Foundations are theoretical and conceptual
frameworks for understanding and evaluating communication. Through an
Organizational Communication course I was to choose an existing organization
that I was apart of and interview members or employees about strengths,
opportunities, and needs in the organization. I chose my previous work location
and interviewed members based upon their different departments. This allowed me
to get a better understanding of the organization as a whole and what
opportunities we had when dealing with communication. This course allowed me to
understand how organizations communication within themselves, along with
members external to the organization. This project gave me the opportunity to
see the strengths and weaknesses within the organization and what I think that
they can impact from in the future. Through organizational communication I am
able to have a better understanding of theories that organizations use and how
I can critique or implement practices in order to enhance the organizations
communication as a whole. Below are the finding of my organization.
Organizational Communication
Diagnosis
Communication within organizations is crucial to a
successful business. The organization must be able communicate within themselves,
and also to those who are not members of that particular organization. The
purpose of this project is to develop an awareness of communication practices
happening within internal members of my organization. Identifying communication
strengths, weakness, and needs that my organization can learn from to grow in
the future. I will begin my introducing my organization and share a little bit
about our structure. I will then point out the strength, weakness, and need of
the organization.
The Apple Store in Stoneridge Mall, "the best place for people to shop and
the best place to work." At my organization, the Apple Store, this is the
overall goal. Management not only wants our customers to find our store the
best place to shop, but also wants the employees to find our store the best
place to work. The Apple Store can be your one stop shop for really any of your
technology needs. We not only sell products, we help get your products set up
and running, and also service any issues that you may be having with current
products that you own. Due to the different services that we offer, we have a
structure which has different positions that all employees fill. Currently our
store averages around 90 employees with 3 different areas. Our structure first
starts at the top with our leadership team, which manages all areas of the
store. Second, is what we call the family room team. They are responsible for
training customers with memberships and well as troubleshooting and repairing
devices. Lastly is the Red Zone. The Red Zone is where purchases or inquiries
about new products take place. This is a very general overview of our
organization, but gives those of you who don’t know the company a better
understanding of the structure.
Strength
Apple is an organization like no other. Not only are their products
spectacular, but also their employees are known for their outstanding customer
service. Being one of those employees, the culture that Apple creates adds to
our success. One characteristic that builds such a strong culture at Apple is
their openness to feedback. From the beginning, the company has also encouraged
the use of feedback under certain conditions. If employees are going to provide
feedback it must be constructive, specific, and always with a positive intent.
Employee Eric Brown says, "being part of an organization where I can share
my opinion and not get in trouble for it makes me feel great." Encouraging
and being open to feedback helps the well-being of employees drastically. They
are not only able to provide feedback when something is going wrong, but also
feel better when they are praised for the good work they are doing. This makes
the team feel powerful because not only are they growing from the use of
feedback, but they can also help others grow as well. The well functioning of
the organization gains great benefit from the use of feedback because if
someone or something is not happening in the correct way it can easily be
fixed. The proper use of feedback can help to correct others actions and make
the store function back to normal.
Feedback helps get the job done because behaviors or actions that need to be
corrected can and will be. Being in an organization where things are
continually changing, we have to be open to receive help where it's needed.
This helps us to grow individually and impact the organization as a whole.
Apple is know for their customer service and as employees we have to ensure
that we are providing the best customer service possible. When we are not providing
the best customer service it can ruin the brand and what we stand for. That is
where we can hope and rely on our team to provide that feedback of what we can
do better, so our next interactions can be better than the ones before. This
helps us to develop better versions of what we can be.
Apple culture has created and promoted communication within all departments and
areas of the company. Feedback is one aspect of communication that impacts the
overall flow of the company. There are many opportunities that we have as a
company, but feedback is one element that I believe can go a long way. It
enhances every member to become the best version of themselves they can be.
Opportunites
Even though we have strong communication practices that take place in the Apple
Store, there are still opportunities we can work on changing. A communication
weakness that was brought to my attention by our lead trainer Phillip, was
employees will to actively seek communication upwards. When things are not
going right in the store people would rather complain about what’s going wrong,
rather than proactively finding a way to make it right. Members are waiting for
the communication to come downwards, rather than taking it upon themselves to
go upwards with communication. This affects the well being of people in the
organization because it continuously causes them to have a negative outlook on
everything. The negativity and lack of proactive communication ends up
affecting the well functioning of the entire organization because misery needs
company. People tend to not just think negative to themselves, but rather try
to spread it to everyone else. This causes the functionality of the
organization to decrease, negatively impacting others.
Negativity tends to consume people creating less attention on their job and
more on the issue at hand. They are choosing to continue to be negative with
what is going on, rather than finding the answer upwards to make it better. In
turn because people are not doing their job, it is affecting our quality of
service drastically. People are building up the negativity day by day which
causes them to not want to be at the organization more and more. When we go
from a store where it looks like we love our job to somewhere we don’t want to
be, people can pick up to that quickly and it has a negative affect on our
reputation. We are all adults and need to take responsibility for what is going
wrong. If it’s wrong, find out how to fix it, if you don’t want to then you
should reconsider your position in the organization.
I believe that this weakness occurs in our organization because of a recent
downfall that we had. Within the last year we have lost a lot of key employees
and managers that have had a huge impact on our store. Along with our losses,
we have also had positions given to people who didn’t necessarily deserve them.
Because of this, employees have lost trust in management and some other members
of the team. They started the negativity as an outlet for all the wrong doings.
After months of lost hope, we now have a new store manager who is trying to
gain her trust in the team and that she will lead us to the place we once were.
Of course that is not something she can gain right away, but rather something
she is going to have to work for. All she has asked of us is to meet her half
way. If we have a problem, bring that to the attention of management so that
hopefully we can find a way to resolve the issue.
Needs
After speaking with multiple employees in my organization, the overall theme
for what we need is transparency. To Brandon this means, “relaying changes
within the store. We don’t communicate frequently enough when things change”.
To Alyssa this means, “communication of development if we want to move up
or look into other positions”. No matter what the topic may be around, my
organization needs to become more transparent in letting employee know what is
going on. Transparency will effect the well being of employees because it will
make them feel included in every move that is being made. Of course there are
some things that management needs implement because that is the direction of
the company, but when there are things that are done for certain reasons, those
reasons needs to be communicated throughout the whole team. The well
functioning of the entire organization will benefit from transparency because
everyone will feel equal in knowledge and opportunity. Everyone will know the
same information as other employees, and opportunities in positions will be
equally offered to everyone.
If we know what we are doing and why we are doing it that way, the job will get
done in more of an efficient manner. When employees aren’t aware of these
things then things are getting done the way they should be. Like I’ve state
before, working for such a fast pace company we always need to be informed of
any changes. This will help our staff to sound knowledgeable and professional
at all times. When we are not informed of change and cannot inform our customers
of the any new policy or procedures, we are not giving the best possible
customer service that we can possible give. Being informed and transparent with
anything that is happening, it will help our team to be the best possible
employees that we can be.
I believe that our store needs transparency over everything else because this
will help to make our team grow into something spectacular. Due to the amount
of new staff that we have, if we are able to develop this type of communication
as norm, then all employees will feel equally supported.
No matter the
organization, communication is critical to having a successful business and
happy employees. Being able to identify strengths, opportunities, and needs
allows an organization to determine where to concentrate its efforts on next.
This opportunity allowed me to have an insight on organization communication
and the different ways members interact. Going through the experience and
analyzing the information collected will help me to perform a study like this
in the future.