analysis has made it made it easier to pinpoint my strongest skills, my fears and threats that I need to gain control of and areas in my communication skills I need to work on most to become better communicating with others effectively.
Task 1B
BELOW I HAVE CREATED A DEVELOPMENT PLAN
Communication Skills
Audit 0/10
How to Improve
Duration
Speaking (correct English)
6/10
Practice speaking correct English
On going
Delegating
8/10
Gain Employment or start a business
ASAP
Interacting with others
9/10
Continue as I am
On going
Assertive communication
8/10
Continue as I am
Writing Email/Letters
6/10
Keep writing letters/ Emails
3 months
Listening
6/10
Give team mates a chance to speak up
Negotiating
6/10
Continue as I am
On going/ASAP
Questioning
7/10
Try to ask more direct questions
Reporting to line manager
8/10
Gain employment and learn from experience
Nearest opportunity
Report writing/ assignments
5/10
Complete assignments before deadline
keep reading
On going/ ASAP
Presenting to an audience
5/10
Plan ahead for course presentations and begin presenting in my own time
ASAP
Apply for jobs
7/10
Change Approach
On going
Save enough money to start my business
5/10
Keep working hard
1 year
Spend more time with loved ones
5/10
Managing time more affectively
ASAP
Use time in the day valuable
5/10
Manage time more affectively
1 month
Finish all assignments by due date
5/10
Work extra hard
2years
Evaluation
1). From my personal development plan it is evident I need to improve English speaking I have given myself 6/10 because I know my vocabulary needs to be improved to ensure I am communicating to company standards.
2). I am good at delegating responsibilities to the efficient members to ensure the ultimate aims goals reached so I gave myself 8/10 and I can improve by gaining employment with derogatory opportunities and the time frame for this is ASAP.
3,4). I love communicating and interacting with others which lead me to give a score of 9/10 allowing myself room for improvement I expect to improve by continuing as I am ang gaining employment. I am an assertive communicator that doesn't have a problem with communicating my ideas to small groups of people.
5). For my English written which I have given myself 6/10, I have given myself 1 month to improve and I expect to a accomplish this by completing all my assignments by the deadly given.
6). I regard myself to have good listening skills but sometime I can be ignorant to others ideas and want my own thoughts and objectives implemented as I've asked for without any addition extra I haven't asked for to I've given myself 6/10, I can improve my listening skills by allowing others to have more of an input to help enable them to feel a valued member of my team.
7, 8). I regard my negotiating and questioning skills to be quite fear hence me scoring myself 6/10 for negotiating and 7/10 for questioning because I am good at getting my intended aim across by asking probing questions and negotiating deals that often result in me having the better deal, in the future I will need to try and be farer in letting the other parties receive a better bargain depending the negotiation factors.
9). I am effective in communicating with my line manager and completing my job with the skills expected by them so I scored myself 8/10 I intend to improve in the future by aiming to complete all workload before the deadline set to enable me to help my team with other tasks to help me with promotional prospects.
10). For reporting and assignment writing I scored myself a 5/10 because I find it difficult to put my thoughts on paper in the format expected, I am aiming to bring myself up to 9/10 by July 2013, I will achieve this by going to all my student development class and continue to read my recently purchased book writing up your assignments and research projects by Neil Murray, Geraldine Hughes - 2008.
11). I have given myself a 5/10 because I have never like presenting/ pitching to a large audience, I get nervous then start to forget my speech in the order I have planned it, in order to overcome this, I believe it is necessary to start reading out my assignments to a small audience and gradually increased the size of the audience as my confidence grows and I am planning to work on this immediately to ensure I am fully prepared for my future presentations.
12). I will be continuing to applying for jobs which I gave myself a score of 7/10 because the job market is hard and I am becoming aware I may have to change my approach as soon as possible.
13). I must continue to keep saving money as I aim to ensure I can start my business in the near future which is work in progress.
14). Spending more time with my loved ones help me feel happy within myself with and will encourage me to be happier when communicating with others.
15). I need to start using all my time more valuably by planning ahead by giving myself a time frame to execute each task within that time frame and I intend to achieve this by practising as soon as possible.
16). I have given myself 5/10 for my assignments because I feel I need to develop myself a lot in this area and I will do this by completing my assignments on time to the best of my ability and I have given myself a time frame of 6 months to improve ,y current abilities.
Summary
For task 1b I decided to do an audit table with my audited communication skills which shows how I will intend to improve my skills over a specified time.
Task 2 Communication Process in an organisation
For this task I have chosen to use my old employers William hill organisation that I will be referring to as WH during this task.
WH is a public limited company that was founded in 1934 by a man named William hill during a time gambling was illegal in Briton they are currently providing betting opportunities in 8 different countries and employs over 16,000 employees between head office and in stores. They operate an over the counter, telephoning and online service.
In this task I will be focusing on the in store service that is provided because this is were my experience lays with them and internet betting, telephone betting and in-store betting are treated as different entities.
2. 1A
The internal communication processes I have observed during my 7yrs employment was mainly face to face and over the phone interactions with co workers and district operational managers,
As a shop manager it was my duty to train new employees that was allocated to my shop I would have to train them in company rules, regulations and procedures.
2. 1B
The external communication between the organisation and the customers is mainly dealt with by the shop staff, from pricing to taking bets over the counter. Customers expected to be dealt with according to the (CBS) competition beating service standard which is very professional, but they don't have a customers are always right policy because within the betting industry a lot of the gambling consumers are fraudsters.
2.2 The company always had managers meetings and the managers were told to forward on the information to there cashiers, if the company were to start having cashier meetings it would help to make the cashiers feel more included within the organisations objectives.
This company could also improve the staff performances by introducing a secret shopper service to test staff customer service skills and betting knowledge, the customer service experience could possibly improve up to 80% if the employees are made to understand that it is a serious exercise.
2.3 These can be implemented by the shop manager calling meetings once a week to keep all staff up to date with their performances and targets and know the previous week's progress of the business.
The company can also hire a secret shopper firm to secretly test the staff performance while they are not under district manager's eye.
Task 3 Decision Making
For this task I am producing a report to evaluate how I will best use my knowledge in management, communication, knowledge and information to help with the planning.
The business I have chosen to start is 'CharlaStarZ' which is a hairdressers and beauty spa. The mission of this business is to give women a 1st class experience in the local area, to provide quality cosmetics and hair product at competitive prices. I will be employing 3 other members of staff to help with the running of the business.
3.1 Decisions to Be Made
Before the stakeholder make any investments he has got to start a lot of planning to help analyse what the next steps should be.
First off he will have to do some strategic planning to work out his main objectives, the best location, suppliers and resources at the good prices for good reportable quality.
He will have to do tactical planning to work out what resources need to be obtained and used effectively, whether he can employ the right staff to be the job.
Then finally to get off and running he will need to do his operational tasked to ensure that specific tasks are carried out successfully according to the guidelines of the strategic planning and tactical planning. At this stage mark is the only stakeholder making/ taking decisions.
The stakeholder will have to ensure that the premises and the staff are fully qualified and ready to carry out work to the companies expectations e.g. the shop must have the appropriate equipment and should be decorated in nice feminine colours to appeal to the customers, the staff must be fully trained in customer care, hairdressing and or must have a beautician qualification.
3.2 Information and Knowledge Needs
The stakeholders will need embrained, embodied, encoded and embedded information and knowledge for effective decision making in this business. Embrained knowledge - the stakeholders will need to have a qualification in hair and beauty and customer service, they will also has to have embodied experience - ideally the employees will have at least two years behind them doing their job. They will also has to adhere and perform to Encoded knowledge - which is company rules/ the companies way of doing things and they will also need to have embedded knowledge
based on who will supplier me with the equipments for the shop e.g. chairs, sinks to wash clients hair, mirrors, beauty spa beds, beauty treatments, shampoo and conditioning treatments etc.
3.3 Internal and external source of information and knowledge needed for effective decision making.
- Internal sources of information
The accounting of the company will need to be looked into the budgeting analysing of stock, deliveries times etc.
Personal information will be needed to work out the cost of the project and the rate of pay needed to be paid to the selected staff.
Production information will be needed e.g. chairs, sink to wash clients hair in shampoo etc.
Marketing information will be needed to provide the company with information and opinions regarding consumers buying habits, what's hot and what's not!
-External Sources of Information
The external in formation which may be needed is what is hot at the moment what consumers are looking out for and how to entice them with the services you are offering.
Informal information
Collecting information from outside the company can be informal and formal. Formal source can be anything from company adverts and anything that is going outside of the business that is relating to the business e.g. competitors doing special offers or customers demanded new facials that work like facelifts etc.
Formal information
Formal information may be needed e.g. government requirements/taxes, market research, and whether any recent changes in the law will affect the company in any way.
3.4 For CharlaStarZ to be successful it will need good marketing, excellent customer service and quality products. For the marketing it would be a good idea to advertise special offers in the local newspaper and on the local radio stations and if possible get flyers printed and posted through the local residents door, by doing this it will make the company's present more felt.
3.5 There are many stakeholders to this organisation will be mark, beautician and the hairdresser are the main stakeholders then the other stakeholders are the customer, suppliers and the banks.
3.6 CharlaStarZ main aims should be to maintain good relationships between all the stakeholders and the business by doing this this could enable the business to be 100% more affective.
They can introduce a customer loyalty can that can give customer benefits and discounts. They offer suppliers with a 6 month contract which the supplier may be happy to know that they will have 6 months' worth of business with the company.
3.7 All the stakeholders to this company have their role that they carry out and will have an input and point of view that will if is valued the company can use it to their advantage e.g. the suppliers know what is selling the most and what is not leaving the shelf. The hairdresser knows what hairstyles are popular which can help with the marketing and advertising of the hair products and styles.
The beautician will know which products to best promote to the customers. Letting all stakeholders have a say within the organisation will also help with their interpersonal skills and will encourage them to build a better rapport with the customer.
4.1 Research Skills
For this assignment module I have gone through all my work I had done in class and the presentation slide to research information I also read books to help me with my research and internet searches, reading books and reports.
4.2.1 I would like to make changes to improve my research skills, to do this I have made a strategic plan using the smart criteria.
First off I will focus on managing my time affectively in order to get all my objectives complete. I will have to spend more time in the library and read more books; I will also have to spend more time planning my assignments and also start them as soon as I get them.
4.2.2 I will implement these by scheduling 6hrs a week in the library study my current modules to ensure I know as much as possible on the given subjects, I will also start my assignments on the day of receipt.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6VJGXS7cl2EC&pg=PA33&dq=business+communication+skills+define&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VCn8UITuO4mq4ATL9YDgBQ&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=business%20communication%20skills%20define&f=false
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SaU2UEVB5l8C&pg=PA73&dq=skills+audit+table&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qzH8UJDDAa6A0AXr8oHgDA&sqi=2&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAQ
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k38DPjrS8hkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=time+management&hl=en&sa=X&ei=x1v8UIGRMsrP0QW3tYHoDA&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAQ
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W-3euTAGdnwC&pg=PA100&dq=assignment+writing+university&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TlT8UO-9OoTK0AXxuoCQDQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=assignment%20writing%20university&f=false
