Good Practices
Discuss About The Effective Business Communication Management?
As inferred by Adrian (2012), communication plays a vital role in the overall development of any corporation. In the business world, effective communication is significant for the everyday operations of the company as it has the possibility to affect sales and profitability respectively. As every organization possesses a unique and distinctive personality, attaining effectiveness in communication is a tough task. Herein, this report the challenges faced by an Australian MNC towards the varied internal as well as external communication is resolved. In addition to this, to have a deeper understanding of the best-suited communication channels for our organization different strategies of other MNC’s are studied in detailed.
Communication Channels employed by renowned MNC’s
In any aspect of life, whether it is personal or professional, communication is the key to success. The communication ability helps in carrying out the business with efficacy. In any form of business environment communication, it can be understood as an exchange of message from one person to another, acknowledging that the message received is understood and likely some kind of action is expected as a result. Due to its complexity, it plays a prominent role in MNC’s than any other localised company (Schleimer and Pedersen, 2014). There is enormous MNC’s sprouting up all over the world, which have adopted varied ways of communication both through internal and external means.
Tesco operating beyond 2200 stores, which includes hypermarkets and express outlets across the world impends to satisfy the need of its all customer and brings satisfactory results to become the Britain’s largest retail industry. The aim of communication within an organization like Tesco would be to serve information to its public and employees. Tesco needs communication to keep perhaps their staffs updated and provide its customer with every detail of its existing by way of promotions and marketing (Channon and Jalland, 2016). Communication is needed to keep Tesco running smoothly.
In any business, it can be observed that the point of communication is to influence upon something in the business. Being an established chain working in more than one country, they have relied upon consistent sources of the communication channel to run an efficient business. Channels of communication played a prominent role in Tesco. It has established varied channels formal, informal, nonverbal, verbal, written, oral, technological different electronic methods to facilitate the spread of information through the organization. Formal communication being the official channel is quite significantly adopted as Tesco is a big company and different board meetings, weekly staff reports, forms and memos all must attune to run the business smoothly. Formal communication is quite prominently associated with vertical communication, and thus Tesco involves a well-organized system to work effectively and spontaneously. Also, it adopts informal communication which does not follow any official channels or bound by the chain of command. This form of communication is the voluntary type and is required to build a strong bond and cooperation between staff members. This informal form of communication acts as a motivator also for Tesco employees.
Future Strategies
Also, Nike a renowned name in sports additions has incorporated sports value through effective communication within its organization. Kobayashi (2012), reveals that Nike has embraced the essence of the sport by facilitating its communication among its team and all employees. This company uses both sorts of communication, i.e., internal and external means to attain the ultimate goal of creating a world class sporting brand. The communication between top management and their employees is equally important to help the understanding of values of multinational companies amongst them. It thus uses emails, formal reports, face-to face conversation as means of communication to keep the work environment intact (Tippmann, Scott and Mangematin, 2012). It also uses external channels of communication like video conferencing, online Internet, vouchers, advertisements, surveys to know the customs and tastes to outer world enticing customers towards their product.
Coco-cola another MNC established since 1886, selling across 200 countries and owing beverage trademark and licence across the globe (Dudovskiy, 2015). Coca-Cola has undertaken distinctive and innovative approaches to create strong relationships at the heart of the successful business. Verbal and Non-verbal both key channel of communication is employed by the organization to deliver its message effectively. The verbal communication is used by the organization to get in contact with its customers and employees by spreading information more effectively and thus acknowledging them more about the opportunities. On the other hand, the company to determine its brand positioning and creating an unwavering image of the people uses Non-verbal communication.
Healthy communication is pivotal to the success of any organization, whether it’s a start-up or any established enterprise (Montazemi et al., 2012). It is quite known that businesses who operate in multiple states often encounter difficulties to share information and meet the trajectory in real time. For our current Australian organization it is important that it simulcast each member associated with an organization.
Organization encounters the biggest problem, i.e., to communicate effectively with all its staff and customers in timely and operative manner. Communication within an organization is a critical activity. It helps not only strengthen but empower employees by facilitating them to share the common purpose and meet organization efficiency, productivity and overall value. The real-time communication can help in exchange the information instantly and enable people to work whenever and wherever by pooling up the collective skills and guiding them to move towards finding a reliable solution (Marin and Bell, 2010). The ability of business partners, employees, and customers to interact in such a manner increasingly helps determine whether enterprise flourishes or stumbles.
Before jotting down ways of developing a culture of real-time communication, it is important to ascertain the specific needs of the same. The organization can come up with numerous ways to meet this issue effectively. It can establish real time communication habits in the workplace; this can be made possible by the MNC by organizing multiple channels to spread the information to as many people as it seeks. For this aspect, the message must be consistent so that it can be spread from one person to another by informal means also. Since the message gets distorted when passed through informal paths, it is important that everyone should get the same message leaving no point for discussions. The organization must also have an everyday plan of communication, which is carefully sorted to notify employees of upcoming events. Also, a communication strategy must be adopted by an organization to use the same in an emergency case. Most importantly no matter how complex organization be, it is important that everyone keeps track (Paik and Ando, 2011). It is also important that people acknowledge upon the questions and clarification could it seek from. The organization must make it easy for both its employees and client to reach them as it is for making a complete communication cycle.
There is no doubt that customer service has a due impact on company’s brand image. Also, the satisfied employees help in translating happy services to the customers. Hence, effective communication with frontline staff is an important aspect of good customers service. It can be seen from a current case study that Australian organization encounters communication barriers restraining effective communication of top management with the front line staff and vice versa. Frontline employees are the most important people within an organization and are quite often overlooked. This ignorance could turn out to be a huge mistake as though it may be at the bottom most of the organization chart but still they more likely to be engaging and become advocates for the company. Since they interact with customers on a daily basis, they acknowledge the true expectations of the clients. They are the face of a company and as such know what might be the true customer needs.
Wilken and Sinclair (2011), advocates that front line employees are beyond just knowing the wants of customer they actually know organization customers. This is because front-line employees see customers and how it interacts with the product or services. Thus, they are many superior sources of information than any other traditional research. Effective listening to front-line employees can help in breaking down the company’s hierarchy. Employees, when encouraged, can help serve the top-management and customers better.
Listening also help in motivating the employees thus a more collaborative and engaging workforce can help connect everyone in the organization. Listening can though be a real challenge but most effective means to gather feedback from front-line staff. As IBM created an Idea Jam forum where it encourages employees from all the layers to answer questions and share their ideas (Li and Tallman, 2011). The Australian company could also establish an employee discussion forum to offer a virtual meeting place where the opinion, ideas and feedback from the staff can be collected.
Obtaining customer feedback is the most important facet as it provides marketers and the business owners with insight on how it can enhance its business product or services. Clients experience encompasses all aspects of company offerings like the quality of customer, the reliability of the product; it’s feature, packaging, ease of use, utility etc. Customers being the utmost clients of Australian MNC, their feedback is extremely essential for the product and services so offered. The best ways of incorporating this could be by way of choosing a direct line so that one can determine whether they are happy with company services and product so delivered. Customer feedback surveys on a regular basis can help the company ensure what may be frustrating or pleasing to the customer (Petersen, Kushwaha and Kumar, 2014). As it delivers tangible data perceived competitive offer could be explored, and it can be used for making a more profound business decision from customer feedback. The feedback can be used as a guide for business and marketing their decisions.
The customer feedback provides valuable insight, and it can help the Australian organization to create a product which every customer wish to buy and create a customer experience that is everlasting. A happy and satisfied customer is a retained customer. Gaining feedback from a loyal customer can be more valuable if it is called upon regular basis it could serve as a first-hand feedback. The other new trends that could be employed to collect feedback could be by way of social media, as an active user would help in excavating problematic issues faced by the customer either from product or services (Ruppel, Gong and Tworoger, 2013). However, social media could lead to a negative image of the company as rumours could be framed herein more quickly. Therefore, complete reliance on this medium for gaining feedback would be not advisable.
Since, the Australian organization serve across different cultural backgrounds thus, doing things straightforwardly is far from reach. As mentioned by Gammelgaard (2010), learning to appreciate a range of communication cultures requires the need to be flexible. Flexibility is the need of a company to establish and maintain decent connections with the stakeholders and other interest groups. In addition to flexibility, tolerability and cultural adaptability are also concluded as an important means of establishing a business. The flexibility, tolerant and adaptability component are required to make multicultural communication. Since, Australian MNC works in different parts of the world it faces cross-cultural issues, which needs to be resolved through proper functioning of the company. To build an effective internal and external communication the organization requires efforts and acquisition of experts to facilitate corporate communication averting cultural risks.
Internal communication plays a crucial role in multicultural settings. Since each global employee has the potential for framing company’s image; an excellent internal communication is fundamental. Internal communication helps in delivering a strong impact of the company towards the desired direction (Leeuwis and Aarts, 2011). Internal communication to function and process in a manageable and effective manner internationally, as a common practice of multicultural corporate communication, the company can set up internal networks. These networks can be used to direct employees in local communities, and such networks can be maintained in countless ways like email, instant messaging, telephone, video conferences etc. Emphasizing on face-to-face communication and making people familiar with different countries culture by the mutual trust can also help create successful cooperation.
Undergoing the facts of the case study, it can be observed that the most prominent issue which is being faced by the Australian MNC is that of local language as the people are not capable of communicating effectively with some of the clients, business partners, suppliers and employees. Indeed, there is also an impending need to enhance employee’s language and their cultural know-how to meet the professional requirements (Lauring and Klitmøller, 2015). Many international companies ensure that its employees are trained and acknowledge the know-how to serve the company as a whole. This aspect is also important for meeting the external services. To meet the corporate goals, in-house communication skills are a must. As inferred by, the strategic understanding of each and every employee is a necessity to make a vital link between communication and the corporate goals and reputation. Matanda and Ewing (2012), emphasize that all corporate communication must be established on sound policies and guidelines. These policies and guidelines move on to build a unique image, a strong brand positioning and ultimate appealing reputation. Reliable translation services could also help fulfil the needs of the company.
In the current era, Social Networking and Digital Literacy has turned out to be the most popular trend to grab the attention of people. As the case study reveals facts wherein Australian MNC operates in countries like India, Vietnam and Australia wherein the proportion of people using digital literacy is quite high. Almost all people are aware of the different social media channels and are quite responsive towards the same (Channon and Jalland, 2016). Digital literacy and social media ensure immense engagement and success, but also organization has to struggle hard enough to implement the open network in its system fully. Nonetheless, a number of MNCs push itself to adapt themselves to social media field.
The social media is useful to the organization in both internal and external communication context. Implementation of social networking at the formal base can help foster knowledge and knock down the different barriers of communication. The internal social networking could be the use of tools such as ‘Watercooler’ at HP, ‘Beehive’ at IBM. While, in an external context, social networking has a far-reaching lightning pace as it helps customers acknowledge about the company and its product as well as services (Regnér and Zander, 2011). Also, it has been quite known that the networking and socialising in modern days has become day by day more flexible and dynamic. Social media helps in diversifying the communication targeting the right people through a specified channel. Some of the known channels of social media are Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc. Further, it facilitates direct communication as the issues and problems can be bought right on one platform providing the company with an idea about the interests that connect with its MNC directly. This media can also help the MNC in announcing the new launch of product or service.
Conclusion
Thus, it could be very well articulated from the report that the Australian MNC can deal with the internal and external problems by adopting varied communication strategies. For effective communication internal channels like emails, messaging, face-to-face meetings etc. can be used by managers, which allow noting the response its employees. Also, I can use the external channel of communication like online chap portal, feedback forums, social media etc. to broadcast the updates and know about the prevalent issues.
References
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Channon, D.F. and Jalland, M., (2016). Multinational strategic planning. Springer.
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Ruppel, C.P., Gong, B. and Tworoger, L.C., (2013). Using communication choices as a boundary-management strategy: How choices of communication media affect the work–life balance of teleworkers in a global virtual team. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 27(4), pp.436-471.
Schleimer, S.C. and Pedersen, T., (2014). The effects of MNC parent effort and social structure on subsidiary absorptive capacity. Journal of International Business Studies, 45(3), pp.303-320.
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