BIZ101: Analyzing Communication Barriers and Solutions in Coles Group

This report identifies communication barriers and challenges affecting Coles' business success, focusing on leadership issues, cultural differences, and lack of employee integration. It discusses the impact of technology, leadership, cultural differences, and employee feedback on internal communication. The report concludes that poor leadership and cultural differences are significant challenges. Recommendations include regular employee feedback, a lenient management structure, and employee engagement programs to foster honest communication and improve internal processes. The goal is to enhance employee experiences, promote effective communication, and ensure the company's continued success in a competitive environment. Desklib provides access to similar assignments and resources for students.

Business Communication

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Communication is an essential part for all the organizations to stay in the competitive
environment. Business communication is useful to share the information between the people
who are working in or outside the organization to achieve trade advantages. In this context,
the report is related to the identification of communication barriers and challenges which
affects the business success Coles company. From the study, it has been found that the
company deals with issues such as leadership issues, cultural differences and lack of
integration among employees. Hence, to resolve the problems and challenges, few
recommendations have been given including regular feedback of employees, lenient
management structure, employee’s engagement program, etc.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................2
Background.............................................................................................................................2
Problem...................................................................................................................................2
Purpose...................................................................................................................................2
DISCUSSION............................................................................................................................2
Theme 1: Technology raises internal communication challenges in the company................3
Theme 2: Leadership challenges in internal communication.................................................3
Theme 3: Cultural difference raises internal communication challenges..............................4
Theme 4: Employee feedback and collaboration...................................................................4
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................5
RECOMMENDATION.............................................................................................................5
REFERENCES...........................................................................................................................7
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INTRODUCTION
Internal communication is the process of sharing the business-related information in
all units of an organization. A business uses internal communication to set up strategies,
meetings and to handle corporate affairs. It could be done by various media such as face to
face interaction, email, and others (Verčič, Verčič & Sriramesh, 2012). The present report is
based on several internal communication challenges faced by the Coles Group of the
company in reaching and engaging with their employees. Furthermore, this report also
provides a solution about the improvement of the internal communication in the organization.
Background
Coles is an Australian based retail organization which has several retail stores which
deal in varied types of products and services. It is known for the continuous delivery of
quality products, outstanding customer services to millions of Australians (Inside retail
contributor, 2011).
Problem
Large businesses affected by inefficient communication and business cannot operate
efficiently. An efficient communication platform is crucial for the smooth running of such a
large corporation. However, companies which are working at large scale may usually face the
issue related to communication; engaging or approaching their employees. At this juncture,
the problems in the engagement of employees may result in lower motivation and might lead
the employee turnover. On the other hand, communication-related issues may negatively
influence the overall outcome of the business because the chances to contact with customers
can reduce, ultimately, profitability may hamper.
Purpose
The primary objective is to discover the current state of internal communication and
information flow and its obstacle in the Coles Company and creating a feasible solution to
have better communication.
DISCUSSION
The internal communication challenge as a result of increasing globalization and the
millennial workforce is engaging and reaching their employees.
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Theme 1: Technology raises internal communication challenges in the company
In speed up the business communication and information flow, technology plays a
crucial role. In this context, online media and mobile technology can be helpful to reduce
communication barriers and increase productivity (Smith & Mounter, 2008). Further, the
cultural environment of the company can also be improved. However, these communication
tools significantly enhanced collaboration and communication, but there are a few cons as
well. As it made possible to get a response from your correspondent within minutes, but it is
not essential that if the server goes down, the employees are unable to access the information
(Sultan, 2013).
These technological transformations become a significant challenge for Coles's
internal communication process. For instance, as emails made many things possible and
faster but in Coles, more and more email was sent internally for improving low engagement (
2014). However, employees have too many emails that they took it for granted even though
some of them essential. Along with this, due to network issues or various technical errors
employees could not revert on these emails. This negligence leads loss of relevant
information and affects corporation operational efficiency (Manoj & Baker, 2007).
Furthermore, that prior communication between management and employees conduct
on face to face meeting in office but now as the company adopts platforms like Slack, Skype
and another interface medium due to which real communication and bonding within the
office are depleting (Manoj & Baker, 2007). Owing to this, the issue of engaging with
employees generated in the company. Therefore, the company needs to address these
challenges to obtain and maintain positive internal communication.
Theme 2: Leadership challenges in internal communication
An authentic leadership has a significant contribution to the development of team
members because group members come close to each other and communicate the issues.
However, ineffective leader affects the team in a negative manner which cultivates the quality
of employee–organization relationships. The internal communication effectiveness depends
on the leadership quality of an organization (Men, 2014). However, in Coles, lack of
authentic leadership became a barrier in internal communication. In this regard, for effective
communication to take place, it is necessary that message must be transformed adequately so
that the meaning of the message may not change. More often, top management of the
company makes a mistake for assuming that employees know what the leaders require
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(Karanges, Johnston, Beatson & Lings, 2015). However, this is not right most of the time
unless management deliberately releases information. This miscommunication creates
barriers to achieve desirable message and especially occurs within a highly diverse workforce
like of Coles organization. This misinterpreted information affects the morale of employees
as their performance cannot be improved. This poor leadership leads to a lack of transparency
and freedom of expression between top to bottom line of human resources (Men & Stacks,
2014). Here, manager of Coles Corporation needs to encourage their employee to speak up
and share their ideas. In this regard, the company needs to hire a manager who has better
communication skills and create the management of value system (Luthra & Dahiya, 2015).
Theme 3: Cultural difference raises internal communication challenges
Globalization is the process of integration, compression and convergence of the
world. In the current competitive business environment, most of the companies deal with the
issues related to the development of flexible and appropriate interaction environment inside
the organization (Pieterse, 2015). There are 16 general managers in Coles operations
management structure; however, out of the eight are associated with retail operations and
remaining eight are related to store support center. Furthermore, the company is having 66
regional managers and 742 store managers and store department managers. By considering
this, the departmental managers demanded a strong communication among all the
departments for regular running of business activities (, 2018). These growing presence of
workers from different areas and culture generated several communication issues in Coles.
Customer service department is one of the areas where effective communication is
crucial. For instance, the language of different people who comes from different
environment-initiated communication challenges. Further, people from different background
have different understandings regarding their words and expression. In the context, it might
not be possible for the company to collaborate with all its employees and reach out them to
boost their motivation level and clarify all related tasks to them (Guffey & Loewy, 2010).
This cultural diversity leads obstacle in the way of effective communication, which causes
dissatisfaction among workforce who are from different regions (Martin, & Nakayama,
2013).
Theme 4: Employee feedback and collaboration
In every organization employee feedback is a vital part of the communication process.
It enhances the employee experiences and helps the company to reach the employees. (Ruck
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& Welch, 2012). The management of Coles facing the issues related to feedback from the
employees. In this regard, employees often feel that although there is various communication
medium in spite of that, it is not necessarily that anyone is listening regarding their feedback.
Along with this, due to complex management structure and work pressure in the
company, the workforce do not get time to place their feedback and get them resolved. It
creates a negative feeling among the workforce because it is the tendency of millennials to
get distracted from their targets if they are not communicated timely. This further increases
their tension at the workplace and they do not find anything interests in the workplace.
It is essential that employees provide feedback regarding the training, learning,
performance evaluation, etc. to get the clarification as per their expectations. This facilitates
to increase their interest towards the work as Coles operated on the large-scale and consists
800 supermarkets and multiple numbers of convenience stores (Inside retail contributor,
2011). Thus, it is necessary that the company needs to engage with employees and get
feedback about their work experience and problem faces by them.
Moreover, it is helpful to assess the personal issues and challenges of the employees.
However, employee's information may not be obtained because employees feel fear to
disclose the information to others. Feedback is vital on many levels because it helps to
determine how well employees have met the goals, but it also shows how well they
collaborate with their teams (Mishra, Boynton & Mishra,2014).
CONCLUSION
From the report above, it has been concluded that the poor leadership and cultural
difference are the significant communication challenges which faced by an organization in
internal communication. However, if the internal communication is ineffective, then the
organization will fail or confront the issues which are related to an interruption in business
operations. Also, it concluded that every employee of Coles organization needs to understand
and ready to follow the instruction to improve the internal communication. According to the
report, it can also be concluded that the effectiveness of internal communication affects the
image of the organization in a competitive environment.
RECOMMENDATION
From the above analysis, it recommended to Coles to avoid several internal issues
which occur in the future in the context of communication. For example, since the company
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operates on a large scale so it should ensure cultural diversity so that cultural barrier can be
resolved quickly. Further, management should create honest communication growth culture
through which each employee can share their issues and can understand the future vision of
the organization. In addition to this, for smooth operations of the organization, internal
communication should be well implemented. In this context, the company should
appropriately explain values and mission with the help of corporate training. Further, regular
reminders can also be used to enhance the activeness among employees. Apart from this,
departmental meetings of employees should be carried out through which it becomes easy to
interact with the workforce and get timely feedback.
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REFERENCES
, D., (2018). Coles bolsters management team [Online]. Available
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[Aaccessed on 20 November 2018].
. (2014). Inside Coles' technology transformation. [Online]. Available
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[Aaccessed on 20 November 2018].
Guffey, M. E., & Loewy, D. (2010). Business communication: Process and product. Cengage
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Inside retail contributor, (2011). Coles’ comeback: how the company got everyone singing in
tune [online]. Available at:< https://www.insideretail.com.au/news/coles-comeback-
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2018].
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Men, L. R. (2014). Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership,
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Men, L. R., & Stacks, D. (2014). The effects of authentic leadership on strategic internal
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Mishra, K., Boynton, L., & Mishra, A. (2014). Driving employee engagement: The expanded
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Pieterse, J. N. (2015). Globalization and culture: Global mélange. Rowman & Littlefield.
Ruck, K., & Welch, M. (2012). Valuing internal communication; management and employee
perspectives. Public Relations Review, 38(2), 294-302.
Smith, L., & Mounter, P. (2008). Effective internal communication. Kogan Page Publishers.
Sultan, N. (2013). Knowledge management in the age of cloud computing and Web 2.0:
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