Choosing Effective Ways to Communicate with Employees and Coworkers

When choosing effective ways to communicate with employees and coworkers, one must take into consideration both the ramifications of what method is chosen as well as the way it is conveyed. When presented with three separate scenarios, the question was posed as to which channel would be most effective.

Scenario 1

I have been deemed the Marketing Manager for a new beverage that has done remarkably well in the United States after its introduction. This is particularly true within sports arenas such as football and basketball. The Vice President of Operations has put me in charge of gathering a team to develop a strategy to enter the new beverage globally. The plan is to take this task to the team which I will be overseeing and give them the product details. The project is of the utmost importance and therefore must be initiated quickly. On a similar note, the team and I will only have one week to develop a completed strategy. When taking this information to my team, I feel it would be best to use a formal communication channel of face to face contact. This would allow for the employees to voice their opinion, concerns, as well as contribute input. By convening in a meeting with my teammates, we would then be able to work more collectively on the project without any nonverbal issues. Once the strategy has been determined, an effective communication channel to discuss the strategy with the Vice President of Operations would be either a face to face meeting with presentation or possibly a video chat, determined by proximities at the moment. This would allow the management team to view the project in its entirety and understand the concepts without misinterpretation. Should a business use a method such as e-mail or voice-mail to convey such information, it would run the risk of divulging privy information to possibly competitors or other manipulators of the system, putting the product at risk for failure.

Scenario II

As a manager of a rather large travel agency, I am in charge of eleven employees. One day, myself and my employees arrive at work to find that the login and password information to a company- wide computer application does not work. I realize that I need to contact the IT department to have someone look into the issue. Later on, the IT technologist determines that the logins and passwords have expired and must be reset. Therefore he gives the department new ones to use.

When an issue such as an IT problem arises, the initial contact can be made by using a rather informal form of communication channel such as e-mail or telephone contact. Contacting IT personnel can be considered routine as these are issues that companies tend to deal with on a daily basis. However, when informing the employees of the new login and passwords, it would be best to either inform them in a meeting setting or one on one in order to maintain