Background of the study
The purpose of this report is to investigate based on a case study of an Australian software company, Data solutions, which is suffering from internal communication gap, though external marketing strategies and promotional communications were appropriate. Data solutions is operating their business in Brisbane, along with Melbourne and Sydney. As per the recent observations, although, the organisation has been maintaining a good performance since a long time executing effective promotional strategies yet communication gap among the employees and between the management and employees have been detected. In the addition, practices of unprofessionalism as well as some of the managerial issues have been identified as serious blockage in the pathway of achieving organizational objectives. This report will discuss the existing issues in detail at first and suggest recommendations according to that as well. Hopefully, this report will be capable of providing a guideline to those organizations too, who are suffering from the same issues as Data Solutions.
Data Solution is one of the Australia’s prominent companies, which deals with data management software. Although, the company is originally from Brisbane, established in the year of 2001, it has expanded its business further to major cities of Australia including Melbourne and Sydney. Although, the organization believe “Success is a team sport”, yet communicational misinterpretations are being common issues these days within the organisation. The management is dedicated towards the organisational goal and the customers (Quirke, 2017). In order to assure best quality service they believe in monitoring operations without any break through physical and virtual security system as well as continuous process of improvement and innovation is going on to keep the performance best in class (Zhang & Venkatesh, 2013). As per the recent observations, it has been taken into account that Data Solutions has been going through a difficult phase of internal conflict for a considerable amount of time. Surprisingly, the company has not yet faced any major issue regarding external marketing policies or customer communication for promoting their products as of now yet the increasing disturbance in the process of executing regular business operations due to communicational gap between employees may affect the organizational goals in future. Considering the current issues and probable outcome, a necessity has been felt to act against this crisis.
Although, Data Solutions is not facing any issues regarding external marketing and promotional communications with their customers yet internal communication gap is increasing between employees and the C-level employees are increasing day by day. Moreover, employees are not communicating among themselves as well. As per the case study, both the qualitative and quantitative methods of interview were applied on ten employees and five managers of Data Solutions from the branch of Brisbane to discover the ongoing problems. The methodology is significant enough as without their participation it was almost impossible to identify the internal matters (Vaismoradi, Turunen & Bondas, 2013). Issues are as follows in detail.
- Issue 1: Executive level business decisions are not being circulated properly in a timely manner among the employees. As managers are not communicating with the employees, workforce is not responding the way they should. As a result, it is influencing both the production and profit in a negative way. As the employees are unaware of the executive decisions, they do not recognise the hurdle and feel motivated to accomplish the target.
- Issue 2: Most of the time supervisors do not work in the same offices with the other employees for the reason the communication process is not that effective. As human resource is the most valuable aspect for any organisation, therefore it is important to keep them updated with new government policies as well as company’s plan and development on that. In order to keep the workforce productive and dedicated, one of the most essential tasks the management can do is communicating with their employees. However, which is not happening in the case of Data Solutions.
- Issue 3: Unethical and unprofessional practices have become a part of the work culture of the company. Employees have been engaging themselves into unprofessional communication via email since the work environment started to deteriorate. This issue should be considered with highest priority as production and progress depend on the work culture of company.
Issues faced by the organisation
Solution 1: The first issue, which has been detected that c-level decisions are not being communicated properly within the company. As a result, employees are suffering with major confusions while executing business operations. Effective business communication is a process by which managers and executive officers maintain the resources and make them feel integrated with the organizational goal (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). As the communicational gap has occurred it should be dealt with traditional theories of business communications considering the emergency of the situation. Therefore, if the purpose of the management is to make the employees feel dedicated and well productive, company should make them feel appreciated for their work and valued at the same time. According to, Men, (2014),they will feel valued if HR managers care to listen to their problems, consider their opinions before taking major business decisions and share the credit of any successful venture with them as well (Den Hartog et al., 2013). Communication is a consistent two-way process by which employees get to know about operational information of the company from the management as well as employee feedback influence managerial decisions and they figure out if the process of communication is helping the employees to work accordingly or not. As described in Zerfass & Franke, (2013), internal communication does not only influence business decisions, it shapes employee behaviour. It creates a positive impact on the organisation’s productivity and work culture (Mazzei, 2014). Recognising the benefits of internal communication, the management should realise their faults and resolve the issues with highest priority like organising weekly or monthly employee meet regarding ongoing issues and progress, conducting interactive sessions with HR department or occasional fun activities can be helpful to increase integrity and promote a better work culture.
Solution 2: Second issue is, no supervisors work in the same office with the employees due to accommodation problem, which can be considered as a reason behind ineffective internal communication. It should be mandatory to arrange the infrastructure first otherwise; it is affecting both the relationship between executives and employees and the work culture as well (Men, 2015). Every business organisation comes with a single purpose of increasing the productivity yet as far as evaluating their own management practices are concerned; most of the companies do not invest much time on that, as they are busy with setting new agendas and external marketing policies. While dealing with these factors, there is a tendency among c- level executives to give less importance in matters of internal communication (Michiels et al., 2013). However, they do not recognise the fact that if the workforce loses motivation then it will be difficult to accomplish the objectives. That is why it is essential to keep healthy relationship with the employees and make them updated with every important information regarding operations and business decisions. Moreover, as the supervisors are not physically present in the workplace regularly, the work environment is deteriorating. In order to resolve this problem, regular monitoring with digital aid can be helpful until the management resolves the accommodation issue. Technological advancement has made the communications easy yet the positive approach of physical presence cannot be denied as far as employee behaviour and effective communication are concerned. Data Solutions should resolve the accommodation issue as quickly as possible, so that supervisors can recognise the areas of developments by regular visits and interaction.
Recommendations
Solution 3: Unprofessional emails have been forwarded during the office hours, which is strictly against the company norms. In order to improve the work environment and employee behaviour; HR policies should be very strict and an employee should comply with the company rules and regulations (Nankervis et al., 2013). Employees should know unless they are maintaining the norms, they will be penalised for unethical practices in workplace. With the purpose of accomplishing organizational goals, if the managers maintain a friendly work atmosphere and communicate with them, they will feel more engaged towards their job role and restrict themselves from practicing unprofessionalism (Mishra, Boynton & Mishra, 2014). Advancement of technology now-a-days allows the supervisors to access the portal of every employee, therefore by monitoring them digitally this type of practices can be avoided in future.
Conclusion
As per the case study conducted on the issues of internal communication gap of Data Solutions, Australia, few issues regarding business communication have come in front, which is disturbing the balance of production. After developing a perception on the existing issues, it can be concluded that, if Data Solutions do not take necessary steps soon then the company will face serious conflict between management and employees. The production will be hampered and the entire process of the company will be slower than ever. The report has discussed the recommendations as well, following which the company is expecting improvement in the situation. HR managers should arrange human resource development programme in order to make them active and there should be an effective channel of communication within the employees and between the workforce and management if the company wants them to perform at their best with the purpose of achieving the organizational goal.
References
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Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
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Vaismoradi, M., Turunen, H., & Bondas, T. (2013). Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study. Nursing & health sciences, 15(3), 398-405.
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