Brisbane's Story Bridge
The image above is the Story Bridge in Brisbane, Australia.
When to conduct an employee communication auditBefore you find you have serious problems: Communication problems in the organisation are not unlike the progressive development of a headache. If the initial bodily cues are ignored or not monitored, the full "throb" will hit. The result is much more time and effort lost in trying to correct the unbearable condition than would have been needed to prevent the situation in the first place. The communication audit can provide that initial sensoring or monitoring for the organisation which will allow for a preventative stance regarding communication problems rather than the typical corrective stance. Professors Howard Greenbaum and Noel White (Downs p.1) An effective business needs systematic communication audits, just as it requires financial audits, management evaluations and other regular self assessments. And this is not limited to major corporations...Accordingly, a communication audit should, like the financial audit, be a normal and regular part of management, rather than an emergency measure left until some pressing problem or difficulty arises. Dr Seymour Hamilton (Hamilton pp. 5-6) Unfortunately, many organisations fail to exploit the predictive value of surveys by using they only to diagnose a problem after it has emerged. It is also possible to use surveys to prevent such problems....By identifying many employee concerns at a relatively early stage, surveys allow management to work toward maintaining organisational "well-being" rather than fighting to remove "illness". R B Durham and F S Smith (Downs p.7) Periodic monitoring of organisational processes: Organisational systems, like other organisms, evolve and have a life cycle. They have a dawn and, quite often in recent years, a sudden old age or stagnation periods. Given the pace of events and the turbulent environment, organisations confront tremendous problems if decline is not inevitable. Essentially, this means that organisational systems must renew themselves continuously if they are to survive in this society. Professor Warren Bennis (Downs p.2) Internal communication systems have never been more crucial to business success. The organisation whose members do not interact effectively among themselves is neither efficient nor well-motivated. Accordingly, from time-to-time every business needs to examine its internal communication system and find out who is talking to whom, about what, through what channels and with what degree of success. Dr Seymour Hamilton (Hamilton p.3) Long taken for granted, communication can now be related to job satisfaction, productivity, team-building, and the general coordination within the organisation. Therefore, periodic monitoring of how well employees are communicating is particularly important for organisations, because their very survival depends on their workers' abilities to coordinate and exchange information. Consequently, there is a growing awareness of the need to conduct a periodic communication audit. Managers would not dream of making a major financial decision without basing it on as much up-to-date information as possible. Nevertheless, some managers often make decisions about people and organisational communication on the basis of an unsystematic collection of hearsay evidence, intuition, personal experiences, and three-year-old attitude surveys. Professor Cal Downs (Downs pp.2-3) Even though an audit usually involves weeks of study, it still takes a snapshot of an organisation at a particular time. The audit can be a valid assessment, but generalisations to be made from it must be limited to that particular time frame. Organisational circumstances are generally in a gradual but constant state of change. That is the reason why financial records are checked periodically, at least once a year. The communication patterns in organisations are not static either. They too need to be audited periodically to keep the information current. Professor Cal Downs (Downs p.5) At times of organisational change: Most organisations recognise that a communication audit is vital at times of change in the life of the organisation, for example, when: - major expansion is contemplated or enacted; Dr Seymour Hamilton (Hamilton p.6) Audits are most commonly employed when the following circumstances arise: - a new CEO or top management team Louis Williams, L C Williams & Associates, Inc., Chicago (seminar notes 1984) The audit process served as a catalyst for organisational change by bringing as face-to-face with issues only randomly perceived before. The result provided a framework for specific action steps such as: - the investment of increased attention and energy in the planning function at all levels of the organisation; When the findings of an employee survey indicate something should be done to improve internal communication: Most of the many communication audits I've conducted have been as a result of clients conducting a general employee survey (usually called attitude, opinion or climate surveys) and finding that employees said that a dramatic improvement in communication is required. The general survey does not provide enough information to either know exactly what needs to be improved or how to improve. Because it concentrates on internal communication, a well-designed and managed communication audit can identify what the exact communication problems are, and can normally give a pretty good indication of what needs to be done to improve communication. Rodney Gray |
- ©2010 Employee Communication & Surveys Pty. Ltd.
- Privacy Policy