Importance of Internal Communication in an Organisation

Introduction

Communication play the important part to solve the any kind of the problem occurs in the real life. There are two types of the communication.

• Internal communication
• External communication

Internal communication is the 'communication between employees or departments across all levels or divisions of an organization' (CBS Interactive Inc., 2009) whereas the external communication is the 'the exchange of information and messages between an organization and other organizations, groups, or individuals outside its formal structure' (CBS Interactive Inc., 2009).

Internal communication is the most and important factor within the any small or big organisation. Because of the good and right internal communication between employees, make their work more efficient and accurate which helps the company progress in the market.

There are no of the flows of the internal communication within the organisation and those are formal, informal, upward, downward, vertical, and horizontal. All of them are used by the any organisation as they required. It adds value to the company's overall performance. All flows of the internal communication uses different types of the method of communication and that are verbal, non-verbal, visual, written, electronic, mass.

But for doing that, organisation is using different kind of support to implement the internal communication .And those are telephone, face to face, tables, advertisement, eye contact, email, sign language, letter, fax, etc.

In the organisation when we are going to use more of internal communication when something happening in the business or the organisation. That means 'change'. When anyone thinks about the change, at the first point nobody will like it at the very first stage. Because of,' Change is something that presses us out of our comfort zone.'(Institute of Industrial Engineers, 2009).

Why we need a change? Change will be occurring in the organization due to two factors. Those are

• Internal force
• External force

Change with Internal forces like, changing the employee, new equipment buying, behaviour or attitude of the employee, or the structure of the company has been change, or owner change. That all affecting the organisation and they heavily affect the business. Second one is external forces. Those are the new technology due to new research, market change, economy change, government laws change, etc. All are affecting the whole market and the organization as well.

Mainly there are three types of the change occur in the organization structure, technology and people. First is structure changing that means like formalization, size of the company, converting flat structure to tall structure, changing the country (culture). Example, before the organization does not have the timing to come at work and go. Suddenly top management implement the time to come to work and go from work. That will make the difference to the entire employee. Second one is technology that means; today everyday there is new technology coming in the market. To cope up with the competitor everyone have use the latest technology. For that you have to train all the employees to use that new technology. Example, before LSC do not have the biometric attendance but now they do so, the management has to train the all the lectures,' how to use that biometric machine?' and last one is the people that means attitude and behaviour change of the employee, or management change Example, suppose the company is in loss and owner sell the company to the another owner so the new owner might change whole employee or might he/she keep them but the management is changed so employee has to work in way that is suitable for the new owner.

Now this change cannot be implementing in straight way in the business so for that we have to follow the process or steps of the change. They are as follows,

1. Purpose
2. Plan
3. Action
4. Feedback
5. Adapt
6. Repeat (lance haun,2009)

Now I come back to the main question which is

How to use an internal communication in a context of change? For that I am going to give you two or three case study as an example.

Case study: JD SPORTS using the HHT (scanners)

Few months before there is new system comes in the one of UK's company name called 'JD SPORTS'. That system is HHT (scanners).When this system came in the company nobody have a clue how to use it and at the first stage all management denied to use that. But then top level management explain what the system is about and how to use it what are the benefit for that all that to the managers of the stores. And then after manager came to staffs and same thing explain to them and then they all understand what the HHT (scanners) is? And they are going to use it? Now that system is in the store but still employee bit scared to use it because it is very expensive product and second thing it is that connected to the head office so, any single mistake done that straight go to the head office. Then time gone people use to it and now it become so simple to use it. Now they realized that the manual work was very time consuming but with the scanner their job become easier. Now if you go in the store everyone of the employee is always looking for the HHT (scanner) because it makes their job easier. Why that is make happen because they explain the whole system from top level management to the normal staff very briefly and also they took the feedback and implement some new feature to it and now system is in the every single store of this company. And for doing that company spend so much time and money. Like they handout the leaflets for that and they shown the employee videos of it.

Thus, from above we can say that, they change the system but very important the internal communication was well enough in the company so, they make the change successfully.

Cash study 2:

There is another company called ABC LTD (name changed) that company have so many stores in the UK. For the couple of years ago they had the two stores in Camden town. Distance between two stores was all about 10 min walk. One is bigger and the other one is smaller. But because of the two stores on same high street the smaller store was not making much money. So they send the e-mail to the store manger that we are thinking to close down that store. But they did not decided yet .they give like one month but still there is a same condition. So company's director thought that smaller one will be closed down and we will expand the bigger store. So the decision has been done that smaller store will close down.

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This information passed on to the regional manager and the area manager with the use of mail and telephone about the decision. Area manager come down to the store with company's HR person to the branch personally. They explain the whole thing to the manager and whole team. They already decided that everyone have to go from the company with the redundancy except management (they will give them a transfer to the other store). But every single staff (28 staffs) has to go. All staffs oppose to that decision. And they told the management we are not going to leave the company. And for making that happen they can go to the court. Because some of them working for the company more than 3 year. Their family relay on his/her job. So management informed that to the top level management. Because of the legal problem they decided that,

• Temporarily staffs have to go from the company.
• Staffs working for the company more that 1 year they can go by taking the redundancy.
• Staffs who still wanted to continue with the job they can have transfer to their nearest branch.
• They took all the staffs contact detail and said that if there is any place in other store they will contact with them(that means they will have the first preference)

And they send letter each of staffs and let them know what is going to happen to them.

Thus, from above we can say that because of the good and the problem solving internal communication between the staffs and the management they resolve the problem of store closing down.

Conclusion:

From above discussion we can say that for any organization in real world if anybody thinking to go for the change than they can make the change but only with the good communication between the members of the company.

Society, technology, culture are changing every time. And because of that any organization which is in the market they have go with the change and that will be implemented only if there is the good, efficient internal communication .So we can say that internal communication is a blueprint for developing an organization strategy which drives an organization towards its corporate goals.Thus it helps the organization to get success in the market.

References:

Books:

• Cook ,Sarah (2004) Change Management Excellence, Kogan Page Limited
• Smith,Lyn Mounter,Pamela (2005) Internal Communication, Kogan Page Limited

Online:

• JD SPORTS (2009) JD SPORTS HISTORY [Online] (Access on 21/11/09) Received on: http://www.jdsports.co.uk/about-us/jd-history/
• Iienet (2009) change management [Online] (Access on: 12/11/09) Received on: http://www.iienet2.org/Details.aspx?id=3290
• Rehaul (2009) six steps of change in organization [Online] (Access on: 14/11/09) Received on: http://rehaul.com/six-steps-to-manage-change-in-your-organisation/