The Issue in Communication

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Task description:

In this assessment you will both write a report based upon the following case study and then present an oral presentation either during the lecture or tutorial. You will be assigned into a group of three by the lecturer/tutor. Each member of your group will focus upon and write on one of the issues. Do not simply cut and paste each persons’ contribution. The group needs to make sure that all of the parts fit cohesively together and read as one document.
The presentation must be 20 minutes in length. All group members must present during the presentation. You will present the information that you developed and wrote in the report. The flex students will present using Zoom.
Case study:
A multi-national organisation operates in various countries including Australia, Vietnam, India, Oman, and Nigeria. The organisation manufactures and distributes agricultural equipment’s to local and international clients. In total the organisation has 8,000 employees in five countries and more
than 1 million customers worldwide. The head office is based in Australia. In recent years the organisation is facing several communication challenges.
They include:
1. Ineffective use of social media such as blogs, wikis, social networks to support teams in sharing ideas, building knowledge bases and task management.
2. Lack of quality feedback from clients on ways to improve product quality and service delivery
3. Misunderstandings and lack of trust based upon intercultural communication issues in different contexts

Solution

Introduction:

The report discussed the issue in communication being faced by a multinational organization which deals with manufacturing and distribution of agricultural equipment in local and global clients. The organization which has been chosen for the analysis has been engaged in the manufacturing and distribution of agricultural equipment to both domestic and international customers across the world. The company operates in many countries including Australia, India, Vietnam, Nigeria and Oman. It has a total employee base of 8000 employees working in different offices of the company located in different countries. It serves even more than 1 million customers.  The headquarters of the company is located at Australia. The organization has been facing some of the issues regarding the communication aspects. The issues include ineffective use of use of social media such as blogs, wikis, social networks to support teams in sharing ideas, building knowledge bases and task management. Secondly, the company faces the issues in relation in respect of poor quality feedback from clients on improving quality of the products and service delivery and thirdly, it faces issues like misunderstanding and lack of trust based upon intercultural communication issues in different contexts. The report has been prepared with the aim of analyzing the issues so that relevant recommendations could be developed.

Analysis:

Issue one-Social media:
According to Parveen (2012), there are many business organizations which are facing the issue of ineffective use social media such as blogs, wikis, social networks to support teams in sharing ideas, building knowledge bases and task management. They also rely and depend much on the blogs and wikis for different information they need for their jobs. The overdependence on the social media can be harmful (HARRIS, 2017).  The employees are not using their own analytical power and thinking and just relying on the data and facts they could easily get from the social media platforms. But it is beyond doubt that blogs, wikis and social networking sites can be of great benefits if used properly and effectively (Parveen, 2012).
In the opinion of Humphreys (2013), there are certain issues and challenges of using social media. It has been seen that in the organizations the team members are not using the social media effectively. They are not making the fruitful utilization of the information that they could have collected from different resources of social media (Dodaro, 2018). They are just depending on everything they are getting from the social media without verifying their reliability and relevance. The employees are not using the blogs and wikis for extracting the exact and required information rather they just collecting the information and using them for their own purposes. These situations can make the organizational communication highly ineffective (Humphreys, 2013).
According to Razmerita, Kirchner, & Nabeth (2013), the social media can be effectively used in the organizations with the help of the mentors and team leaders. There can be several issues when the mentors are not making the employees understand which blogs or social media to be followed for knowledge sharing and task management. They are just using the social media because of convenience and ease in getting information but they are not using them skillfully as a result they are not able to pick the right and suitable results for their queries (Boag, 2013).  They are not able to use appropriate search keywords because of poor training and they waste time and resource and opportunities (Razmerita, Kirchner, & Nabeth, 2013).
According to Silic and back (2016), it is also seen that ineffective use of social media can also pose risks to information security. Some of the employees have been observed to be using the social media platform of LinkedIn as a platform of sales. They are also found not to be updating the profiles and features. They are using the advantages of the social media platform (Lowe-Jr, 2017). The team leaders are not providing ample training and education facilities on the use of the social media platforms for sharing ideas and management of tasks. The team members are only using the social media platforms as per their understanding which is creating an issue for the organization (ROBINS, 2016). Instead of using the different resources of social media the team members are found to be using them for non-work related resources and wasting their valuable time and lack of effective use strategies increases the risks of exploitation of sensitive information of the organizations (Silic & Back, 2016).
In the view of Hajli (2014), in many cases it has been seen that the marketing department of the organization is not using the social media effectively as the marketing people are not using any concrete plan of action and they do not set any objectives which are to be tracked in case of social media campaigns and strategies (GAMBLE, 2012). They are also not using the right channels for communication both verbal and non-verbal. They are posting relevant contents. They are not using the social media for building relationships. They are not oriented towards creation of an experience on the social media platform (Wang, Yu, & Wei, 2012).  The employees have been found to have created too many accounts on social media which have resulted into more investments of cost and funds (WeLIVE Branding, 2016). They are flooding the active accounts on social media with huge pool of posts which are difficult for the viewers to read. Too many advertisements are being observed to have been posted in the social media which makes the users irritated and that has resulted in mere wastage of monetary resources (paccpronetwork , 2014). It is very important that the social media platforms have to be used for effective marketing activities (Hajli, 2014).

Conclusion:

The issue of ineffective use of social media such as blogs, wikis, social networks to support teams in sharing ideas, building knowledge bases and task management must be addressed and handled with proper measures and steps. Lack of proper training and education facilitation has resulted in the issues in the ineffective use of the social media platforms. The analysis has shown that the proper training of the members of the organization is very much needed and significant. The training will make the employees to be competent in using the social media platform for the purpose of their work and knowledge building and also for task management.

Recommendations:

Issue one-Social media:
It is also true that the use of Facebook as a platform of mass marketing is not viable any more. The company has to understand that accumulation of likes or comments on Facebook is not a good strategy any more (tmrdirect, n.d.).  The social media has to be used for specific purposes and reasons. The sharing of ideas, knowledge and task management can be highly benefitted by the use of social media. To eradicate the issue of ineffective use social media there is urgent need for proper training and education. Social media has to be used as one of the most effective and efficient tool of communication. Social media platforms can also be used to eliminate social isolation of physically remote teams and can establish effective communication platform for them. The training of the team members of the organizations is necessary. The training would make the employees to find the appropriate ways of using the social media for sharing ideas, knowledge and would enhance the efficiency of task management.
The team leaders have to provide adequate knowledge and education to the team members regarding effective use of social media. The crowd-sourcing can be used as a method for team collaboration and research. The team leaders can communicate with all the team members through a common platform on social media where everybody could receive and send messages instantly. The members of teams could be provided with any kind of information they need for their tasks through that common platform. The sharing of ideas must be done through the right communication channels under the guidance of the team leaders.
To measure the success or the failures of the recommendations it is very important that the organization must conduct regular communication audit. There should be effective evaluation and invigilation measures to measure the progress of the training behaviors of the employees towards the effective use of social media platforms. The team leaders must assess the conducts and behaviors of the team members on regular basis.

References:

• Boag, P. (2013, March 27). 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging. Retrieved from boagworld: https://boagworld.com/marketing/corporate-blogging/

• Dodaro, M. (2018). 5 Warning Signs That Your Blog Posts Are Ineffective. Retrieved from topdogsocialmedia: https://topdogsocialmedia.com/social-media-strategy-ineffective-blogs/

• GAMBLE, S. (2012, April 12). 6 Reasons Why Social Media is Ineffective. Retrieved from smile: https://blog.smile.io/6-reasons-social-media-ineffective

• Hajli, M. N. (2014). A study of the impact of social media on consumers. In te r n a tio n a l J o u rn a l o f M a r k e t R e se a rch V o l. 5 6 Issue 3, 387-404.

• HARRIS, J. (2017, July 2). How to Beat the Battle of an Ineffective Blog. Retrieved from contentmarketinginstitute: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/07/beat-battle-blog/

• Humphreys, L. (2013). Mobile social media: Future challenges and opportunities . Mobile Media & Communication 1(1) , 20–25.

• Lowe-Jr, R. (2017, April 12). Ineffective Ways to Use LinkedIn. Retrieved from thewritingking: https://www.thewritingking.com/ineffective-linkedin/

• paccpronetwork . (2014, December 13). Three Ineffective Uses of Social Media. Retrieved from paccpronetwork : https://paccpronetwork.com/social-media-2/three-ineffective-uses-social-media/

• Parveen, F. (2012). Impact Of Social Media Usage On Organizations. PACIS 2012 Proceedings, 1-12.

• Razmerita, L., Kirchner, K., & Nabeth, T. (2013). Social Media in Organizations: Leveraging Personal and Collective Knowledge Processes. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce 22 Nov 2013, 1-50.

• ROBINS, D. (2016, May 16). How social media can improve the discipline of project management. Retrieved from binfire: https://www.binfire.com/blog/2016/05/social-media-can-improve-discipline-project-management/

• Silic, M., & Back, A. (2016). THE DARK SIDE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES: UNDERSTANDING PHISHING RISKS. Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 60, 35-43.

• tmrdirect. (n.d.). 4 Examples Of Ineffective Social Media Marketing Strategy. Retrieved from tmrdirect: https://www.tmrdirect.com/4-examples-of-ineffective-social-media-marketing-strategy/

• Wang, Yu, & Wei. (2012). Social media peer communication and impacts on purchase intentions: a consumer socialization framework. Journal o f Interactive Marketing, 26, 4,, 198-208.

• WeLIVE Branding. (2016). THE MOST INEFFECTIVE WAY TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA IN A BUSINESS. Retrieved from welivebranding: http://www.welivebranding.com/ineffective-way-use-social-media-business/