Communicating in the Virtual Workplace: Analyzing Messages

Communicating in the Virtual Workplace: Analyzing Messages

Effective communication is crucial to the success of any organization. It plays a significant role in the planning and control of organizational resources, and is, therefore, essential for the realization of organizational goals. Effective tools of communication are, in that regard, a fundamental employee attribute and a critical business tool. The 'seven CS of business communication'- completeness, conciseness, consideration, concreteness, clarity, courteousness, and correctness - are used to show the features of effective business messages (Daw, 2006). The use of these attributes in communication ensures that employees become effective communicators, with the ability to effectively select the content of their messages, and the environment that best suits a message's purpose, and recipient (Daw, 2006).

An Analysis of Sample Business Messages

The communication process provides a framework for the realization of effective communication (Sanchez, n.d.). Through the communication process, the sender, and the receiver of a message are able to share a common meaning (Daw, 2006). It is only then, that effective communication is said to have taken place.

The Communication Process

The process of communication comprises of four major elements; encoding, the environment, decoding and feedback (Sanchez, n.d.). There are two additional factors in the communication process; the sender and receiver of a message. The sender is the source of a message, and marks the beginning of the process of communication, which ends with the receiver (Sanchez, n.d.), as summarized in the diagrammatic representation below.

Noise Source

Destination

Receiver

Env

ironment

Sender Message Signal Received Signal Message

(Source: Lee, 2014).

Sample Business Messages

Message 1 Analysis

Purpose

The purpose of the message is to remind employees the importance of having potential senders include the company name, in addition to that of the actual recipient, when sending mails, so as to prevent these mails from being undelivered.

The Sender

The dispatch section of the administration department.

Receiver

The message was intended for all the company employees.

The Environment

In this case, communication takes place within the confines of the company. Only the company employees receive the message, and use their own means to communicate the same to other stakeholders, such as potential mail senders.

Technology and Medium

The message is relayed through e-mail. The sender encodes the message, translating it into a form he/she believes the receiver best understands. Encoding takes into consideration factors such as organizational culture, perceptions, skill, knowledge, etc. It is a company policy that messages intended for the company employees only, are sent to their work e-mails. This essentially explains why the sender of this message chose to make use of e-mail.

Feedback

Feedback is proof of whether or not the receiver interpreted the message correctly. A reduction of the number of incoming mails that are returned to the senders could, in this case, indicate that the message was correctly interpreted, and thus communication was effective.

Noise

Anything that could prevent effective interpretation (Lee, 2014). In this case, errors in transmission, and language barriers could be the main sources of semantic noise.

Appropriateness of the Message: In my opinion, the message was appropriate. The medium chosen was appropriate especially because the company mainly deals with online marketing, and therefore, a bulk of the recipients would, almost immediately, read and act on the same. Moreover, the communication was timely, given the company's efforts to minimize instances of failed mail delivery.