Module name: Business Communication

Student name: Khandaker Reza

Student ID:

Assignment on Communicating with employees about

significant company changes

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4

Challenges on communication.........................................................................................................5

Theories related to the Problem.......................................................................................................7

Real-life business communication failure.......................................................................................9

My solution to the problem............................................................................................................11

Things that well in our presentation..............................................................................................13

Improvements to make..................................................................................................................15

Actions to take to make suggested improvements.........................................................................16

Reference.......................................................................................................................................18

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Introduction
Communication is an essential part of any organization or company. Communication is more
crucial when the company is undergoing significant changes. An organization faces some
communication challenges when going through periods of transformation. Two things need to be
addressed when the company takes some initiative to go through significant changes.

1. If the employees have the motivation to change

2. If the employees can go through a significant transformation.

However, as a manager of company communication is a major challenge to overcome.

Especially when there is a big workforce to collaborate with and significant changes that will
impact the whole workforce starting from the top-level management to the bottom-level
employees. According to Gartner, 34 percent of change initiatives succeed, while 16 percent end
in mixed results and the rest 50 percent end in clear failure.

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Challenges on communication
Communication has always been the center of any business; the nature of work today presents
special communication challenges. There are some challenges of communication in an
organization.

Increasing globalization and workplace diversity (Gatzen and Bollier, 2020)

Countries and cultures are now interconnecting with each other more than ever, and businesses
are now expanding at a high growth rate around the world. With the expansion of businesses in
different countries, workplace diversity has increased. (Rentz., 2013)

Different people have different values, perceptions of attitudes towards efficiency and
punctuality. Moreover, with the growing numbers of women entering the workforce gender
diversity has also increased. Nowadays organizations are more diverse, even though it is making
the workforce more productive it is also a challenge for effective communication.

A growing need for strong analytical efficiency (Pecheransky, 2016)

Adapting to a quickly changing organization requires grasping information quickly, learning fast,
making data-driven decisions, see patterns in data. So, the need for visual literacy is also a
mandatory skill set.

Employees do not understand their benefit about the changes

Employees not having the will to adapt to change

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Theories related to the Problem
Berol’s S-M-C-R model (Saud, Jufri, Rahman and Salam, 2014)

SMCR (source-message-channel-receiver). It centers around the connection between the source

and the collector. The more fostered the relational abilities between the source and the collector
the better and more viable correspondence will be worked out.

This model shows a process where the source can be used as communication skill, knowledge,
and culture. The message is transmitted through channels such as sight, hearing, touch, etc.
Finally, the receiver decodes the message based on communication skills, knowledge, attitude,
etc. The only lack in this model is the receiver’s feedback.

Face negotiation theory (Zhang, Ting-Toomey and Oetzel, 2014)

When a company undergoes some changes some people or groups of employees may not be
happy with the changes. There may be a rise of conflict of interest between the management and
the group of employees. This theory talks about facing conflict situations with an individual or a
group of individuals.

Muted group theory (Jule, 2018)

This theory talks about women's oppression this proposed that women compared to men are
served worse. It proposes that women cannot express their ideas as clearly as men because they
are not given that chance. This also is a lack of effective communication.

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Real-life business communication failure
Nike: business communication failure

Since 1971 Nike has been one of the leading companies in the sneaker business with brand
endorsement with some famous athletes. Right now, it is the leading footwear company with a
business valuation of $36 billion.

However, in 2018 Nike faced an unusual issue of gender discrimination. A group of female
employees conducted their research at the Oregon headquarters. The result of the survey was
directly sent to the CEO mark parker himself. Women reported that it was a male-dominated
workplace where women could not express themselves because of the male-dominated
workplace.

However, mark parker solved this issue by eliminating all the C-suit employees including the
head of diversity. Then followed by arranging proper training for the new executives.

Well, all these were a result of poor communication between the management and employees.

1. A survey was needed to reveal this toxic culture

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2. A lack of trust between the HR and employees

3. A leader who was unaware of a critical situation

4. Inefficient and ineffective communication at the bottom line of employees

Nowadays, companies are solving communication challenges through digital media. Email is
widely used all over the world when it comes to any company changes or announcements.
(Chaney, Martin, Zhang and Wang, 2014)

Besides companies have arranged for special public relationship training, which teaches the new
managers to help communicate with the employees more effectively.

My solution to the problem

There are many challenges issues arise when communicating with employees about changes in
the company. Which has been discussed in the 2nd slide.

According to us, there are some ways to communicate with employees about company changes
which may eliminate communication issues. (Bovée and Thill, 2012)

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1. Whenever there is a need for change in the company the top-level management will announce
the news themselves to the employees. It is better to get an announcement rather than hear
rumors.

2. The managers have to be clear and specific while making the announcement.

3. The managers have to be specific in telling the employees the benefits that will be achieved
through changes.

4. Select a medium where everyone is accessible easily.

5. Take questions from employees, and have answers premade in the back of their minds.

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PART TWO

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Things that well in our presentation
It was a presentation on communication challenges with employees about the organizational
challenge. There were some well-done things and some parts where things did not go well. Parts,
where we were strong on our presentation, are:

 Identifying Communication challenges between managers and employees

 The real-life problem of organizations and how they solved it
 Our solution to the communication problem with employees about significant company
changes

Firstly, we talked about four challenges that managers face when communicating with an
employee about significant company changes. Where we discussed globalization & diversity, the
need for analytical skills, understanding about employee benefits, and why employees are
unwilling to adapt to company changes.

Then we discussed Nikes real-life problem about communication challenges, and why Nike had
to eliminate its c suit executives for that communication problem. Which did go well, because
we were able to identify Nike’s communication problem perfectly, and how they solved this
problem.

And finally, we gave our solution, which was good. Because modern leaders, modern companies
are solving communication challenges through training programs and solution that was like ours.
Nowadays communications are happening through digital media, which was a good part that we
covered. Digital media is advantageous for communication in the modern world. So, these are
the parts that went well in our presentation.

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Improvements to make
The first thing that we need to improve is the understanding of theories that are related to the
communication problem. We identified three theories related to communication challenges, but
we did not show how these theories could be applied in real-life business challenges. So, we
need to improve our understanding of theories and how to implement them.

Then we discussed the advantages companies are getting through social media and digital
platforms. Social media & digital platforms have now become the primary means of
communication for any company. However, even though we discussed the advantages of
communication through digital media, we did not discuss how it has to be done, the
disadvantages of digital media.

Even if it is a world of digital media and social media, some managers or employees might still
face challenges communicating through it. So, we have to improve our presentation and discuss
that. Which could be a great factor for the future.

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Actions to take to make suggested improvements
There were many segments where we need to improve, but to make something better we need to
take action. Here are the actions that we will take to make suggested improvements.

 Focus on implementing theories that are relevant to the topic

 Focus on real-life company scenarios to make an improvement
 Solve real-life communication challenges through social media and other media
 Analyze and evaluate the solutions and see which work the best in which situation

There have been many theories considering communication challenges and how to solve them.
Theories will not be of value if they are not implemented in real-life situations. Our next action
will be implementing and analyzing Berol’s theory, face negotiation theory, and muted group
theory.

Then understand how companies are using social media & digital media to communicate with
employees. What problem managers are facing, what problems employees are facing. Then
implement our solutions in different scenarios and analyze the data to see and evaluate which
solution works best in which situation. By taking these actions I think we can improve a major
part of the presentation.

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Reference
Bovee, C.L. and Thill, J.V. (2012) BUSINESS COMMUNICATION TODAY, 9th Edition,
published by Pearson Education, Inc, publishing as Prentice Hall

Chaney, L. and Martin, J. (2014) Intercultural Business Communication. 6th edn. Harlow:
Pearson

Gatzen, P. and Bollier, D., 2020. Reinventing the Commons, a conversation with Pascale Gatzen
& David Bollier. APRIA Journal, 1(1), pp.138-138.
Jule, A., 2018. All Together Now: Using Conversational Analysis and Muted Group Theory to
Understand Gendered Classroom Discourse in a Cameroonian Primary Classroom. African
Journal of Teacher Education, 7(1).

Pecheransky, I., 2016. Report «FUTURE WORK SKILLS 2020» lifelong education goals
(philosophical-pedagogical notes). Lifelong education: the XXI century, 13(1), pp.14-22.

Rentz., 2013. Lesikar's business communication. [Place of publication not identified]: Mcgraw

Hill Higher Educat.

Saud, S., Jufri, A., Rahman, M. and Salam, S., 2014. Learning Devices Development on
Descriptive Writing for Foreign Language Based on Berlo’s SMCR Communication Model of
Secondary School Student. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(5).

Zhang, Q., Ting-Toomey, S. and Oetzel, J., 2014. Linking Emotion to the Conflict Face-
Negotiation Theory: A U.S.-China Investigation of the Mediating Effects of Anger, Compassion,
and Guilt in Interpersonal Conflict. Human Communication Research, 40(3), pp.373-395.

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