Internal communication
Internal communication is communication within a company. It happened in three ways namely upward communication and downward communication and horizontal communication. Upward communication involves communication from junior employees to managers. A business entity where this kind of communication does not exist operates in a void since there is no evidence that their information ever gets to the employees. Downward communication on the other hand happens from the managers down to the junior staff. Upward communication is used for responding to management-raised issues, giving ideas and suggestions to management. The information passed down in downward communication is usually aimed at giving instruction, announcing a resolution, or finding a response on certain issues. In a successful business organization, downward communication should be brought in when upward communication has been established and in operation. Horizontal communication occurs between people or employees at the same level and it helps them perform and accomplishes given work without misunderstandings
Ensuring effective communication in a business setup means being certain that employees have sufficient information, training expertise, and the proper working environment required to serve clients efficiently and effectively. Different companies have different ways of ensuring effective internal communications.
These ways include frequent staff meetings, creating a teamwork atmosphere, use of memos and other written forms of communications as well as staff motivation programs.
Through frequent meetings and talking to staff, managers can improve the internal communication of their company. Frequent meetings can be done weekly, monthly but a daily departmental brief would work in ensuring instructions are given daily and that staff is equipped with updated information every minute. Managers and supervisors can create a friendly working environment by being approachable, friendly, and easy to talk to and maintaining a calm and peaceful attitude. This way, employees can reach their superiors at any time when they need to clarify an issue and in turn creates a feeling of being worthy and wanted in an organization.
A teamwork atmosphere is also necessary for effective communication in a business setup. In most cases, a different group of people is assigned a similar job to accomplish. In such a group, every person performs an integral part of the job which is essential for the completion of the given job. Therefore, all members need to know their role in the team, air and settle any personal differences that may hinder the team performance, giving everyone a chance to give their views and suggestions and using their ideas if found relevant. A proper team atmosphere gives employees a positive work attitude and a feeling of being part of the business.
In a good working environment, management and employees can set goals and targets which staffs take positive and they strive to achieve. As a manager, a constant flow of information to employees and follow-ups are very important as they keep the pace up and achievement of set goals. The use of employees’ internal communication tools such as emails, telephone calls, or even a visit in their working area can ensure constant contact with staff and communication.
In You – The Spa, I ensured employees provide the best service to the customer by creating an atmosphere where the customer will feel at home. Welcoming them, greeting them, remember their names, families member, events in their lives, and remember to recall it in their next appointment.
Communication through Letters
The use of letters is one of the oldest forms of communication in the world. Before the internet, telephones, mobile phones, and other new communication tools emerged, letters were the main means of communication in organizations to pass formal information as well as in social setups to pass the informal message. Letters are still in use today and in business setups, they are used for specific purposes and mostly for internal communication between managers and their employees. Internal communication letters examples are warning letters, appointment letters, acceptance letters, complaint letters, dismissal letters, and many more.
Dismissal and warning letters can also be termed as a bad newsletter. A warning letter is usually given by the management of a company to an employee for repeatedly violating the rules and policies of the organization or for poor performance. It is usually given after the employee has received several verbal warnings and corrections but has repeated the same actions or no improvement has been seen. This kind of letter is usually purposed to correct the employee and warn them against their actions. The letter spells out the penalty the employee will face if they go on with their actions or don’t improve their performance; it is filled with the personnel office and used as reference when doing employees evaluation. To ensure that employees don’t break rules and regulations in the organization and that they perform their duties effectively, these rules, regulations, and policies need to be communicated clearly to every employee either through a written staff handbook, manual, SOP’s and job descriptions. As a founder and CEO of “You – The Spa, Flushing”, I developed a staff manual and policy document and issued it to my employees to ensure they are all well informed of the rules, regulations, and policies of the company. I also maintain a progress report of each staff which would assist me in times of appraising.
Complaint letters on the other hand are written by staff to management seeking clarification about some management actions, policies, and rules that the employees don’t like. In most cases, such issues concern staff welfare, remuneration, and working environment and emanate from employee union leaders. Depending on the organizational culture of a company, management may choose to take action and give a response to the letter or even ignore it. Companies that value their employees will in most cases seek audience with their employees through regular meetings and address their issues. At the You – The Spur, Flushing, I needed to give incentive to my employees not only by paying them fairly, but also by listening to their problems, showing them that I care, trying to help extra from what I needed, celebrating their birthday, or celebrate any goal that the spa achieves for a specific month. Take them to a restaurant or to play bowling. I tried to help them set the goals not only for the spa benefit but also for the benefit of themselves. My goal was to make sure that they are happy to come to work because I knew that they will reflect their feeling to the customer.
Good newsletters are also used in businesses as a way for managers to communicate with employees.
Examples of such letters are appointment letters which are used for confirming an employee for a permanent job, promotion letters used to communicate a reward for a better job position, and acceptance letters used to communicate a job offer.
Telephone mode of Communication
When transferring information between individuals or entities, it is very important to realize that there is more to transferring the information and that is the meaning being implied. For effective business communication to be achieved, then the parties communicating should be in a position to share their thoughts and feelings with the intent of being understood. Therefore, for an organization to be successful, effective office communication should be adhered to.
This office communication embraces communication between the employees in addition to business talks and interactions with the company clients. This communication between company employees influences the organization’s culture and the working environment. One of the forms of office communication is office communication over the telephone.
When starting up a conversation on a telephone, one is required to start it up by making an introduction of the self. It is significant to let the receiver know who is calling and the intention of making the call. At the You- the Spa, Flushing, NY, I had situations where I dealt with a few phone calls simultaneously. As an operating manager with the Air-Force intelligence unit belonging to the Israel Army, I was as well tasked with operating phones simultaneously, for example, when keeping track of operations deadlines as well as managing the operations of the intelligence unit.
When making telephones calls, one has to keep the conversations precise and brief. One should make his or her points without sapping vitality.
Telephone calls are impersonal for they do not contain face-to-face communication. In addition, facial expressions and gesticulation are not involved when making a telephone call since one is not visible to the other party receiving the call.
Despite having immediate feedback, telephone calls have an added advantage in that one can be in a position to leave a message to incase the recipient does not pick up the phone. It is of great importance to be very clear when making a phone call. For example in the intelligence unit, where I was handling confidential and sensitive information, it was of extreme importance to ensure that I delivered accurate and precise responses for this is a very sensitive sector in the government unit. To make it easy for the telephone call recipient to reply, one should leave his or her number when leaving the message.
In the event of getting a missed call, a person is required to answer back since the person calling in might be in need of making a one on one communication, which could be urgent. Telephone calls should not be ended abruptly. One is supposed to present his or her point and let the recipient make his or her own response. In conclusion, one should end the call with an appropriate greeting.
Attention should be given to the position and age of the person to be called.
Therefore, one has a mix of cultures at the office. The persons surrounding have different ages, have attained different levels of education, and come from different family backgrounds. It is therefore of great importance to put all these factors into consideration while making a telephone call to clients and colleagues. The words used when making these calls have a great impact on the relationships with fellow workers. Office communication, therefore, affects one’s office work and by the end of the day, it affects an organization as a whole.
Interviews
An interview is a meeting where a person is asked questions. With regard to my experience, I had a chance of conducting an interview when as a CEO of You- The Spa, Flushing, NY. I recruited professional staff, scheduled interviews, coordinated the interview schedules, and tested professional abilities. While I carried out these interviews, I paid attention carefully to the person that I interviewed, his body language, his tone, the way he was dressed, spoke and moved. Each posture told me something about the person.
Interviews require adequate preparedness in that a person carrying out an interview requires one to answer in brief, unless told otherwise, and to give convincing messages. These messages should be presented eloquently and memorably. The person undergoing the interview should be able to tackle the simple and challenging questions from the panel effectively and consistently.
A formal interview can as well be termed as the face to face communication. This face-to-face communication entails a variety of encounters, ranging from clients who are the suppliers all the way to fellow workmates and even to the competitors.
Therefore there exist a number of action checklists that one has to bear in mind when carrying out the interview. These include clarification of the aim of the communication and what shall be expected out of it. Here one should distinguish between what to expect at the end of the interview and the long-term expectations. The lasting goal comprises for instance making sure that a key project is transmitted on time and is within the stipulated budget. This is important in assessing the effects on communication as well as dictating when the meeting should come to an end.
The interviews allow one to plan on the use of available space. Here a person is able to maintain a favorable distance for relaxed communication. If one is very close, then he or she may end up being intimidating and if he or she is very far, then one ends up being threatening. If one needs to compete and argue successively, then he or she should take a position on the facing side but however if one wants to cooperate, then one should sit side by side.
Devoid of appearing simulated, an individual ought to lay down a right tone suitable for the role anticipated to be assumed. Here if one is seeking information, then he or she should be relaxed, very open and warm. The tone should however be different when carrying out a disciplinary interview. Here one should be firm and business-like. A wrong message may be passed across the table to the listener if an incorrect approach or tone is used.
One must be pragmatic, realistic, or sensible and put in place a time limit where an individual anticipates accomplishing the set objectives or results. For psychotherapy interviews that may perhaps be classified as unrestricted communications, one must first talk about the timing with the interviewee prior to concluding an interview discriminatively.
Before commencing an interview, one must create a rapport. One can smile before launching into the pitch. In addition, one can be friendly by trying to get to know how a respondent feels for this raises one’s spirit and allows for the flow of information. This has greatly helped me at “you- the spa, Flushing, NY” in that I have created an atmosphere where my employees feel free to share with me.
Business Communication through emails
With the current rapid growth in technology, the internet and in this case use of mail for communication has become an integral part of many businesses. Email is a preferred choice of communication because it is a quick and easy way of keeping a record of all day-to-day dealings and exchanges between the organization and its employees, between employee to employee, customers, suppliers, vendors as well as partners.
When writing a business email, four basic things need to be observed. One, the receiver’s name and correct spelling, two, tone to be used depending on the relationship you have with the receiver, an official tone is to be used when emailing a customer, a casual tone but not too friendly can be used between coworkers. Three, it is good to be careful with the tone used between organization to organization emails because the tone portrays the image of the organization. Besides, for executive emails to be effectual they ought to be short and precise.
Email is around the way of communication with numerous advantages: First, they help in solving the problem of language difference and pronunciation between the sender and receiver. Secondly, due to time differences, mails can be read at the receiver’s own time as compared to other forms of communication like a telephone which happens at callers’ convenient time without considering the time zone of receivers’ dissimilar regions. Thirdly, emails are precise and they can be used to pass information in a clear way. However, the use of emails for communication has its disadvantages: Emails are considered impersonal since they lack the auditory element present in other forms of communication like the use of telephone, speech, and oral presentations. Emails are also time-consuming since they do not have instant answers compared to telephone communication. It is also important to note that not all people are able to put a message across through writing therefore they may be misunderstood when communicating through emails hence may prefer to use other forms to communicate.
Nevertheless, emails are the most ideal mode of formal communication used by businesses today. In most cases, business agreements are done through a telephone conversation but the real contracts and treaties are scanned and emailed for the involved parties to sign. Though documents can as well be faxed for signing, this method would not ensure the same confidentiality the use of email would ensure.
Many companies have intra email accounts used for most of the internal communication in an organization. Internal email communication happens from managers to supervisors or subordinates and vice versa. This ensures information is passed effectively and written and accurate responses are sorted in good time. Though telephone communication is also common for the internal passage of information, emails are best suited for passing instructions for easy referral. On the other hand, emails make it easy and cheap to pass the same message or information to more than one person as opposed to the telephone where you have to call every person individually.
As the CEO of Millennium Homes Investment Company, I managed effective communication with my office team of twenty employees through emails, passing information and instructions.
I also effectively used emails to obtain and send property purchasing documents such as title deeds and insurance policies. This helped me in terms of saving time since I would combine both office and fieldwork and I could access my emails from outside my office.
The Importance of Business Communications
In today’s worldwide business environment, the essence of business communication cannot be overlooked. We all know and fully recognize the value of communication in real life. Disruption in communication between two or more persons can result in or a noisy and unrestrained situation. Effective communication is vital in realizing a conducive and successful working environment in a business. This is because many people, who could be located anywhere worldwide, are involved in a business setup. For example, when a business is in a multinational corporation.
Good communication is therefore that which is sent and received by the envisioned addressee or receiver without having been altered in any particular way. It is therefore taken that verbal communication is the ideal type of communication since the chances of varying the sent message are very minimal and also immediate feedback is realized. For example, at The Spa, Flushing, NY, where I was the founder and the CEO, I had to confront unsatisfied customers and change their attitude and have them leave happy. Without effective feedback, as one of the qualities of good communication, then the unsatisfied customers may end up even quarreling with the rest of their colleagues which can result in the downfall of the business. It is therefore out of the good communication with the employees that made sure that they did their best in the provision of services required from them.
However, in businesses, the non-verbal mode is employed as a result of its immense importance in business communication. With this type of communication, there is no feedback, vocalized words, or even body language required. Therefore if a message is not clear, then wrong assumptions may be made by the recipient. It calls for all written communication to be short and clearly stated as well to be precisely worded. To avoid a double-entry of concepts, one should proofread and all the sentences, otherwise one would end up having an uncomplimentary response from the intended respondent as a result of a confusing message. There are contemporary tools of business communication. These tools can be used globally throughout any business set-up which has this equipment in place. The tools highly encourage a non-personalized exchange of information. In addition, the tools help in upholding an impersonal as well as a formal tone thereby advancing the perception of equality and consistency in an organization. The whole world has become like a small village. This has been due to technological advancements which have in turn transformed cross-cultural communication into a significant aspect of any business. It is therefore essentially important to have an idea about different cultural groups that one wishes to communicate with. This is because a slight subtle difference can make an immense difference in the way people perceive the communicated message.
As a founder and CEO of You- The Spa, Flushing, NY I had a number of responsibilities that I had to adhere to that required regular communication with employees that I managed. For instance, I had to work closely with fifteen employees who all worked in different fields. I too had to maintain a progress report of each staff member and inform the employee of their progress. Here I had to have weekly meetings with the employees and have one on one discussions. This helped greatly in my coordination and maintenance of high standards of excellence that led to achieving the business’s set objectives.