Sharing information among an organization's various branches or departments is of the utmost importance and frequently determines the efficacy and efficiency of its employees. However, there are a variety of barriers to effective communication within a company, and these barriers frequently have a negative impact on both employee and organizational performance. Finding and eliminating every obstacle to effective communication within a company thus becomes of the utmost importance. Although there are methods an employee can use to promote better communication, poor communication in the workplace causes issues that waste time and resources for the business.
This refers to the way in which communication flows from the source to the recipient. Organizations are required to have a well-ordered channel for disseminating information, where formal communications are passed along established channels. The formal power or authority relationships between the employees of an organization define the direction of the flow of communication. Information from top members of the organizations to lower ranking members, for example managers, to subservient staff is known as downward communication, while that from the subservient staff to the managers is called upward communication. Communication between members of staff in the same level of employment is known as horizontal or lateral communication. In additions to this, organizations have departments that handle external and internal communication. External communication comprises of all the information passed from the organization to an outside recipient or from outside sources to the organization. Internal communication comprises of all the information that is communicated within the organization.
Organization efficiency depends on the communication channels’ ability to operate reliably as a means of sharing information. The information needs to be well organized and run through a well-ordered network system to ensure that all the members of the organization are kept informed at all times (Buhler and Worden, 2013).
E-mails
E-mail communications are becoming the dominant mode of information sharing within organizations. E-mail communications are easy to use as the all that employees require is an e-mail account, a computer and a good internet connection. It is an efficient mode of communication, as it allows easy transfer of messages within and outside the organization. E-mails are also accredited for their ability to send bulk information, in that, a single employee can send an e-mail to multiple recipients with ease. This enables the quick and asynchronous sharing of information to the rest of the organization. Another advantage of using e-mails is its ability to attach multimedia files. This means an employee can send an e-mail with videos, images, audio or document attachments. This provision by the e-mail enables the effectiveness of communication in a work environment, and thereby contributes to the achievement of organizations’ growth. In addition to this, e-mails make dissemination of information fast and cheap, it is quite clear that communications via e-mails within an organization play a pivotal role in improving performance in the work environment (Mano and Mesch, 2010).
With that said, communication via e-mails does bring with it negative implications that threaten to derail its effectiveness in improving work performance. The issue of e-mail overload arises as impediment to work efficiency to e-mail users in an organization. E-mail overload presents itself in four sets of issues, which are extent, content, frequency and increased volume. All of these factors under e-mail overload can bring negative balances to the relationship between work performance and information sharing. E-mail overload is informally defined as the existence of too much mail in someone’s e-mail account to an extent that it triggers stress or anxiety, it could either be sent or received. Under the extent category of e-mail overload, an employee’s e-mail account may accumulate numerous mails in the inbox. This is not bad as information sharing is thriving, however the accumulation of received mail develops into a problem when the employee finds it hard to locate work related e-mails in their inboxes. This becomes frustrating as it ends up wasting too much time to undertake simple tasks such as retrieving orders from the e-mail. To make matters worse, the accumulation of mails in the inbox may increase to a point that the e-mail user or employee feels overloaded by the burden. This problem sees the balance between communication and work performance tilt in favor of communication, increasing work effectiveness, but triggering stress to the employee.
In many occasions e-mails work as a distraction from the work that is at hand. Under the e-mail overload, frequency is seen as the number of times employees stop working, so as to check their e-mail accounts for new mail. E-mails must be frequently checked so as to provide detailed information sharing concerning various work-related issues e.g. feedback, work related data or work processes. A study showed that the recovery time from an e-mail distraction at work is almost the same as that from a telephone call, about six seconds. However, with frequent communication via e-mails, the employee is likely to suffer more distractions at the expense of the work performance in an organization due to the accumulation of recovery time.
Content, under the e-mail overload, describes the existences of a large number of mails from different sources, some work related while others are social or just announcements or advertisements. In an attempt to remain connected, employees also use the e-mail as a media to communicate with colleagues, friends and family. According to a research, only 30% of the content in the e-mail require the recipients to reply, the research further added that the duration of time which an employee is disrupted from their roles at work is determined by the content of the e-mail, with both personal and work oriented e-mails disrupting work, the more personal or social e-mails provide the employees with an escape from the stress that is associated with overload. Too much work-related content in the mail creates anxiety among the workers, this then reflects negatively in their work output (Mano and Mesch, 2010).
Under e-mail overload, increased volume describes the fast rate at which the work load is disseminated. This means that e-mails amplify the amount of undertakings that employees are expected to handle. The increase has reflected in the work performances of workers negatively due to the increased level of distress it arises, however, it succeeds in guaranteeing work effectiveness.
Barriers to Communication
There are several factors that act as inhibitors to communication in an organization, these factors can be broadly categorized as external, physical and mechanical barriers. Mechanical barriers include defects in the medium of communication, where the mode of information transmission malfunctions, noise, which is a form of electronic disturbance to the transmission waves and defects in the communication system. Physical factors are caused by environmental features, such as storms affecting electricity connection. External barriers originate from factors such as a language barrier, and socio-psychological influences. These factors affect different individual employees in different ways depending on their backgrounds.
Overcoming Communication Barriers
It is important to understand the various factors that bar communication from being effectively disseminated in the organization so as to develop means to mitigate and solve the communication problem. One method used to overcome communication barrier is by offering constant training to the employees, with the aim of improving their communication skills. To eliminate language and semantic barrier, short clear sentences are used, to avoid confusion or miscommunication (Rai and Rai, 2008). This responsibility falls upon the most trained person in the field or to the senior of most members in the field. The higher-up members need to acquire good communication skills as they are the most likely persons to be communicating to the other members of staff, therefore they have to be prolific speakers and employ all the verbal and non-verbal features of communication that will enable them to communicate effectively. The senior members of departments in organizations are charged with ensuring that their department achieve certain set goals and objectives, it is through effective and clear dissemination of information that this can be achieved by guaranteeing that information is well understood so that the subordinate staff can act accordingly as requested.
The organization also needs to review and maintain the communication systems placed, this could be intranet networks or notice boards. In the case where electronic devises are used, the organization should ensure that there is a constant maintenance of all the involved devices so that there is no disruption to the information sharing process, where orders from managers may not reach the subordinate staff, thereby halting key operations from being executed.
Respecting the channel of passing information is a key factor in improving the effectiveness of employees. It is important for an employee to receive information through the right channels. Orders from managers should be passed downward from the manager’s office to the subordinate staff in question and not from the manager to secondary staff members who then take the information to the employee in question, in a lateral flow. This will contribute in lowering the morale of the employee who is to undertake the given orders and may end up not doing their tasks with the enthusiasm and effort as should be (Sostrin, 2013).
Conclusion
Senior and subordinate employees should understand that communication is more than just talking and listening. For communication to be termed as effective or successful, it has to appeal to the senses of the listeners maintain their attention and compel them to act in a certain desired way. Members charged with communicating information to other members in an organization should ensure that they do not fall prey to the numerous myths of communication, they should therefore make efforts to ensure that they clearly pass information in a manner that the recipients will understand the details clearly and not fall prey to misinterpretation.
References
Buhler, P. M., & Worden, J. D. (2013). Up, down, and sideways. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Mano, R. S., & Mesch, G. S. (2010). E-mail characteristics, work performance and distress. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(1), 61-69. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2009.08.005
Rai, U., & Rai, S. (2008). Effective communication. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Sostrin, J. (2013). Re-making communication at work. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
