Impact of Organizational Communication on Employee Performance

Man is a social animal. He cannot overcome the worldly activities alone. He needs help from other people to do his usual deeds. We spend a lot of time in writing, reading, talking and listening, infect most of our time is spent while communicating. For the implementation of our routine activities we always need someone’s help. Then process of communication starts. No one can communicate alone. There’s always a sender and one or more receivers. Communication is a source of delivering messages form one to another. Through communication people share their ideas, feelings, thoughts and emotions. Man carries out his needs and also helps others by knowing each other. And life will pass with the same zeal.

Communication plays a vital role in the working of any business. Organizations have to communicate to carry out their business activities. Researches indicate that organizations cannot meet their goals unless they have effective communication. In the triumph of any organization, the relationship between manager and his subordinates plays the significant role. In any business activity manager is a key player. Communication is a ribbon, which binds the management and its official together, and is very obligatory for the success and excellent performance of any organization.

Communication helps the organizational members to make both personal and organizational goals. And also help them to co-ordinate on the internal activities of the organization. To the extent the less effective communication of any organization is, the less effective its performance will be. E.g. the new employee orientation program is the first and most essential step for any organization towards efficient communication. New employees feel a great sense of confidence with orientation program. And this thing leaves a positive impact on their performance. In this respect the job of a manager cannot be ignored, because problems occur when directions are not clear. Every manager should be a good communicator. Because he is one who communicates the message to one or a group. (Ivancevich & Matteson, 2002)

Effective communication increases the efficiency and productivity of any business. And also make the employees more satisfied. Researches illustrate that effectual and well-organized communication positively relates to the job satisfaction, performance and positive attitudes of employees.

A study by University of East London shows that the concept of communication is immeasurable in modern management, and it seeks to meet clear understanding between manager and all the employees. It explains that employee communication is; infect exchange and clear provision of information, commands and directions between management and employees. And it makes the organization to work properly and employees to be well aware about their responsibilities and duties. (University of East London, 2009)

Communication is a course of action in which information is being shared from one person or group to another by using common symbols. Though science and information technology become advance now even yet the human element of communication cannot be ignored, because communication within the organization is preferred for any business. It is necessary for the healthy environment of any establishment. Communication is a pervasive activity through which people become able to know each other and they combine their efforts.

Today employees want to know what is happening in their surroundings, what their co-workers are doing and how they are participating in the organization, and how the daily functions of the organization are carried out? Today the manager requires more effective and logical communication in all the directions i.e. upward, downward; lateral etc. when there is effective communication in the organization it provides a bridge of understanding to people. In this way they can better understand each other. And this bridge of understanding helps them to cross the river of misinterpretation. Communication is not what the sender says; it is to what degree the receiver understands the message. Organizations cannot survive without communication. When there is no communication, workers were not clear with their everyday jobs, management cannot get the information, group leaders and executives cannot lead and direct their employees. (Newstrom, 2007)

Through communication we can better understand each other’s feelings, opinion, beliefs and principles. Communication makes it possible for the organizations to perform their daily management functions e.g. organizing, planning, controlling and leading. Co-ordination is an essential element to carry out the business actions. When there is no effective internal communication, co-ordination of work also becomes impossible. And organizations have to suffer a lot in this situation. Co-operation also becomes impossible because people will not discuss their ideas and feelings with others. This will lead to low productivity and low performance in the organization. Innovation also stumps in this way.

According to Balondi, companies that are very good at communication are effective listeners to their employees, and also they plan effectively. He explains that effective internal communication keeps the employees on track and it increase the financial performance of the companies. The results of the study confirm that companies with effective communication, their market value increases by 20 percent. (Balondi, 2006)

BROAD PROBLEM AREA

Every organization has its own culture and patterns on the basis of which they conduct their functions and activities. The present study is an attempt to analyze the factors which affects the performance of employees in the organization, as in organizations there are several things which affects the employee’s performance. The communication is the most important thing in this respect. Many studies have conducted in this regard but those did not discuss the factors which affects the employee performance with respect to communication.

From a managerial perspective, it is important to discuss the relationship between management and employees with reference to communication. As there are many factors which relates to communication and enhance the employee performance in the organizations e.g. co-operation, co-ordination, job satisfaction, employee motivation, image of the organization and accomplishment of goals. Keeping this in mind, the study of communication and managerial behavior requires an in-depth analysis of all those circumstances in which the functions of the organization takes place.

This study will focus on the managerial behavior and patterns of communication in the organization which leads to employee’s performance. This study will incorporate the attitude of managers/organizational leaders towards their employees by taking in-depth information from the concerned functionaries.

LITRETURE REVIEW

A literature review discusses published information in a particular area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period. A literature review can be just a simple summary of the source, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine with old interpretation. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

According to Hellweg & Phillips (1982), the worker productivity increases when there is communication within the organization. Besides many other things the communication within the organization helps the employees to perform their tasks well, to have information about the duties they have to perform, and about the goals of the organization. They argue that existence of communication within the organization lead to the effective decision making.

Smidts, Pruyn, & Riel (2001) define the employee communication as communication transaction in their study. They argues that employees who are well informed about organizational activities as goals and objectives, new developments and achievements can enable the organization’s members to develop such characteristics which differentiates it from other organizations. They found that communication climate is an important variable in the relationship between employee communication and organizational identification. In their point of view the lack of communication within the organization affect the organizational decision making. According to them, it’s the foremost duty of the manager to pay serious attention towards the internal communication climate, by giving each employee opportunities to speak, get involved and be listening and guide them for the fulfillment of goals.

A study by Harshman & Harshman (1999) concludes that the structure of the organizations is changing day by day as the environment is changing. The changing social and economic atmosphere in any country brings change in the work settings of any organization. Organizational communication is the critical function, and it affects the content and structure of the organization. These changes lead to change in formal and informal patterns of communication in the organizations.

The previous researches show that there is a strong bound between communication and other organizational functions. Another study by Monge, Cozzens, & Contractor (1992) shows that communication variables like information sharing and communication between group members leads to innovation in the organization. They found that communication variables have a strong effect on the organizational outcome. They argue the participative environment within the organization, increase its productivity and improve its performance and outcomes.

Effective communication in the work setting of any organization promotes trust in the employees. When they are getting involved in decision-making or when they are empowered this thing will increase their confidence level and definitely have a positive effect on the performance of the employees.

In connection to this another pertinent study to be quoted is the one proposed by Dirks & Ferrin (2001) on the role of trust. Their findings show that trust is an important element in the organizational settings as it positively relates to the attitudes, perceptions, behaviors and performance outcomes within the organizational settings. It has direct effect on the various outcomes. Trust is an essential building block in the functioning of an organization. They found that trust is directly relates to increase productivity, positive attitude of the employees, their good behaviors and more likely to the high level of cooperation between management and employees.

A study of manager-employee surveys, Trinka (2006) found that managers can increase their overall effectiveness by 50-60 percent by focusing on communication. He argues that employees are interested in learning communication skills to make a healthy and co-operate working environment. He proposes that a manager can play an important role in retaining employees and in their performance. He found that those managers, who discuss and communicate the performance standards with their employees, get more effective results and outcomes.

A study at BigCo Company of USA found, those leaders who follow the bureaucratic model in the company, results as restricted interaction patterns. The social interaction between employees is very low which indeed leads to low sharing. They argue that social interaction is the core of any business and there should be good interaction between the leaders and the employees. They further illustrated that women are more efficient and active at communication. They found in their research that women working at BigCo are more likely to bridge the communication in the company. They explain that the coordination between top management and the subordinates is very less which seems divergent in the complex world of information and technology, as communication and coordination are two most important ingredients in the working of any organization. (Kleinbaum, Stuart, & Tushman, 2008)

Previous studies conducted on organizational communication suggests a visible relation between trust and communication. In relation to this, Yamaguchi (2009) proposes that there exists a strong relation between these two factors i.e organizational communication and trust. He predicted that bad news such as about failure of proposals or low performance, results in developing a bad perception of employees about their boss. Wheras as good communication between superiors and employees leads to good results in the organization. He further explain that good communication can change the attitude of employees for the desired results. Communication decreases the uncertainity and effective communication enhance the trust, increases the job satisfaction, employees commitment and their loyalty towards work. He found that effective communication breaks the wall of misunderstanding and conflicts can be avoided in this way.

Yukl & Falbe (1992) gave the relation between soft and hard communication tactics in his study. He found that the hard communication tactics are not as effective as the soft ones. He predicted that consultation is the most effective tactic and it leads to the positive results in the organizations because hard communication tactics are least successful in the organizations. Hard communication tactics make the employees violent and they mistrust their superiors. He argues that to influence the people is the most important thing in the managerial effectiveness, that how the manager motivates his subordinates.

Gray & Larry (2005) suggests that CEO is the supreme head in the organizations and he lead the employees and workers to achieve the goals. They give directions and their behaviours sets the culture in the work setting that how to fulfill the objectives and achieved the visiion and mission. They found that, employees are most satisfied with those Executives and CEO’s who are good communicators. The CEO and Executive communication influence the employees perceptions. They explain that communication is not only information sharing but also to create a sense of understanding. Organizations are nothing without their people, success of organizations is not possible until there is a balance between employees and the tasks. Employees can only be able to get full results when they are clear about their assigned tasks and duties, and when there is a relation of trust and appreciation.

The strong relation between management and employees results in many positive aspects in the organization.

Goris, Vaught, & Pettit ( 2000) proposes that job performance and job satisfaction can be achieved only when there is a balance relationship between employees needs for growth and job characteristics. They found that high level of downward communication in the organizations make employees to feel dependent on their bosses. And when there is too much upward communication, employees sometimes assume that their superiors don’t know how to perform their tasks and duties. He further agues that excess of everything is dangerous in the same way excess of any communication direction in the organization creates trouble for workers. Negative reactions can be the result of too many good things or too little things. In lateral communication employees compare themselves with their co-workers and this thing negatively affects employee sstisfaction and their performance.

Communication is considered to be an important ingredient in the work setting of the organization. Organizational communication is a way to develop a strong culture within the organization to achive the set goals and objectives. In this regard Scholfelder (1998) defines organizational communication as an approach in which everyone should participate to create an effective culture within the corporation. This leads to sharing of knowledge, opinions and ideas which results as innovation, effective decision making and also increases the productivity of the organization. He found in his study that managers spend 70-80% of their daily time in communicating with others and if their communication skills could increase by 10 % this will lead to 7 % increase in the productivity.

Trust in an important element in getting the effective and efficient result. Researches further makes this point more clear and understandable. Goris, Pettit, & Vaught (2000) examines the relationship between trust in and influence of superiors and job satisfaction and job performance. They propose that trust and influence are two vast concepts in the organizational context. And this permits the supervisors and managers to attain desired results and enhance positive working conditions. Trust in supervisors is related with job satisfaction and innovation. Whereas influence of supervisors leads to employees satisfaction. They found a positive relationship between trust in supervisors, influence of supervisors and job performance and satisfaction.

Denton (1993) define the relation between communication and productivity. He found that 88% of the engineers strongly believes that least productivity is the result of poor co-ordination and lack of communication between different business units. CEO’s also on the view that good communication with employees directs the job satisfaction. General Electric, is a well-known organizatation, expierencing the open communication to make employee relations more effective and to increase productivity. This helps them to eradicate the communication problems because CEO;s and leaders of their 14 business units are in direct communication with each other. This results as effective and quick decision making.

He further explains that Cypress Semiconductor Corporation, California uses the open communication and gets the drastic change in their productivity. When employees feel that they are listened and they are important for the organization, this increases their motivational level. Open communication is simply sharing and trusting each other in the work setting. The corporations use open communication, gets the employees satisfaction, motivation and cooperation. The improvement in the employee relations leads to the increased productivity.

Role of communication cannot be ignored in any establishment. communication between management and employees keep them up to date about what is happening in their sorrundings. Dinsbach, Feij, & de Vries (2007) founds that there is a positive and strong relation between communication, job satisfaction and organizational identification. They talked about in the terms of discrimination between employees and found that those employees who are treated unequally leads to negative outcomes. Whereas those employees who are treated equally are more satisfied and committed to their management. They examined a positive relation between communication and job attitudes and outcomes. The study demonstrates that communication is the best way to know about tha attitudes of employees. They explain that communication among people is essential in all type of organization, because when there is good public relations this results as increase productivity, job satisfaction, positive attitude of employees towards their organization and also organizational identification.

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