Business communication approaches: A case of UNISON

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie
Published: 22nd December 2016

Introduction

While this might not be known to the individuals undertaking performing certain tasks in a company, the fact is that people actually engage in a number of communications while at work. For instance, they might be communicating verbally with their fellow colleagues, taking orders from supervisors or even sending emails to customers.

Communication is the very heart of any given business activity. On that ground, it is important that people in any company assess the way they communicate in order to ensure quality flow of work. According to the communication theorist Wilbur Schramm (1955), communication is the process of establishing unity of oneness of thought between two parties in communication. On that ground, it helps the employees to measure the way they communicate with their fellow workers as well as the customers in order to ensure that intended messages are actually communicate as intended.

UNISON is a company headquartered in London with over 1.3 million member and 12 regional offices, including those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its staffs amount to 1,200 people across its 1,300 branches. Conferences are normally designed to sort out issues and members are given the across wide range of issues. Considering the high volume of member and workforce, it becomes easily understandable that establishing quality communication is necessary for ensuring quality delivery of services in the company. Thus, this paper is designed to gain an understanding of the communication approaches in the company as well as analyze how these approaches can be enhanced in order to improve the quality of communication flow in the system.

Analysis of communication approaches in Unison

Past studies have widely linked communication to organization growth because it involves the exchange of information, opinions, plans, proposal, decisions, reaching agreements, sending orders, and conducting sales (Blalock, 2005; Alyssa, 2006; Kotler, 2006; Peason, 1993; Stewart, 1981; Churchill, 1995).

Internal and external communication

In order to gain an understanding on how communication is made within the company, the model developed by Shannon-Weaver (1947) best describes the approach adopted in the company. The model involves a transmitter that sends messages to the receiver. Normally, the transmitter will have to place the data in a form that the receiver can understand (encoding), the medium is then chosen (e.g. email, video, postal), and the receiver will then translate the message upon receiving it (decoding).

In any case, it is important that just sending the message to the receiver doesn’t actually mean that the receiver will get the message or even understand it if it is gotten. The reason is because there are a number of factors (such as noise and policy) that influences the potential of a receiver to get a message and download it exactly as encoded by the sending. One of the important approaches for communicating internally in the company is through its magazine called: InsideOut. The company sends out this magazine to all of its staffs via numerous mediums such as e-mail, posters, staff briefings, documents or meetings, and this magazine highlights issues facing the company as well as details the staffs on ways to push forward with suggestion about ways that these issues can be reduced.

Just like internal communication, external communication is also important to the company as it has over 1,300 branches that it needs to convey issues to and receive feedbacks from stakeholders in these branches with respect to how these issues can be handled. The company makes us of its website (www.unison.co.uk) as the primary medium for communicating to the all of its employees and clients. For instance, the website features an article for new uses to detail them about the company’s main objectives and its services. Through this medium, the company is able to communicate to its employees about business issues they face as well as model out a standard for all of its branches, while also communicating to its customers about the quality of their services and getting feedbacks from these customers – which they use in redesigning their services to meet the needs of customers.

From the above analysis, it can be stated that the company has been able to establish strong communication both internally and externally through these medium. This is because Kotler, (2006), made known that communication is the process through which the company informs its customers –directly or indirectly – about if products or services and persuade them to make purchases. On the internal sphere, this is done to communicate with the employee about standards that they must abide with in order to meet the corporate goal of increased business performance. Thus, UNISON has been able to meet these objectives and it can be linked as the main reason for the company’s continued success.

Formal –vs- informal communication

Still on the side of understanding of the company communicates in its system and also externally. In terms of the formal communication, it is derived from the company’s desires to change certain policies. When the company decides to change certain policies in its system, it communicates the new policies within its branches before conference meeting and each staff in each of its branches will discuss the issue – then come up with their own idea on how to handle the issues. On that same ground, each of the branches will elect a member from the branch and then these representatives will come to the conference meet where they will discuss the issues together. Once the company have decided on new policies, then these representatives will then carry on the policy down to their branches where they will also discuss it with the staffs and then enact these new policies.

In the informal context, the company sort of empowers the staffs to have that freedom of handling certain issues by themselves. The company publishes communication catalogues that details all the problems faced by the staffs and how the staff solves it. This is used to empower the whole workforce in such a way that other staffs can go through the catalogue when they experience related issues.

Blalock (2005) also made known that communication should be done in such a way that the intended audience will be well informed with respect to issues of things that will reflect the situation the company is intending to solve and highlight feedbacks based on the complains that customers have highlighted and the recommendations made by the staffs on how the issue can be solved. UNISON has been successful in that area.

Measure to reduce barriers of communication in UNISON

There are numerous barriers to communication in the company both internally and externally. In the internal aspect of it, the barriers come in the form of “noise.” For instance, when the staffs are going through new information, they might be distracted by the noise coming in from different angles and this can impact on their understanding, assessment and response to the situation negatively. Additionally, barriers also come in the form of language as not all the employees and customers speak English – thus people who don’t speak English are limited with respect to their understanding of things that are being communicated to them. Additionally, it was also made known in the case that there are some lone workers in the company that are not easily reached and this can impact on the potential of having the messages communicated to these workers.

On that ground, recommendations will be made with respect to how the company can handle these issues. Alyssa (2006), made known that issues like this can be solved by a number of ways. For instance, the noise issue can be solved by communicating the messages at the staffs convenience in order to ensure that there are no distractions, of communicating it to everybody during board meetings where all the people in the company are present and noise is less as they seek to gain an understanding of what is going on in their respective branches. On the side of language barrier, this can be eliminated by translating the catalogues and websites into languages that are easily understood by the employees – this is now possible with a number of free software that are designed to do such. Finally, messages can be tailored for the staffs individually and this will address the issue of lone workers that seem to be ignored in the communication delivery sphere.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, the understanding being highlighted is that communication is very important in the organizational setting and they are four types of communication that can come in the form of internal (communicated to people in the respective company), external (communicated to the stakeholders or staffs in other branches), formal (used to form polices that govern business operations in the company), and informal (used to provide workers in the company with tips on how they can advance their performance by checking through previous issues and the issue where solved. UNISON as shown in the paper has been successful in this area and this can be reflected on the company’s high level of performance. However, the company is also experiencing some barriers to their communication pattern and this comes in the form of language barriers, lone workers that are hard to reach, and noise. It has been recommended that personalized message is right for solving these issues. 

References

Alysa, G. (2006). 12 secrets of effective business communication. Posted in HW to’s – 35 comment by Noupe.

Blalock, M. (2005). Listen up, why good communication is good business. Wisconsin Business Alumni update.

Churchill, G. A. (1995). Marketing research: Methodological foundations (5th ed.). London: the Dryden Press.

Kotler, P. (2004). Marketing management. New Delhi: Pearson Education.

Peason, G. J. (1993). Business orientation – cliché or substance. Journal of Marketing Management 9 (3), 233 – 43.

Stewart, D. W. (1981). The application and misapplication of factor analysis in marketing research. Journal of Marketing Research, 18, 51 – 62.