The company I work for decided they were going to change positions and pay for employees.
However, there was no communication for exactly how or when this was going to happen. People
were speculating about it and rumours were flying around like crazy. When the affected employees
were finally told what the plan was, they were not happy. Corporate decided to eliminate the
position of many employees. They ultimately had to decide if they were going to step down and
take a sizeable pay cut and lose their set schedule or leave the company. This obviously did not go
well. They company lost many long-term employees due to the way they handled the change. The
lack of communication in the beginning did not help matters as the ones who stayed no longer felt
the company valued their commitment and service. Another time there was a communication gap
was with another group of employees. Instead of communicating with employees about schedule
changes and how it could help them one day a member of management went to employees in
each area and told them they either needed to sign a new schedule to be implemented
immediately. This would guarantee them a set full-time schedule every week. The employees who
chose not to sign would lose their full-time status and lose their full-time benefits. This caused a
lot of stress because many people had schedules that met their needs and now things had to
change again because the company was more worried about their bottom line than the effects it
would have on employee morale. There was a breakdown of employee trust and employee
performance decreased. If there was better communication through the entire company rather
than just the corporate offices employees would have a better understanding of what changes
were coming and why they were necessary. Employees should have a chance to ask questions so
they could make the best decisions for themselves when the time approached. For many people
switching to a set schedule was wanted but the way it was presented was wrong.
There is a general lack of oral and written communication within the company and it gets quite
frustrating at times. Those were a couple of examples and there are many more. I think there
should be meetings held to discuss changes that are going to be companywide. The company
needs more transparency.
Working for a governmental agency, effective communication has not historically been a strong
point. Most communication channels are of top-down focused and grouping all employees into
one category. The problem being we are comprised of both civilian and sworn employees with
different collective bargaining units and a sizable differentiation of roles and responsibilities. One
of the points of emphasis for effective communication planning as described by MTCT (2022), is
“understand your audience” (p4). The impact of any message communicated can be vastly
different among each employee group and tailoring a message based upon an understanding of
cause-and-effect relationships can enhance communication. From personal work experience I can
relate to how a lack of understanding can undermine the message.
Early on in my career there was merging of a state agency of similar scope into the agency that I
worked for. Due to many areas of overlapping authority, there had been a history of less-than-ideal
relations between both agencies. The merger proposal had only been discussed at higher levels
within the organization and naturally what developed were rumours plotting every possible
scenario. No formal communication on the topic came out for months which by that point every
employee had a different idea of what the merge was going to look like. Tensions that already
existed only increased. As pointed out by Kerr (2019), “information is power, a lack of information
is a killer” (p.1). Within a communication gap, rumours and false assumptions can manifest into
plausible reality. A message from an authoritative source early in the process that contained at
least some of the parameters of the merge like a timeline of events or an acknowledgement of
certain facts would have helped settle a lot of the tension. MTCT (2022), speaks to the fact that
you need to choose the right channel, an email from the Director of the agency would ensure each
employee received the same message. b What ended up happening were group meetings with
higher leadership after the months of rumours. They discussed the basic structure of the merger
but by that point, the message missed the mark. No one cared anymore about the structure they
cared about the items that would affect them such as how seniority would be calculated. Seniority
was paramount to many as that was how shift selections, vacation requests, and to some degree
work assignments were determined. Again, the higher agency leadership didn’t understand their
audience. A stakeholder analysis to define power and interest is important but truly understanding
emotions, motivation, and current opinion based upon stakeholder groups would have greatly
changed the points of discussion for my group (MTCT, n.d.). b b
Kerr, J. (2019). How to Stop the Rumour Mill from Sabotaging Your Business. How to Stop the
Rumour Mill from Sabotaging Your Business. Retrieved April 22, 2023, from
https://www.inc.com/james-kerr/how-to-stop-rumor-mill-from-sabotaging-your-business.html
MTCT. (2022). Communications Planning. MindTools. Retrieved April 22, 2023, from
https://www.mindtools.com/a9wsomu/communications-planning
MTCT. (n.d.). Home. MindTools. Retrieved April 22, 2023, from
https://www.mindtools.com/aol0rms/stakeholder-analysis
