Departmental Communication Summary
For the theory department at Relativity.com communication to the rest of the company has developed into a significant problem. The theory department provides personnel services to every employee in the organization. The progressive communication and technology improvements over the past decade have actually contributed to a failing communication strategy of the theory department.
Ten years ago there were three primary ways of communicating to employees at Relativity.com. The first was through interoffice mail. This method was utilized to communicate information that was relevant to only specific individuals. The second method was to post on company wide bulletin boards. This method was utilized when information was relevant a majority of the organization. The third method was disseminate by organizational structure through the management team and verbally communicated during department staff meetings. This method was utilized when information was relevant to only specific departments. Absent was a systematic method for receiving feedback for department customers “employees.” Feedback was only received from employees that choose to extend their opinions.
In the past ten years business communication technology has changed significantly. In addition to the aforementioned, we have also added: the Internet, the Intranet with a variety of departmental hosted links, company TV network, management central, e-mail, we have our own department web server to mange the services we provide, a growing communications department, just to name a few. Our facility has added over 500 associates in the last 10 years and our company has built two new facilities in North America that our department also services. This is an additional 700 employees. With the exception to our supervisor, none of us have been in the department longer than 2 years.
We do not have a communication strategy and it is a mess.
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Jamie, this is a perfect case study. It will be interesting to know how important employee feeback is the company. It seems as though they have tried some methods, but are they willing to push the buttom.
ReplyDeleteJamie, I agree with Yvonne. Sounds like you have a great case study in your hands. As companies move to doing more with less, technology will play a key role in our communication process. It seems important for companies to work the bugs out of their communication means before it takes its toll on the bottom line.
ReplyDeleteJamie,
ReplyDeleteAs I've said before (on Gayle's blog), communication is the key to success. Therefore, it is imperative that they push towards methods of effective communication throughout the company in order to prevent comprimising the bottom line. Thus, I agree with Yvonne and Gayle on this case.
Jamie,
ReplyDeleteGood case to study...the challenges are not insurmountable, but they do look intimidating. Katina hit it on the head. Without good communication it is difficult at best to succeed. I look forward to seeing more on this.
Jamie, I was wondering what challenges do you see facing the company that could be addressed first. It certainly seems as if we would need to call in an expert of sorts for an organizational overhaul. I believe a organizational consultant would be someone who could look at doing some research in a new system that would help to disseminate information through the company in a consistent way. It also seems that communication lines could be mended with a subtle approach rather than so technical. Or maybe technology is the bigger fish to fry...what do you think?
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