Mini Project For this assignment, you will research the different ways that managers and leaders use communication to guide their organizations.

Introduction

General Electric has experienced various changes over the years which includes the move to locate its headquarters at Boston as well as redesigning performance growth and re-engineering the form’s culture. The author; Amanda Guisbond is really grateful that the firm has decided to become more transparent in making changes and utilization of serious communication strategies to change the narrative in the industry. Amanda believes that the firm’s decision to make communications through change will go a long way in redefining its brand in a positive manner. Amanda also believes that communication flow will be smoother and will reach the audience effectively. Amanda also sees this as an opportunity for the firm to get all of its stakeholders involved in telling its story. The company’s chief executives and employees should be engaged. Guisbond contacted the CEO Immelt Jeff enabling her to acquire this crucial information.

Communication Strategy use by GE

One key strategy is the integration of internal and external communications to enhance branding of the firm. The firm’s objective is to make key communications to employees as fast as possible. The workers get to understand the impacts on their personal lives due to the changes being made. Through this, a culture of transparency and honest is encouraged which has been transferred to the external domain. (Amanda, 2017). The company believes that the employees’ friends and families, suppliers, customers, and the community will be impacted by the strategy of communicating. The firm is managing external communications of internal change and this is not a role that has been left to the workers. GE is utilizing LinkedIn in making communication about its cultural changes as well as use of emails to communicate the same. The platform may seem personal but in really sense it is very wide and it is made of professional targets. It is also a key environment to seek potential employees. As for many firms, they are still utilizing company blogs and websites to reach out employees and this denies them an opportunity of attracting and influencing the audience that is beyond their social media platforms. The firm has many tools and content to be delivered to the right audience. The internal communications are taken seriously such that the places where active employees are analyzed and the relevant information is supplied. Workers are not told where to find the information but rather information taken to where they are.

The company uses the executives as the primary spokes persons while employees are used as secondary spokes persons. This has enabled most of its workers to become story tellers of the brand. This is a duty that was in the past done by the top management. Trust issues has negatively affected communication in the firm. As a result, the company has encouraged workers to share their stories through an internally developed system. Via the internal editorial communication team, these stories are created and distributed. (Cheng, 2018). The feedback has been positive and the workers can now understand their influence and purpose in the company in accordance to GE’s goals.

There is also a key challenge in the firm in deciding what should be communicated, to who, at what time and how much should be shared. This issue of balancing transparency and the commercial image of the firm affects the communications. The company has the sharing as much as possible mentality in addressing this issue. Actually, this to them is telling their own story in their own ways and acknowledges that communication should be made when internal or external changes are to be made is an old kind of thinking in the communication world of the present times. Due to the technological advancements, the firm believes that its story should be told in a more creative way where the top management and the employees are engaged before it is told. Consistency in communicating a firm’s strategy and culture will build trust and respect from the customers. (Dolan, Conduit, Fahy, & Goodman, 2017). Integrated and transparent systems of communication are the key aspects of leveraging the firm’s brand either through just telling the story or massive cultural change.

Conclusion

At my former workplace as an energy auditor for a geothermal producing plant, there was poor communication strategies that were being employed and this really demotivated workers some of whom who ended up being laid off due to low productivity while others just voluntarily resigned. Communication is very key and poor communication will mess up things. The top management always made decisions without involving the employees. Most of them felt left out and to them, the leadership was selfish. It became so hard for the firm to come up with changes and implement them. Because they faced employee resistance. Also, there was no consistency in which the communication was relied and it was only communicated occasionally when it was perceived crucial. Therefore, the firm should borrow GE’s communication strategies in making their workplace a better place to be. They should involve the employees, communicate on regular basis, and integrate the internal and external communications.

References