Applying communication strategies in the workplace is a necessary undertaking that will enable any organisation to operate efficiently and effectively. If done correctly, your organisation becomes better equipped to achieve its goals and objectives. This undertaking requires continuous work and effort. Much like any other venture, it begins with the planning stage.
For you to successfully employ communication strategies within your organisation, you must first prepare for communication. This stage involves five sub-steps. First, you must identify the work activities that would require communication. After this, you must likewise establish the communication requirements for your identified work activities.
Once you have accomplished these preliminary steps, you can move on to identifying communication roles for yourself and others to complete the necessary activities. You must also consider seeking assistance or clarification regarding communication objectives as required. Finally, you must select the appropriate method of communicating information internally and externally based on your organisational requirements.
The first stage in applying communication strategies in your workplace is preparing for communication. This involves the necessary planning that will enable you to engage in communicating effectively. The first order of business in your planning process is the identification of work activities which require communication, which is essentially the transfer or sharing of information.
In essence, every interaction you will ever engage in requires some form of communication. The same goes in the workplace, where interactions are at the core of your operations. There are key work activities, however, which are done in every organisation. These activities especially require communication. The following merit further discussion:
Reporting
Reporting is an integral activity that is done to present details of various undertakings. In the context of the workplace, reporting is an activity that may be done before, during, and after projects, meetings, etc. These would provide summaries, progress updates, and other important pieces of information necessary to assess the work being done in the organisation.
Reports can be done in various ways. One may opt to present their report through a formal document (i.e. a report), through electronically assisted means (i.e. email or instant message), or through face-to-face interaction (i.e. presentation).
Coordinating with Clients
Every business has clients, and this is the reason why coordinating with clients is a work activity fundamental to all organisations. Coordinating with clients involves external communication, which is the interaction with people outside of the organisation. This activity is done to ensure that the needs of a client are understood and met sufficiently.
Like reporting, this activity is done during different points in your undertaking (i.e. before, after, and during a project). Coordinating with clients can also be done through face-to-face interaction or digital means.
Meetings and Consultations
Perhaps the most important work activity one can engage in, meetings are a key part of the operations of every organisation. You can have different kinds of meetings for various purposes – everything from planning to the evaluation of your different work-related functions and activities. These meetings can be attended by various stakeholders – both internal and external – and can be as small or as large, as necessary. Thanks to technology, you are no longer limited to having meetings in person. You can now have video conferences as meetings as well.
A special and likewise important type of meeting that is required from every organisation is consultation. Consultation is the process of formal discussion and collaboration with at least one other person. This is done to help you identify key information necessary for various organisational matters (i.e. challenges, issues, perceptions, trends) and determine what can be done about these matters to improve operations.
Training Initiatives
Training is a work activity that is vital in every organisation. This is because all workplaces are composed of people, and these people must be sufficiently trained so that they can fulfill the work tasks expected of them. For the most part, training initiatives require internal communication. However, there are instances when professional help or assistance is required. This is especially true when the specific skills or knowledge to be taught seek the expertise of industry leaders and/or experienced trainers.
There are several training initiatives that employees can engage in throughout their careers. These include everything from induction activities that are designed to help them learn about their roles and the organisation to specific training sessions that enable employees to expand their skillset and continuously develop themselves and their careers.
Now that you have identified your different work activities, you can sufficiently determine the communication requirements for each. Given the varying natures of the work activities you engage in, different communication requirements emerge.
Your communication requirements are essentially an overview of the different needs you have in communicative interaction. The basis of establishing your communication requirements is, therefore, the nature of the activities you are to engage in. In essence, the determination of your communication requirements is done by seeking answers to the question: ‘What do you need to successfully engage in communication in a given work activity?’
Generally speaking, the different communication requirements for each work activity are as follows:
Information Requirement
Your information requirement or need is essentially the pieces of information expected from an information source. These are the matters that need to be shared and discussed through your communication. Information requirements would vary depending on the nature of your work activities.
Sample information requirements for each identified work activity include:
When reporting, there is a variety of information you may require. This would be dependent on what you are reporting on. The most common information requirements include goals and objectives, budgets, sales projections, issues and subsequent resolutions, system changes, updates or adjustments, project updates and results, etc.
In coordinating with clients, the most important thing to do is make sure that you and the client are on the same page; this is why the different information requirements you have would cover a variety of matters. These include product details and specifications, agreed-upon timelines and deadlines, project updates, delays, and problems encountered.
As with reporting, there is a variety of information your meetings and consultations may require. The most common of these include project updates, timelines and deadlines, organisational requirements (i.e. goals and objectives, policies and procedures, codes of conduct) and subsequent changes to these, conflict, and conflict resolution.
There are many information requirements depending on the kind of training you engage in. For one, induction training activities would need job roles and applications, organisational requirements (i.e. goals and objectives, policies and procedures, codes of conduct), processes, and house rules. Other training sessions, such as those geared and developing specific skills for employees, would likewise require information such as technical guidance, in-depth details, processes, rules, procedures, techniques, etc.
Audience
In every communication activity, there needs to be an audience that one intends to communicate with. The audience is the recipient of the message/s you send; they are the ones you are trying to reach out to for any given interaction. As with any other communicative activity, your audiences vary depending on your work activity.
Sample audiences for each identified work activity include:
The audience of your reporting would depend on the purpose of your report. Two specific audiences can be identified, however, as they are the most common target audiences of your reports. First, supervisors, managers and other higher-ups are the usual audiences of internal reports. Reporting is usually done to inform those in higher positions of the different matters that they ought to be aware of. This is because they themselves do not always have the time to get directly involved in every work-related process. Second, clients are also a common target audience for your reports. By virtue of being clients, they require sufficient updates and information on the projects they have a stake on.
As the name would suggest, the main audience for your coordination with clients would be the clients themselves. Different clients may have different attitudes and personalities, and this is something you will need to note as you communicate with them. Further guidance on this is provided later in this resource.
This is perhaps the work activity with the widest range of possible audiences. Given that meetings and consultations can be done for a variety of reasons, your target audience for every meeting may change. This may include everyone from members of your team and department, employees across different departments, supervisors, and other higher-ups. On the external side, your audiences may also include clients, suppliers, consultants, and subject-matter experts.
Your training initiatives usually involve employees who require guidance for various matters. This would include new hires that need to learn the ropes of the company, employees that are struggling with certain tasks, as well as those who would like to expand their skillset and expertise.
Other Requirements
Along with these identified requirements, there are a number of others that you may encounter as you engage in different work activities. This would include your documents, visual aids, and prompts as well as the different technologies you may need to supplement your activities. These are necessary to ensure that you are able to make your communication as effective as possible.
Along with your communication requirements, you must identify the different roles that you and others must fulfil in each activity. In the process of doing so, you must also assign these roles and articulate them sufficiently to the necessary personnel.
Communication Roles Defined
In essence, communication roles refer to the part a person plays in a communication activity. This role would involve the different tasks they have during a given activity that involve communication. For each of the previously identified work activities, there are a number of communication roles that can be recognised.
Reporting
In reporting, the main roles of those engaged in the activity are the reporter and listener or audience. The reporter is the person in charge of presenting the information that needs to be conveyed. The listener or audience is the person who needs to know about this information. In some cases, the reporter/s may need help from key persons. This may include subject-matter experts who can further substantiate the data being presented. Sometimes, those in the audience may also include observers or approvers who are evaluating the performance of the reporters and the merit of the report, respectively.
Coordinating with Clients
When coordinating with clients, the two main communication roles represent the two parties engaged in the activity: the business and the client. You and any other employee you are with represent the former. As the name would suggest, the client and any other party they are with represent the latter. Your role is to ensure that the interests of the business are given sufficient consideration. This means you have enough allowance for working on the given undertaking with respect to the other work you need to fulfill. On the other hand, the role of the client is to make sure that their own interests are still paid attention to and balanced with the concerns of the business.
Meetings and Consultations
In meetings, there are several communication roles that are to be fulfilled by the attendees. First, there is the chair who is in charge of facilitating the entire activity. They are tasked with managing the flow of the meeting and ensuring that everything goes as planned. There is also the note-keeper who records the minutes of the meeting and consolidates the information into a formal document later on. Meetings may also have timekeepers who are tasked to ensure that the meeting starts and ends on time and that all matters in the agenda are given sufficient discussion time. In consultations, a special communication role may be given to subject-matter experts who can provide relevant and credible information that would enhance the consultation process.
Training Initiatives
Although there are different types of training initiatives, there are two main roles in each one. The first is that of the trainer. This may be fulfilled by one or more persons who will be providing the necessary training and development to the employees. The second role is that of the trainee, which is fulfilled by the employees who require training.
Assigning Communication Roles
Although there is no one strict way to assign communication roles for your different work activities, there is a general process for doing so. The steps involved in assigning communication roles are as follows:
The first step in assigning communication roles is to determine what the required roles for your work activity are. In doing so, you will note the different tasks that you may need in any given activity. The discussion above may provide guidance for the roles that are associated with the most common work activities.
Once you have determined the communication roles necessary for your activities, you must then identify who will be able to fulfil the given roles. This is especially important for roles that require a certain skill set or level of expertise. As you identify the viable internal and/or external personnel who can be assigned to the different roles, you must also consider their availability to fulfil the role. For instance, if you are trying to reach out to a subject-matter expert, they may not be available to engage in your activity if they have prior commitments scheduled.
After identifying your communication roles and the personnel who can fulfil these, you can assign them their roles. Along with assigning the communication roles, you must ensure that you are able to sufficiently explain said roles. This is to make sure that they are understood and be fulfilled properly.
Now that you have everything set, you can engage in your work activity and subsequently have the personnel fulfil their respective communication roles. As you do, ensure that everyone assigned is able to properly do their assigned tasks and that the activity runs smoothly.
As you prepare for communication, you may find it necessary to seek clarity on the objectives of your different communication tasks. If such is the case, you will need to seek out the necessary assistance or clarification from key personnel.
Communication Objectives Defined
Communication objectives are the aims that you are trying to achieve as you engage in different work activities. These are grounded on the messages that you intend to send to those you are communicating with. Unlike most organisational objectives, your communication objectives need not be strictly set up to be SMART – that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based. You can use the SMART criteria to guide you in writing more precise objectives, but the ones you come up with need not be too technical.
In hindsight, your communication objectives simply need to provide you with a clear idea of what you want to happen during your communication activity along with when it should happen. To better illustrate this concept, the following examples are provided for the different identified work activities:
- Reporting
- To discuss project updates for the entire month
- To report issues and concerns raised in the past weeks
- Coordinating with clients
- To come up with a timetable for the project
- To finalise the budget for the project
- Meetings and consultations
- To learn about the work health and safety concerns of employees for the past month
- To brainstorm ideas for a new project
- Training initiatives
- To teach newly hired employees about company policies and procedures
- To teach employees about the use of a new software being adapted by the organisation
Seeking Assistance or Clarification on Communication Objectives
Sometimes, the objectives you come up with may not sufficiently align with the overarching project goals you have. As such, you must seek assistance or clarification from relevant personnel. This would include colleagues as well as higher-ups who have experience or knowledge regarding your communication activity that would help them guide you in determining what your objectives should be. In seeking their aid, you must simply approach them and ask them for their guidance.
The final step in preparing for communication involves the selection of the appropriate methods of communicating information internally and externally. To do so sufficiently, you must take into consideration the different organisational requirements with which you must align your communication.
Methods of Communication
The main difference between internal and external communication is the receiver of the information you intend to send. As the name would suggest, internal communication involves the interaction between or among members of the organisation. On the other hand, external communication occurs between organisational members and external stakeholders (e.g. clients). For both types of communication, you have a variety of methods you can use to reach out to those you intend to communicate with. These include verbal and written forms discussed below.
Verbal Communication
Also referred to as ‘oral communication,’ verbal communication methods involve actual conversations between or among communicators. These methods make use of spoken words to transmit information. For both internal and external communication, verbal communication can be done through the following methods:
Perhaps the most common method of verbal communication, face-to-face conversations occur every single day. This may be both informal or formal, meaning conversations may or may not have strict agendas to follow. They may be brief and in passing or extensive and planned.
The use of telephones to communicate may sound outdated, but such is still a reliable method of communication that is widely used in various companies. Most offices have telephones set up in almost every table, allowing employees to communicate with each other internally. Moreover, telephones may also be used to reach out to external stakeholders who have made their telephone numbers available.
Mobiles are a method of communication that have emerged in recent years. They have come to replace traditional telephones and are especially useful for reaching out to external stakeholders quickly and easily. Unlike the wired telephone, the compact and wireless design of mobile phones makes them easy to bring along even outside the office premises. This makes it easier to contact employees you want to reach out to when you are away.
Thanks to technology and the internet, you no longer have to rely on face-to-face conversations to verbally communicate with others. Video conference is an emerging communication method that allows you to hold virtual meetings with everyone – from remote workers and employees who are away to customers who are in hard-to-reach locations. All you need to facilitate this method of communication is the right equipment and a stable internet connection.
Written Communication
As the name would suggest, written communication methods involve the use of writing to send messages. Unlike verbal communication, written communication tends to be stricter and more formal. These methods of communication also face the disadvantage of having delays since they must first be sent and read by the receiver. However, a clear advantage of written communication is that it produces an output that both senders and receivers can refer to at any point after it has been sent. For both internal and external communication, written communication can be done through the following methods:
Perhaps the most popular method of communicating in the workplace, emails are used for everything from scheduling meetings with employees and clients to submitting proposals, contracts, and project outputs. As a general rule of thumb, the use of email has a formal undertone. It is a reliable method for reaching out to any number of people, both internally and externally.
Text messaging, also known as using short message service (SMS), is another trend that has emerged with the use of mobile phones. The use of SMS has enabled the rise of speedy communication between and among employees and their clients as well. This comes in handy when you need a quick response from someone who may not have access to their email or cannot take a call.
Social media is another emerging form of communication that enables you to reach out to external stakeholders through different websites and platforms that facilitate content sharing and creation. The biggest advantage of this communication method is that it allows the receivers of messages to engage with the material that you release. This makes communication more meaningful and interactive.
Organisational Requirements Relevant to Workplace Communication
To ensure that you select your communication methods appropriately in every activity you may have, you must have a key understanding of your organisational requirements. These requirements underlie all organisations, and all your efforts must be aligned with these.
Organisational Goals
Organisational goals are essential to all businesses. These goals represent the long-term aspirations of your organisation. All communication efforts must remain relevant to your organisational goals. If they fail to align with these, they become unnecessary and can be considered nothing more than noise.
Organisational Objectives
Your organisational objectives are short-term aims aligned with organisational goals. When achieved, these enable you to realise your overarching goals. Organisational objectives must be set up to be SMART – that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based.
Policies and Procedures
Organisational policies and procedures work hand in hand. They guide employees in performing their roles and ensure that all efforts are aligned with organisational goals and objectives. Policies are rules and guidelines while procedures are the logical and clearly defined action steps that tell you how to enact your policies. Organisations have policies and procedures that would regulate communications within the organisation.
Protocols
Protocols are another organisational requirement worth discussing. These refer to the set of rules and standards your organisation prescribes to make sure that decisions are made in line with best practice. They are closely related to your procedures as your protocols essentially define the steps – the procedures – that employees are to follow to satisfactorily accomplish given tasks. Organisations would have communication protocols to instruct employees on how to best communicate in the organisation.
Codes of Conduct
Similar to workplace policies, codes of conduct within your organisation are a set of rules that outline the accepted norms employees must adhere to. Codes of conduct are more focused than policies, providing guidance on how employees should act in specific situations. Your organisation would have codes that teach employees acceptable ways to communicate in various scenarios.
Organisational Reputation and Culture
The final organisational requirements you must consider as you communicate are your reputation and culture. The reputation of your organisation refers to the way stakeholders – both internal and external – perceive the organisation. It is important to maintain a positive reputation so that people are more inclined to engage in business with your company. The way you communicate both internally and externally would influence the way your organisation is perceived. As such, it is crucial to keep communication efforts aligned with your goals, objectives, and desired image.
Organisational culture, on the other hand, is the system of shared beliefs, values, and behaviours within an organisation. Communication is perhaps the most visible manifestation of organisational culture, and different organisations have different cultures for workplace communication. This reflects in the use of language, styles, and tones shared among employees as well as the practices in place to promote communication.
Legislative Requirements Relevant to Workplace Communication
Along with your internal requirements, you must consider the external requirements relevant to your workplace teams. These come in the form of legislation that has an impact on your communication. Legislation refers to the collective laws that give definitive guidelines for organisations to follow and the corresponding penalties should you fail to comply. Relevant pieces of legislation include:
Anti-Discrimination Laws
In Australia, there are several laws in place that protect minorities from discrimination. It is illegal to discriminate anyone on the basis of age, race, gender, sex, and disability. Anti-discrimination laws are applicable in several areas of one’s public life, including employment. To comply with these, your organisation may reinforce internal regulations in the form of policies, procedures, and codes of conduct. Along with these, you must also ensure that your communications promote equality and respect towards everyone.
Further Reading
Follow the links below read more on anti-discrimination laws:
Privacy Act 1988
The Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act) is a law that aims to protect and promote the privacy of individuals. It is particularly concerned about how Australian Government agencies and organisations handle personal information. One particular section of the law merits further discussion as it discusses the use of personal information.
Part II, Division 2, Section 16A
This section discusses the situations where it is permittable to share personal information. It is particularly significant because, by default, the sharing and usage of others’ personal information should not be done without their consent.
The section recognises seven permitted general situations, these are:
- To lessen or prevent a serious threat to an individual's life, health or safety, or to public health or safety
- To take appropriate action in relation to suspected unlawful activity or serious misconduct
- To locate a missing person
- To assert a legal or equitable claim
- To conduct an alternative dispute resolution process
- To perform diplomatic or consular functions (this permitted general situation only applies to agencies)
- To conduct specified Defence Force activities (this permitted general situation only applies to the Defence Force)
Further Reading
Read more on this piece of legislation.
Work Health and Safety Act 2011
The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act) is a law that aims to protect the health, safety, and welfare of employees in the workplace. This piece of legislation protects all kinds of workers as well as other individuals who may be affected by the work being accomplished by these workers. The WHS Act outlines requirements every business must provide. These include:
It is important to note that when it comes to incident notification, the WHS Act provides guidance on the information that must be provided to regulators. This includes the specific information you must give through either oral or written form.
For instance, if you are giving notice via telephone, you must give the details of the incident as requested by the regulator. If required, you must also provide written notice of the incident within 48 hours of that requirement being made.
Further Reading
Read more on this piece of legislation.
Selecting the Appropriate Communication Method
When it comes to selecting the appropriate verbal and written communication methods, there are several factors you must take into account. Your two main considerations are the audience and the type of information that you must communicate. More specific guidance on this includes:
Verbal communication
- Often used for scenarios that require more in-depth discussion and feedback
- Preferred for instances that require the use of auditory language to communication information
- Includes brainstorming, presentations, and group meetings
Written communication
- Suited for scenarios that require the sharing of direct or explicit information
- Preferred for instances that require the use of written language to communication information
- Includes sending documents, sharing, and making announcements
Quiz
- There are key work activities done in every organisation, and all of these require communication.
- These integral work activities include reporting, coordinating with clients, meetings, consultations, and training initiatives.
- There are different communication requirements for each identified work activity that you must sufficiently prepare for.
- You must properly identify as well as assign communication roles to yourself and to others to complete your identified work activities satisfactorily.
- You must properly establish the communication objectives of your work activities and seek assistance or clarification regarding these, as necessary.
- You must select the appropriate verbal and/or written communication method for reaching out to internal and/or external stakeholders.
- Your selection of communication methods must be aligned with the relevant organisational and legislative requirements.
