Managing organisational communications

SCOPE

Organisational communication can be defined as a method of conveying and sharing information such as organisational goals, plans used to achieve those goals, policies, rules & regulations, and other trivial details. Informally, communication in an organisation might take place in different ways, but, formally, each organisation follows a particular communication method to convey information.

Explanation

Advertisment

Organisational communication is an integral part of every organisation, and it plays an essential role in building a successful business. Communication in an organisation affects the way people behave in the organisation. Communication in an organisation is a vital managerial component because the role of management is to make plans and give directions. People working in an organisation, whether managers or employees must be aware of how to behave to create the best working environment in the organisation.

Communication in an organisation also shapes the way people behave in the organisation. The behaviour of people in the organization affects the way people motivate each other to achieve organizational goals. Organizational communication plays an essential role in the way people interact with one another in meetings. On the other hand, ineffective organisational communication results in misunderstanding, lack of coordination, and incompetence in the organisation. Therefore, it is essential to have effective communication in the organization to execute plans effectively and contribute to the organization’s success.

Effective communication in an organisation is so vital that nowadays, even recruiters look for communication skills as one of the primary skills in the people they want to hire. Thus, you will commonly find phrases such as business communication, corporate communication, or organisational communication skills in job advertisements.

Overview

We must realize the importance of regular and sufficient communications for our employees. One of the goals is to limit the ways we communicate with our employees preferably communicating in a way that works best for us. This is done because we just dont have the time to do otherwise. Nonetheless, we all absorb information differently. Some of us are more visual than others and want to see charts and graphs; other prefer to listen to others communicate the information to them through a presentation or in a meeting; and yet others want information before review and analyse on their own and then to speak with someone about what they have read. When we plan our communications upfront, we enable for:

Improving the effectiveness of communications overall, including frequency and quality
Keeping individuals engaged in the initiative through open communications
Getting employees involved in communications through enabling for more effective two-way conversations

Communication strategy

How to prepare an effective communication strategy?

An effective communication strategy can only be built by considering essential factors such as organisational structure, goals & objectives, and the organisation’s values. The following are the steps that can be followed to prepare an effective communication strategy.

Analyse the size of the organization

It is essential to consider the size of the organization while preparing the organizational communication plan. In a large organisation with multiple departments, a formal and well-planned communication plan is necessary to keep all the employees working in all the departments. Informal communication can prove to be ineffective in such organisations and can cause various misunderstandings among the employees working in the organisation.

Ask your employees for ideas

Sometimes, considering the ideas and opinions of employees might help you to create an effective communication plan. However, They knows better the shortcomings of the existing communication plan and what can be done to eliminate these defects.

Take inspirations from a similar organisation

You can look at the communication plan of organisations of similar size and speak to their leaders to ask for their help. In addition, you can modify the communication plan used by other organisations as per the requirements of your organisation.

Take feedback from employees and managers

- Finally, managers and employees will be the ones who will be using the communication methods on a day to day basis. Therefore, they can come across the shortcomings of the communication plan and can provide suggestions to enhance the plan.

- How to address the challenges of organisational communication while preparing an effective organisational communication plan?

- The challenges associated with organizational communication cannot be neglected while preparing an effective communication plan.

The impact of effective organisational communication

Effective communication impacts the organisation and the people working in it positively. These include:

Effective communication helps to reduce misunderstandings among the employees and with the clients and business partners. Hence, the number of lawsuits and complaints also minimizes.
Effective communication in the organization builds the confidence and morale of employees working in the organization. The employees feel more satisfied in an organization where they are well-informed.
Effective communication improves the procedures and processes that take place in the organisation, as a result of which efficiencyin the organisation progresses and the cost of production also reduces.
Excellent and clear communication in the organization helps employees understand the organization’s policies and rules & regulations. That helps them to become loyal towards the company.
Proper communication in the organization helps in establishing healthy bonds among the employees and management. The employees trust their management and trust the decisions that they take for them. The main advantage of this scenario is that the organization remains union-free, and people communicate their problems and demandsand look for a mutually beneficial solution rather than on strikes.
Employees feel free to voice their opinions and ideas. It is advantageous for the organisation as it helps the organisation to grow.
Planned organisational communication is helpful in the execution of production plans.

Impacts of ineffective Organizational communication

Ineffective communication causes altercations among employees and management because of the misunderstanding created by ineffective communication.
Ineffective communication in an organization causes incoordination in the departments. Incoordination causes heated arguments between employees, wastage of resources, and high cost of production.
It is difficult to meet customers’ demands and expectations when there is ineffective communication in the organization. The sales department would not know what the marketing department has been promising to the customers.

Ineffective communication can also cause a high rate of turnover. Employees feel dissatisfied and ditched when they are not appropriately communicated.

Building a communication strategy

A company lacking communication skills can end up like a lonely kid in a sandbox with no one to play with. They should learn about how to define communication and business objectives, and how an effective communication strategy can turn the company into a successful, even beloved brand. Communication is what holds people together and the same goes for people and brands. Communication is forever and always a vital part of the product. If customers/consumers like the way you communicate with them, and it makes them feel loved and taken care of, it will probably translate into more sales and more revenue for you.

A communication strategy is the critical piece bridging the situation analysis and the implementation of a social and behaviour change communication program. Effective communication strategies use a systematic process and behavioural theory to design and implement communication activities that encourage sustainable social and behaviour change.

Most communication strategies include the following elements:

Brief summary of the situation analysis
Audience segmentation
Program theory to inform strategy development
Communication objectives
Approaches for achieving objectives
Positioning for the desired change
Benefits and messages to encourage desired change
Communication channels to disseminate messages
Implementation plan
Monitoring and evaluation plan
Budgets

Many of the elements of the communication strategy have their own How-to Guide in this collection and should be reviewed during the development of the communication strategy.

Training

Communications training or communication skills training refers to various types of training to develop necessary skills required for effective communication. Training in communication skills is essential to all organisations. Trainers of communication skills develop communication skills employees already have, rather than focusing on what is absent, while trainees try to alter their communication style to be more efficient and productive. The communication training focuses on the following key skills that every effective communicator must possess;

Active listening– Active listening is one of the most essential skills to carry out effective communication. Being observant and a good listener are very important in verbal communication. An individual should be able to show interest in what is being said and try not to interrupt.
Being Empathetic and Rapport Building– People who communicate with a cordial tone always have the advantage since we are unknowingly attracted to people who are friendly and make us feel good. Also, understanding the perspectives and emotions of other people is also important to good communication. More of emotional intelligence when communicating ( understanding emotions, perceiving emotions, identifying emotions and using emotions)
Being Precise and Unambiguous– People who talk too much and always want to control the conversation, are not much liked and few people want to be around them—going straight to the point without being rude or stiff.
Being Confident– If you appreciate your true abilities, confidence comes from within. Speaking with confidence includes the right words to speak, the tone of your voice, your gestures and also your eye contact. It is essential to be confident in one’s beliefs and opinions and express them in an assertive manner.

Also crucial to note is the purpose of training in communication, these include:

Healthy industrial relations
Effective performance
Facilitates leadership
Decision making
Cooperation and collaboration

Communication skills training thus plays an essential role in a number of aspects in work settings. Being an efficient communicator needs real skills. Communication skills have to be developed and improved continuously to be effective in business and hence communication skills training is very essential for successful collaboration in the workplace.

Responding to employee issues

Communication between management and staff is very often one of the biggest causes of workplace issues. If management is not open to listening or implementing solutions that would make life easier or more efficient for workers, it can be perceived as cold-hearted or uncaring. This, in turn, can cause it to lose the respect of the employees. Resentment and bitterness often follow. If, on the other hand, workers do not give a manager an honest chance to lead the team and refuse to follow suggestions, the manager may also become resentful and angry. In a workplace setting, it is vital that everyone feels that they can be safely and fairly heard. Sometimes this can be done in team meetings; open-door policies and transparency between executives and labourers which is also usually a step in the right direction if handled correctly and swiftly.

Dealing with external media

In order for your company to be recognized and understood in the world, you’ll have to build a strong external communications strategy. This is the only way people will know about your product or services, and this process is the best way to rely information to general audiences.

Measuring results

According to Jenni Field, the importance of internal communication cannot be underestimated; it is one of the few roles that touch all areas of the organisation. Internal communication has a direct and great impact on employee productivity and engagement, collaboration efforts, office morale, and alignment across the organisation. If you’re finding that employee engagement is low, morale is suffering, collaboration is virtually non-existent, the company’s vision isn’t being executed effectively, customers aren’t totally satisfied, turnover is growing, and productivity is faltering then it’s time to look closer at your internal communication strategy. But before you can even enhance your internal communication strategy, you need to measure it. After all, how can you ever improve your internal communication or even make an effective decision regarding it when you don’t have the data to back up or to understand what is working and what needs to be improved quickly. Measuring results in Internal Communication is often overlooked in a company’s human resources and internal communications departments. (Possibly because people can always find “more pressing” issues, the importance of a planning tool is vastly underestimated). Results should show a snapshot of the current state of internal communication in the organisation. Using this snapshot we can create a diagnosis for the state of internal communication to understand what problems we need to improve. But what does measuring internal communication look like? The idea is to stop speculating and start collecting concrete information about how employees are experiencing internal communication daily.

Audience

For any business to succeed, you need to know your audience. Your fancy tech, ideas, or tactics won’t work if you aren’t aligned with what your audience responds to. And because you have various groups of external audiences, you need to think how your external communications can be tailored to speak their language. For example, the communications for customers will be different from investors or partners. You need your external communication to be relatable to given groups of people. Analyse these people and find what interests them most, how they consume information, and what they are saying or want from you. This is where social media becomes key, looking towards review sites or customer surveys, comments from marketing content and adverts, questions and feedback during public appearances or networking.

Communicating up

Getting face time with executives can be challenging. Getting your message across quickly to the executive in a clear, concise, and direct manner is where most people lose the game. Because our interactions with members of the C-suite and senior management can be limited, it is crucial that each conversation is professional and effective.

Find out what executives really care about, and tailor your message to them. Learn how to prepare for executive conversations, including those that are unplanned. Recognize communication techniques that executives commonly use and react to them. Practice active listening and getting your message across quickly; understand how to earn and maintain trust; learn to demonstrate the value you can offer, and use techniques of persuasion appropriately. You will have to practice techniques so when you are faced with conflict you can regain and maintain trust while convincing the executive that collaboration is the key to a successful engagement and deliverable.

Geographically dispersed audience

A long time ago before the days of videoconferencing, intranets, and email, teams generally needed to be in the same physical location in order to work effectively. But those days are long gone. Now, many of us work regularly with colleagues based in different buildings, cities, countries, and even continents. Team members may be in different time zones, speak different languages, and be part of different cultures.

One team may include any variety of circumstances. Some members may work in groups of two, three, or more in the same office, while others may work individually in separate offices or at home. You may see some team members every day, but you may rarely see others – or perhaps youve never even met them. Regardless of how people are organized, managing a team thats spread out in many locations can present huge challenges, even for the most experienced bosses. How do you ensure that everyone feels theyre treated fairly, if you see some team members much more than others? How can you prevent remote team members from feeling isolated? And how do you get all members to buy into the teams objectives and stay on track?

This is done by doing the following:

Choose the right team members
they should be self-motivated
they need good communication skills
they must be result driven
they should be open and honest
Define your team purpose
Develop strong team dynamics
Give feedback and reward performance
stay in contact with everyone
make sure that feedback is fair and consistent
ensure that rewards are equal
Promote team building
set up an intranet page
build a virtual tea room
be sensitive to language barriers

Diversity and global issues

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) continue to be both a priority and a challenge in today’s workplaces. But aside from being a legal and moral obligation, diversity makes for more successful, profitable organisations and happier employees: and communication has a critical role to play.

When we embrace and value different thoughts, ideas, experiences, and identities and the ways in which those differences bring unique ways of working to our organisations, everyone stand to benefit—Diversity and inclusion have been hot for many years. However, genuinely cultivating an inclusive environment for our employees goes a great deal further than merely hiring more individuals from underrepresented groups. It requires a cultural shift, a commitment at every level of our organisations: and that’s something that isn’t always easy or attainable.

While we’re now the most diverse we’ve ever been, there is still some way to go. Many organisations still struggle to talk about and address issues around diversity and inclusion. Particularly as it inherently involves conversations about gender, race, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, and more. Communication is sometimes considered a risk: opening us up to scrutiny, showing where we’re failing, increasing the chances of being called out for discriminatory attitudes or practices, or even being perceived negatively as a PR ploy. It is a fine line to walk. Rather than risk getting it wrong, many choose to shy away from talking about diversity and inclusion altogether. The role and responsibility of Communications is two-fold:

To give each individual and diverse group a voice and sense of belonging within their organisation
To inform, educate, and support all employees to adopt inclusive attitudes in every aspect of their working lives

Those charged with developing and executing a diversity and inclusion strategy must also recognize the nature of intersectionality: we all have multiple identities that influence how we interact with others. Just because we may fall into one group, doesn’t mean we don’t fall into either categories; a mindful approach that ensures we don’t “box” individuals in is crucial.

Vehicles and approaches

Communication occurs in any organisation with two or more employees. Its very easy to fall into negative communication habits that drain the organisation of its talent, energy, and time. By consciously working to communicate in effective ways, you are increasing the chances that more of the talent, energy, and time in your organisation will go toward improving results. It is essential to continue to learn about effective communication to improve employee relationships by signing up for our webinar on creating friction-free relationships at work.

Consequently, communication approaches that ruin working relationships waste the time, energy, and talent in an organization. Conversely, communication approaches that strengthen working relationships optimize the talent, energy, and time in an organization toward improving results. At the heart of building a stronger relationship with another person is truly respecting that person. If youre only working to build a stronger relationship with that person because your boss is making you do it, then you are unlikely to make any real progress.

In assessing your total communication strategy, ask yourself, “What resources are readily available to me to communicate my message?” Once you have identified your needs and resources, review potential constraints you might face and develop strategies for overcoming these challenges. Determine when the communication will be best received. Determining the best timing involves thinking about whether your audiences prefer to be reached on weekdays or weekends, mornings or evenings, at work, or at home. Keep in mind that community demographics play an important role in determining the best methods for message delivery.. Build in time for producing materials and advance notice of events.

Handbook

An employee handbook is given to new employees from the employer. The handbook is used to inform employees about their job duties and expectations set by the employer. It should also detail the rights of the employee, as well as the legal obligations of the employer.
What should be included in an employee handbook? Well to answer that entirely, it is important to understand that an employee handbook needs to be kept up to date and should accessible at any time. Most handbooks include the following:

Company culture, code of conduct, and a mission statement
Human resource and legal information
Company policies regarding attendance, vacation time, sick days, non-discrimination, etc.
Resignation and termination

Newsletters

When the work starts piling up, and it’s difficult for your team members to stay on top of what’s happening within your organisation. This is exactly where internal newsletters may help. Namely, this is a fantastic way to share important company news, both good and bad ones, and ask your employees for their opinions. For example, you could send weekly internal newsletters for your staff members. Still, avoid stuffing their inboxes with a bunch of irrelevant emails, as this may overwhelm them and distract them from completing their tasks on time.

Townhall meetings

Town Hall Meetings derive their name from town halls. Town halls exist to serve everyone; from citizens to civil servants. This is also what the Town Hall Meeting is exactly about. It is a meeting intended for everyone in the organisation, in which management reports on policy matters, and employees are given ample opportunity to respond, ask questions and enter into discussions with managers.

E-mail

With emails, you need to use the proper grammar to avoid giving the wrong message to your employees. During the covid 19 pandemic most organisations are working via emails because it is easier and efficient for them. By using email to communicate employees and their employers should be taught on email etiquette. This, in turn, helps both the organisation and employees to communicate with clients and among themselves in a professional manner.

Face-face meetings

In today’s digital age the importance of face-to-face communication seems to be fading, as one can go almost an entire day without actually interacting with people. People rely heavily on the convenience of emails, text messages, and social media. While it is impossible to deny the importance of these platforms and the way that they have revolutionized communication, it is important to balance these online interactions with face-to-face communication.

Face-to-Face Advantages

Non-Verbal Cues

You can gauge how interested someone is in what you are talking about by reading their body language. If you are in a meeting and your colleagues are fiddling with their pens, or checking their watches, you know that you have to:

Adjust the tone of your voice or
Use more exciting language to capture their attention.

Likewise, if colleagues and partners are actively nodding their heads and smiling, it is clear that they are engaged with you and your message.

Effectiveness

Face-to-face communication and in-person meetings can boost efficiency. Instead of spending an entire day e-mailing back and forth, you can hash out all of the details of a project in one go. These meetings can also boost creativity as the overall energy will be higher so you can brainstorm and solve a multitude of problems at one time. Face-to-face communication can also be much more effective for those who may struggle with written communication. Everyone has their own unique set of skills, and some people are much more fluid and clear with verbal communication.

A Personal Touch

Adding the “personal touch” of face-to-face communication is much more important to those dealing with outside clients and stakeholders. A sense of community comes with the ability to interact and socialize. This sets the foundation for trust, and ultimately creates a better working relationship

While face-to-face communication is not always an option due to distance or conflicting schedules; it is essential that you do not forget about it completely. Whenever possible, take the time to interact with your colleagues face-to-face and enjoy the benefits.

Telephone

Gone are the days when your desktop telephone was your only means of reaching customers and colleagues. Not only have cell phones taken on increased importance in the workplace, computers also have voice and video telephone capabilities. Today’s communication technologies include standard phones, conference room speaker phones, cell phones, and collaboration applications such as softphones, all of which allow you to have conversations with people anywhere in the world, as long as they have the same or compatible technologies available.

Surveys

Employees are the backbone of any organization. Too often, companies suffer from not paying enough attention to their employees. Do your employees know what your company’s goals are? Are they deeply involved in helping the company reach those goals? Good internal communication survey questions can help you find out. We understand now that work culture isn’t as simple as having a coffee machine. Employee motivation can be tricky. Employees should know that their work is contributing to something larger. Communicating with employees is important to make them feel like their work is meaningful. Effective internal communication helps you achieve that goal. There are many channels through which employees receive company news, from emails to slack channels and team meetings. But which are the most effective for your company? Are those emails getting lost in the inbox, or are people zoning out during meetings? You need an internal communications survey to find out.

Stories

Stories help employers connect with employees if they feel the employees are not motivated enough. To help with a clear way of communication employers can use a real life story to do so. If you’re frustrated because your employees, don’t do what you ask even though you think you have communicated clearly and have repeated it many times. If you really want your message to be memorable and effective. Then, instead of just giving details or instructions, tell a story that people can connect to emotionally. Your story will be remembered and the point you want to get across will make an impact that gets results. It doesn’t even have to be a workplace story. A personal story that gets across the point you wish to make can be very motivating. The following true story is an example of how a story can communicate a message that inspires others.

Social media

Social media fulfils many roles within an organisation’s communications plan, including:

Marketing
Responding to customer questions and complaints.
Recruiting potential employees
Getting new leads on clients.
Learning about new advancements in your field.
Communicating with other companies and experts.

While social media marketing is outside of the scope of this textbook, social media can teach us a lot about how the communication fundamentals applicable in multiple contexts. One of the challenges of communicating online is that each platform has its context and this context is constantly changing. For example, a message on Twitter used to be less than 140 characters. Recently, however, that limit has been increased to 280 characters. It’s also become easier to integrate photos, GIFs, and other links, and to write “threads” by linking multiple tweets. This changes how communicators can effectively communicate.

Often, miscommunications occur because communicators don’t fully understand the context of each platform. For example, some communicators link their Twitter and Facebook accounts to save time, but because the message isn’t tailored to each account, the message might not be effectively received by the audience. The best way to understand the context of the platform is to experiment. What works in one industry or for one company might not work for another.

Messaging apps

First, there were phone calls. Then came email. As technology has evolved, so have the primary modes of communication in the workplace. While many companies still rely heavily on email, it is clear that messaging apps are now taking over as the top communication channel. Several factors are driving this change. Traditional organizations such as retail, hospitality, and manufacturing employ a large number of field-based and desk-less workers. Messaging apps make it easy to communicate with employee’s on-the-go. Unlike email, messaging elicits an instant response and makes the communication process faster. The conversational style also tends to feel more casual, making it more personal and comfortable than email. Perhaps one of the most significant factors, however, is the rising diversity of workforces driving a need for accessible, instant communication across multiple languages.

Virtual team meetings

Virtual communication is how people interact with others without being in the same room. Its used by remote teams in an office environment and practically every industry. For most employees, business communication takes place over many different channels:

Instant messaging apps: WhatsApp
Video conferencing software: Hangouts
Project management tools:Asana, Basecamp, or Trello
Email clients:Apple Mail, Outlook, or Gmail
Social media:LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter
Phone calls:Desk phones mobile phones

It’s crucial to get communication right when you’re working remotely. For example, you could be answering calls as a part of a virtual call centre or managing a team of contractors. Effective business communication matters in any company. Why? Because virtual communication has a huge impact on productivity. When your team knows how to communicate well, they can get work done without waiting hours for a response. Plus, poor communication between remote teams increases the chances of things going wrong.

The grape vine

The grapevine communication happens in every organisation, regardless of company size or industry. This informal type of communication may have a significant impact on the employee experience you deliver as well as your business performance and your ability to build trust with your employees. Therefore, it is crucial for employers to understand the power of grapevine communication in order to be able to control and manage it effectively. In this blog, we will explain what grapevine communication is, and we will go over some tips to help you deal with this type of communication in the workplace. There is no way to eliminate or stop grapevine communication in the workplace. However, there are ways to better understand it, control it and eliminate the negative sides grapevine can bring to your company by ensuring proper employee communications via formal communication channels. Having dedicated employee communications channels at your workplace will help you support your employees productivity all while aligning your organisation.

Types of messages

Standard operating procedures

A standard operating procedure (SOP) is a step-by-step instructions guide to help an employee in performing specific operations smoothly. The main objective of SOP is to ensure uniform and quality output, while simultaneously reducing miscommunication and ambiguity. SOPs are detail-oriented documents and provide step-by-step instructions as to how employees within an organisation must go about completing certain tasks and processes.

General business updates

With more people working remotely from different countries and from home, employers are facing a new challenge. How do you keep everyone up to date with changes within the business, projects, progress and the real-time business news that can impact your organization? Here are four ways to share work updates that ensure everyone stays connected, no matter where they are:

a daily call
weekly stand up
video updates
workplace news feed

Bankruptcy, downsizing and restructuring

Employers face difficult questions when deciding to reorganize, restructure or downsize their workforce. Downsizing or layoff is a widespread strategic decision and change practice since 1970’s and during the economic downturn in the year 2016 it became a more common phenomenon. Changing patterns in reasons cited for job loss support this impression of the rising importance of restructurings. Differences in factors such as the state of the economy and the signal sent by job loss could make the process of downsizing and the effects of job loss differ between restructurings of healthy organizations and downsizing due to financial distress.

Benefits changes

Planning employee benefits for the 2021 plan year presents HR with unique challenges, given that the outlook for the COVID-19 pandemic is still unknown. As employers await word on health plan costs for next year, which insurers usually provide in November, they must decide how to allocate benefits budgets, choose which benefits programs to offer and figure out how to communicate changes to employees.

Emergencies

Nobody expects an emergency or disaster. Yet emergencies and disasters can strike anyone, anytime, anywhere. Employers should establish effective safety and health management systems and prepare their workers to handle emergencies before they arise.

Planning

Where required by some Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, firms with more than ten employees must have a written emergency action plan; smaller companies may communicate their plans orally. Top management support and the commitment and involvement of all employees are essential to an effective emergency action plan.

Employers should review plans with employees when initially put in place and re-evaluate and amend the plan periodically whenever the plan itself, or employee responsibilities, change. Emergency procedures, including the handling of any toxic chemicals, should include:

Escape procedures and escape route assignments.
Special procedures for employees who perform or shut down critical plant operations.
Systems to account for all employees after evacuation and information about the plan.
Rescue and medical duties for employees who perform them.
Means for reporting fires and other emergencies.

Merger or acquisition

A merger is never simple for anyone – employees, executives or HR. But if they all pull together, they can reduce frustrations, achieve a better outcome for the company and perhaps even some gain new skills in the process.

There are ways to help employees to integrate after an acquisition, these include:

let your values guide your actions
over-communicate
empathize
engage with those who are leaving
involve employees in the transition

Outsourcing

Outsourcing has received a bad reputation in the past 25 years, as it has been associated with sending jobs to other countries while increasing the unemployment rate in the motherland. However, outsourcing doesn’t always mean less jobs for people in the original country. The popularity of the practice of it is steadily going up for most modern companies of all industries to some extent. For instance, using an outside accounting firm instead of an in-house employee, or an attorney who is not an actual employee is indeed outsourcing. Outsourcing helps increase productivity in many ways, both directly and indirectly. Simply put, it allows employees to focus on what they do best. These are the tasks that are more meaningful to them. In the long run, outsourcing also helps increase efficiency, and (to be honest) job satisfaction for employees.

Legal issues

Companies today must be very aware of the legal issues involved in employer-employee relations and the responsibilities companies have to establish and maintain a safe and fair environment. Companies have to establish a clear set of policies and practices that guide corporate behaviour toward its workers and its business partners. Companies that produce products and services for the consumer also need to stand behind what they produce and meet common expectations for product reliability and consumer safety. The laws governing workplace culture are changing all the time, and both employer and employee need to keep up with current trends in society as they may apply to the workplace.

References

Balzer, W. K. & Gillespie, J. Z. (2007). Job satisfaction. In Rogelberg, S. G. (Ed.). Encyclopedia

of industrial and organisational psychology Vol. 1 (pp. 406-413). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Barnlund, D. C. (2008). A transactional model of communication. In. C. D. Mortensen (Eds.),

Communication theory (2nd ed., pp47-57). New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction.

Gatti, Maria (2011). “The Language Of Competence In Corporate Histories For Company

Websites”. Journal of Business Communication: 482–502.

Miller, Katherine (2005). Communication Theories: Perspectives, Processes, and Contexts (2^nd ed.). McGraw-Hill Higher Education.