I felt Chapter 8 covered mostly similar topics as Chapter 7,
so I’ll focus on Chapter 9. The discussion of communication with employees
reminded me of Chapter 3’s discussion of stakeholder classification and
management. Employees are undeniably stakeholders. But they’re not likely
shareholders. Even if they are, they’re (very) minority shareholders. How does
an organization communicate with such a large and important bloc of stakeholders
who don’t hold immediate or critical power as individuals?
I don’t see many companies with good answers. What
Cornelissen calls organizational silence (170) is very real. Even when employee
opinions are solicited, I think most people have an implicit bias in favor of
uncritical or insubstantial feedback. Why put your neck on the line when you
can tell the boss what they want to hear? I’m intrigued by Cornelissen’s example
of HPCL’s use of workshops for employees to give feedback and decide their own
visions for the company (168-169). I question how possible this is for most
companies to pull off. I’m also skeptical of the results. “Going global” was
truly the biggest takeaway from the employees at the bottom of the ladder?
My own experience and intuition better matches the example
of IBM (174-177). IBM allowed wide freedom to comment, and unsurprisingly, got
blunt and sometimes cynical feedback. I see this as an unblocking of the dam of
organizational silence. It’s too bad it had to come in a single moment, and not
as a matter of practice. The latter would be more manageable and less painful.
The problem of silence seems to be related almost exclusively to negative
feedback. This is why I’m so skeptical that what HPLC employees were holding
back was a deep desire to see their petroleum company expand into an “energy
company.”
This is not to say that constantly soliciting negative
feedback is a solution. The companies that engage in this the most are probably
those trendy tech firms with a name recognition as enviable as their benefits
packages. While a practice of constant, blunt feedback might create more honest
communication, it
can also lead to high stress and turnover.
Cornelissen, J. (2014). Corporate Communication: A
Guide to Theory & Practice (4th ed.). London: SAGE.
I enjoyed reading your take on how companies can end organizational silence, and I agree with your assessment of how difficult it can be to obtain authentic input from employees. Especially if their jobs do not normally require them to articulate their visions for the company, many employees may default to repeating messages the company has communicated in the past. I believe that ending organizational silence requires two things. First, the employees must believe that management will actually listen to and use their feedback. Second, the employees must trust that honest feedback will not harm their careers. Even if they do not fear getting fired for criticizing the company, most employees who want to climb the corporate ladder are not willing to risk not being considered a "team player." I also agree that constant negative feedback can negatively impact the morale of both employees and managers. If action is not taken in response to the feedback, employee communication might fall into a downward spiral of constant complaints that are never resolved.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that organizational silence is very real and practiced by a great deal of people. However, if you maintain organizational silence, then things will not change. Someone has to speak up when the work environment stifles creativity. Without allowing individuals to be creative, we would not have many of the quirky ways that we use to complete the various tasks that we do on a daily basis at our jobs, am I right? I have been fortunate in my last two jobs to have managers that understood that fostering creativity works much better than stifling it.
ReplyDeleteAnytime someone's livelihood is at stake, you will not get honest answers. But I don't blame employees for not speaking up especially given that some companies really don't care what their employees thing. Look at the companies (big banks) that caused the 2008 Recession. Were those employees asked about their vision of Bank of America, for example? I doubt it and if they were, they were likely fed a company line. If I were looking for work today as a new college graduate, I would look for the smaller, newer companies that seem to have a lot more flexibility when it comes to employee relations. I would not want to work for a huge corporation even though it might mean more money. Why does it seem that smaller companies be more honest or at least more forthcoming?
ReplyDeleteI always love the anonymous survey requests in my district which are, of course, emailed to us at our unique email accounts (as opposed to the district wide list serve). Those links may be built to silently track the email account being used to respond to the survey, but we're all supposed to rest assured the survey is secret and anonymous. It's hard to believe it. In turn, everything that teachers are supposed to discuss and voice opinions on becomes adminstratively decided with little to no honest feedback from staff. It makes me wonder if there is really a way to get that kind of information without accidentally (or intentionally) encouraging false responses.
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