Formal and Informal Communication Channels in Organizations
Discuss About The Organization Information Circulates Backward.
In any organization information circulates backwards, forwards and sideways which is known as communication. Formal communication can be defined as the communication that occurs by following predefined or official or prescribed rules, regulation and policy of the organization. Such kind of communication generally takes place between employees or management of same level or between subordinate ad superior and vice versa. It may be written or oral but full record of such communication is kept in an organization(Saleem & Perveen, 2017).In contrast, informal communication is a communication that does not follow any formal lines or predefined channel to share information in an organization. It generally takes place between the workers to share their ideas and to satisfy social needs. Example: Coworkers talking about the behaviors of their seniors(Lunenburg, 2010).
Communication channels is the way in which information transfers in the organization. There are several communication channels which are being used to circulate information(Chand, n.d.). Formal communication channels generally transfer information like policies, goals, reporters and procedures of an organizations etc. The most commonly used technology for formal communication are communication newsletters, formal meetings, company magazines, memos, letters etc. There is always an informal communication network within a formal working environment in an organization(Weedman, n.d.). Team work, quality circles, several training programmes etc. fall under this category. Informal communication media includes telephone, email, voice messaging, chat etc.
Formal communication is flow of information’s through different levels of organizational hierarchy and sticks to predefined rules and regulations, policy and standards of the organization. While the informal communication does not follow any kind of set patterns. The main purpose of formal communication is to pass the information among several departments of an organization. While the purpose of informal is to maintain relationship inside and outside of the organization. The formal communication is not flexible and can be changed according to the situation(Surbhi, 2015).The preference of individual differs based what they are communication with whom. According to a survey in June 2009 on marketing 24% of the customers communicate more often through text. Out of them 33% are using email more often than they were 6 months ago in comparison to the 10% people who uses email occasionally. Further, majority of people i.e. 67% wanted the permission-based promotions via text.As per the survey conducted by ethics resource center, stated that the half of the people who were surveyed had witnessed some kind of ethical misconduct(Rodriguez, 2015). The result also stated that most of the employees or workers of America perform their job in correct manner and also reported those who did not follow the ethical standards of behavior.
Impact of Informal Communication on Employee Motivation and Transgression at Workplace
The motivation level in employee is vital for any organization as its significant for the growth of both individual and the organization. It is important for any organization to understand the requirement of its employee to cope different challenges so that the policies are developed according to their needs. This paper briefs on different aspects of informal communication and it impact on employee motivation and transgression at workplace.
The unconscious and hidden sentiments is defined as an aspect of an individual’s behavior and thinking which affects his action in a certain way towards some individual (Dalal, 2017). The people are generally unaware about their behavior towards certain races of people which may seem discriminatory.
The flow of information among employees or between the employee and employer in an unprofessional or informal manner is know as informal communication. Though this communication style is carried out in friendly manner, it has its drawbacks. The more the informal communication within the organization the more people gets involved in rumor and gossips about other employees(Mikkelsen, et al., 2015). This sometimes leads to situation when employee becomes rude and hurt others feelings and emotions. This certainly, hampers the working environment and eventually affecting the employee performance. The gossips and conversation of longer duration affects both organization and individual’s productivity. The impact of these kind of activities also affects the performance of employee who are true and dedicated towards their job. Informal communication also give rise to conflicts affecting the relationship between fellow employees(Jones, 2017). The communication style of this nature gives undue advantage to employee while communicating with their superiors thus affecting the relation between them. Informal communication mostly consists of gossips which may be vague that could harm the productivity of the organization. Thus, there is use of both informal and formal communication for any operations to succeed. It becomes difficult at time to control the flow of informal information and its origin(Iasmina, et al., 2010). All these activities affecting the overall performance of the employee and the organization which eventually hampers the motivation level of the employee.
It is a type of informal communication which is comprised of rumor and gossip. It is popular in most of the organization as it does not follow any kind of defined rules and spreads any message very quickly(Smith & Smith, 2014). It happens through both external and internal channels. It mostly passes information, rumors, suspicions which do not flow in case of formal communication. This type of communication is not governed by formalities and official regulation but by personal and social relationship(Anon., 2015). The flow of information in grapevine are either vertical, horizontal and even diagonal linking almost everyone of the organization. The existence of this style of communication is due to sense of belonging between managers and staffs brings. Thus, it builds corporate identity and helps in teamwork.
Grapevine Technology Used in Informal Communication
Most of the information passing through this channel are true due to its style of communication. However, it can also lead to passing wrong information at times which can affect the working environment within the organization.
There are several factors which has impacted business communication in todays world. One of the factor which is reshaping the communication world is the introduction of technology or the digital transformation(Eisenhauer, 2014). The following are the current trends which the current generation uses for communication at workplace are as follows:
The introduction of cloud commutation has replaced the costly and premises-based system of old days. Most of the companies in today’s context has realize the value of cloud-based communication services because it requires less capital, low operating expenses, user friendly and faster than the previous modes of communication.
The use of smart phones has revolutionized the business and commercial world. The various mobile applications ahs further made the exchange of messages or in information faster that can reach to desired number of people within the fraction of a second.
There are many messaging applications which the employees use on daily basis and remain connected even after their work time. The options like video calls for conferencing, sharing of documents, storage, and transfer of data, project management tools etc. have replaced the older age systems with newer team collaboration tools.
It is not odd to state that the face to face meetings has been mostly replaced with the introduction of emails, video conferencing, mobile or landlines, messaging applications. According to a survey, 95% of people wishes to use communication tools instead of meeting person face to face.
Emotional labor can be defined as the process by which workers manage their expressions and feelings to fulfill the emotional needs of a job according to the defined guidelines and rules of the organization. In 1983 sociologist Arlie Hochschild introduced this term in her book called “The Managed Heart” that described the things service workers do beyond mental and physical duties(Wharton, 2009).
It occurs when workers suppress or introduce their emotions in order to represent themselves in a certain way that results a wanted state of mind in another. It is important for workers to control their emotions while interacting with co-workers, superiors and costumers.
To show a genuine concern to the needs of customers making positive eye contact and smiling are very important to customer’s perception on quality of service. So emotional labor includes these activities which are important to worker’s performance(Yoo & Jeong, 2017).
Current Trends in Business Communication
When worker engage themselves in emotional labor they need to control their feeling to fulfill the expectations and goals of the organization. They need to express only positive feeling and hide or suppress negative feelings.
To manage negative thoughts and emotions people tend to show the emotions that they actually don’t feel, hide their true feelings and create a suitable emotion for the situation.
Surface acting: People pretend or fake to have an emotion by using artificial and unnatural verbal communication and body language. Using a soft tone of voice and smiling helps to hide people’s true emotions and show emotions that they don’t feel.
Deep acting: People control their internal emotions and direct them to believe that they are actually enjoining the interaction with other and convincing themselves that they are not feeling and negative kind of reaction.
Emotional labor is the tendency of recognizing self and other person feelings to keep ourselves motivated and manage our emotions to maintain healthy relationship at workplace(Handel, 2013). There are mainly four attributes of emotional labor; self-management, self-awareness, social awareness and relationship management. One of the effective way of improving communication skill is how an individual manages his emotions of workplace. For example: when a CEO of a company lacks emotional intelligence, then he may lose his emotion and react unexpectedly while encountering an unexpected question(Roh, et al., 2015). This issue is not only limited to media interviews or public speaking. The company representatives or leaders who lack or have not developed the emotional labor often reacts to the situation s without controlling their verbal and tone responses. This may lead to inappropriate body language and can further deteriorate the relationships with customers, employees, strategic partners, investors. This kind of behavior at workplace could also lead to financial loss and it is apparent that, managing emotions at workplace is beneficial to both company and individual’s performance.
Arlie Hoschild, coined this term to describe the situation of service workers who goes beyond physical and mental duties. The attributes of quality service are addressing customer needs making, positive eye contact, smiling, maintaining proper tone etc.
It is particularly challenging to address angry clients who are not satisfied with the provided service and controlling emotions at that times becomes very much difficult(Hsieh, 2016). It becomes very much important at that time to hide the emotions and continue with a smile even after receiving negative feedbacks from customer, it becomes very much important to understand the impact of emotional labor on their growth and performance. It is equally essential for the organization to understand the requirement of the labor so that they can support them and help to minimize the impact of emotional labor(Rakowska & Valdes, 2014).
Emotional Labor and Its Effect on Employee Behavior in the Workplace
One of the major impact of emotional labor is emotional conflict between the fake and real emotions. According to research, a conflict of this nature can lead to emotional exhaustion and burn out for the employee who hides their emotions on the regular interval further leading to mental stress and detachment from personal relationships(Wipulanusat, 2017). The people with low social awareness and negative personality have difficultly in dealing with emotional conflict and more often experience emotional exhaustion. Hence, it is important to understand the effects of emotional labor so tat policies ad steps are implemented accordingly to minimize the negative impact of emotional labor.
The informal communication network existing in an organization which is used to spread gossips, rumors or information by completely ignoring the formal communication structure(Sharma, 2017). Similar to a grapevine plant, the information in this style of communication spreads in random ways and directions. In 2013, Pravin identified flow of information in Grapevine takes place in four ways:
Single strand chain: the information in this flow is in the form of series. For example: X tells something to Y and Y passes that to Z and so on.
The gossip chain: in this a single person spreads the message to move number of people or groups. The person can belong to more than one group.
The probability chain: the information in this type of style spreads from anybody to unknown groups or persons. This type of communication takes place when the message is interesting but is of less importance.
The cluster chain: in this style of communication, the information flows from selected groups. For example: an individual passes the information to few selected individuals and they further pass the message to other selected individuals and so on. This is one of the most dominant style existing in an organization.
Transgression from societal and psychological point of views is defied as an unwanted or destructive act of behavior, violating laws, norms, budgets etc. in general as per legal, psychological, social, religious refers to a process of a crossing a permitted boundary to a process of a crossing a permitted boundary. There are certain disciplinary procedures that should be followed regarding transgressions:
- The process of disciplinary act falling under matters of misconducts.
- The process of counselling, guidance, training, evaluation etc. falling under matter of incapacity or poor performance or incompatibility.
The main aim of disciplinary process is to contact undesirable or unacceptable behavior by applying sanctions or progressive disciplinary measures(Strutchers, et al., 2005). If the imposed sanctions do not bring desired result then more strict or stringiest action is taken against the employee to correct his actions and make him fall into the line. In worst scenario, it may lead to the termination of the employee.
In case of counselling process, the employers do not impose any sanction rather provides training, guidance, instructions in order to help them in overcoming their weakness. The transgression at work place has become common these days due to increased work pressure, stress and weak motivational approaches which compels employee to transgress.
The transgression at workplace happens due to various factors like work pressure, stress, stringiest policies, less or no motivations etc. forces employee to break the rule and act according to their wish.
As per Ingram (2013), there is equal contribution of both employer and employee in keeping the working environment motivated and the behavior of one party determines the action of the other party. Hence, the policies of the organizations, determine the action and performance of the workforce. The management who try to impose strict policies and behave in an abrasive way then it may affect the working spirit of the employee leading to transgressions.
Almost in any organizations, the employee tries to fulfill the organizational goals by following the guidelines, policies of the organization. The managers always try to deliver top performance on daily basis so that the lower subordinates have similar kind of mindset. The managers who follow the work ethics indirectly infuse the same traits to the people working under them which decreases the transgression among the employee(Mok & Cremer, 2015).
But at time, when the highest management of the company promotes the undeserving candidates and become biased then it affects the performance of the deserving candidates and promotes transgression. The unfair appraisals and lack of recognizing the hard work of the employee translates into transgression in employees.
The proper communication of company’s regulation, policies, procedures are significant for any company. The way both employee and employee communicate directly impacts the performance and motivation level in employee which may lead to transgressions. According to research conducted by Khuong and Hoang in 2015 states that, the managers who are in continuous touch with their employee, replicates the same behavior among themselves (Chapman & Light, 2017). The employee comes and shares their feedback, experiences regarding various work-related issues through effective communication which contributes in overall growth of the organisation. But any kind of barrier to discontinue this process can negatively affect their performance. This happens due to lack of communication as the workers starts feeling that they are not being recognized for their hard work. This feeling of transgression among employees translates into transgressions.
The working style of managers in any organisation affects the morale of the employee. This can be a positive or negative affect depending upon the behavior of the manager(Fay, 2011). For example- The manager who is usually friendly with his employees can boost their morale. On the other hand, the manager who do not care about the performance of his employees and their welfare often faces difficulty in achieving even small milestone. This habit of ignoring the contribution of employee and treating them like ordinary workers to achieve impossible goals hampers the performance of the employee and the organisation as well. In this way, the employees lose their self-worth and starts doubting on their abilities which eventually leads to transgressions.
- The advantages of informal communication include:
- It becomes easier for the employee to understand the information properly under informal system which helps in completing the work properly(Kurose, 2013).
- It helps in maintaining good relationship between the employee and the manager as most of the issue gets resolved informally which becomes difficult through formal communication.
- It increases the efficiency of the employee as the employee openly discuss their problems and gets its resolved instantly.
- Under the informal system, the workers can present their needs, problems, challenges more openly in front of the higher management.
- The actual meaning and matter of the information gets distorted under this system.
- In this the wrong information or rumors spreads rapidly which at times hampers the reputation of the company(Saleem, 2015).
Grapevine is form of informal communication in which the information spreads randomly throughout the organisation in an undocumented manner.
Conclusion:
From the above paper it is evident that, the effective communication style is significant for the growth of both the individual and the organisation. Both formal and informal communication style should coexist to ensure only useful information flows throughout the organisation blocking the unnecessary gossips and rumor.The more people involves in gossips and rumors the more it hampers the productivity of the company. The introduction of various technology has changed the old age communication style and have made the business communication more fast and convenient.This paper also explained the ways by which informal communication affects the motivation level in employees at work place. It also stated the unconscious bias towards certain race. The informal communication style like grapevine can also be useful in passing the information among employees as its strengthen the relation which not improves the team coordination but also enhances the performance of whole team. The management should understand the need of its employees so that they can support them by planning policies according to their need and minimize transgressions. The manager should interact with his employees on regular intervals so that the workers can openly share their concern which would be beneficial for the growth of individual and the organisation at the same time.
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