Blossom Care Corners: Enhancing Business Communication

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[BUSINESS COMMUNICATION]
A case study based on Blossom Care Corners

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The purpose of this report is to highlight the importance of business communication with
respect to the care business of Blossom corners. The company is known to be the leader in the
care industry. Moreover, the study analyses the communication skills that are present amongst
the staff working at Blossom corners.

Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...................................................................................................................1
BACKGROUND................................................................................................................................2
SECTION 1 GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS AT BLOSSOM CORNERS CARE HOME.......................3
SECTION 2 CULTURAL FACTORS THAT MAY CAUSE COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN AT
BLOSSOM CORNER HOME............................................................................................................. 5
SECTION 3 SOLUTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION...............8
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................... 10
RECOMMENDATION.................................................................................................................... 10
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................11

BACKGROUND
Business communication plays a significant role in the success of all the business (Lauring,
2011). The report provides insight into the cultural and communication factor leading to
communication breakdown across the Blossom corners. It also provides justifications and
actions that can enable the manager at Blossom care centres so as to improve communication.
The main vision of the company is to achieve success in the care industry. Blossom Corners
design their policies in such a manner that help them to recruit expert and potential staff. The
formation of a multi-functional team across the organizational culture leads to achieving
diversity and competitive advantage in the industry (Guffey and Loewy, 2012).

SECTION 1 GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS AT BLOSSOM CORNERS CARE
HOME
Communication is the most important interpersonal skill that is used in every day's life for
mixing around with the different people from the different cultural background.
Communication refers to the exchange of information through the use of signs or symbols that
help in maintaining effective interpersonal relationships in the health care industry (Adler and
Elmhorst, 2012). Good communication skill can further help to improve the personal and
professional life of an individual. A business can use this interpersonal skill so as to improve the
relationship with the fellow staff members. A good quality communication system can be
developed by identifying the weakness in the existing system at Blossom Corners and
developing proactive and constructive ways so as to tackle the challenges. The board of director
at Blossom care have identified that it is difficult to manage a team with a mix of different
culture due to ineffective communication amongst them. Thereby, it is essential to address the
issue systematically by framing appropriate strategies so as to achieve business objectives
(Ambresin et al., 2013).
Some of the good communication practices that have been identified at Blossom corner care
are listening with empathy, critical listening, dialogical listening and Identifying verbal and
nonverbal cues. The first skill that is practised with staff is listening with Empathy. The care
homes staff actively listens to the problem faced by the patients and provide them with
genuine concern by truly expressing their care in patient welfare. This will help in building
rapport with the patient and thereby leading to undesirable treatment outcome. Besides this,
the nursing professionals at Blossom corners also desire to provide comfort to their patient by
providing sound judgments. Thus, the staff at Care centres attempts to heal their patient
condition through active listening and healing their pain by providing best treatment (Shockley,
2014).
Dialogical listening is a method of learning through conversation. This will help in promoting a
healthy and good working environment at Blossom Corners. This is also known as relational

listening and indirectly creating relation of the staff with their patients through an exchange of
ideas. The other practice of good communication is identifying verbal and non-verbal clues. The
health care staff at blossom corner needs to identify patients need through body language or
gestures. This will help the staff in maintaining the nurse-patient relationship (Bramhall, 2014).
Practice of good communication skill will help to develop a working relationship and providing
clear information about the care and support required by the customer. Also, the Caretaker at
Blossom care can do an assessment of individual care need so as to provide emotional support
to the people at the workplace. The social care worker at Blossom care centre needs to keep a
conversation going and using the listening skills so as to hack the level of understanding. Also,
the form of non-verbal communication and asking questions can provide an understanding of
cultural difference and its potential impact on communication. Besides this, there is also
another form of communication such as object reference, Human aids, braille, images &
pictures and others that support the health care staff so as to provide sue care and treatment
to their patients (Broadbent, 2013).

SECTION 2 CULTURAL FACTORS THAT MAY CAUSE COMMUNICATION
BREAKDOWN AT BLOSSOM CORNER HOME
Communication and culture tend to influence one another. The effect of changes in culture
tends to be reflected in the communication behaviour of the staff at Blossom corners (Hong et
al., 2011). The individual's communication style at the health care Centre is highly influenced by
the past experience, perception and cultural background. Blossom corner is facing a challenge
of cross-cultural communication so as to manage its diversified team through improving
interactions amongst the staff by devising appropriate communication strategies. The culture
provides sets of rules and values that are required to be followed by organizational staff. People
have different assumptions so as to communicate and coordinate in the organization. Thus, it is
important to develop a sense of understanding amongst the people from a varied culture so as
to interpret the information and reduce the communication breakdowns.
Culture refers to a set of beliefs, principles, shared valued that are common to the particular
group of people at Blossom Corners. The organizational culture plays a significant role in
developing an individual perspective towards the organization. Culture is powerful and can be
effectively shaped through learning communication (Lauring, 2011). Organizational culture
tends to keep changing and is significantly communicating with the symbolic dimensions of life.
Culture strongly influences communication. People from different cultural backgrounds tend to
understand messages in a different sense and thereby leading to the chances of
misunderstanding and cultural differences.
Blossom care corner is a good place with reputed staff but faces some communication
breakdowns due to cultural attitude, power, stereotyping and prejudices. These factors
interrupt the flow of communication and leading to communication breakdown. There may
arise a difference in cultural attitude and beliefs due to the level of acceptability of different
individuals an attitude referred to as individual value judgments and thereby seen as a part of
cultural value or system. Culture refers to norms and values of each culture that are commonly
accepted with everyone in the society (Ambresin et al., 2013).

Stereotyping refers to the process of overgeneralizing people and considering that people
belong to the same culture with similar characteristics. This refers to the negative attitude of a
certain group at Blossom corners (Bramhall, 2014). Also, negative stereotyping provoke
prejudice and judgmental attitude as well as directly affecting the ability to communicate.
Prejudice can be referred to as judging someone's characteristics based on the belonging to the
particular group. It is simply associated with the negative attitude of that group and can have a
devastating impact on the entire segment of the workforce at Blossom corner.
The culture of the organization depends on cultural hierarchy. High powered culture is a boss
centric where all the decisions are taken by superior authority whereas, under low power
culture, Individual team member is considered to be a part of the decision-making process
(Shockley, 2014). This is also called participative culture. Blossom corner should adopt low
power culture so as to reduce the communication breakdowns by involving employees in the
decision-making process. Besides this, time orientation is an important aspect that influences
culture. A future-oriented culture requires the employees to behave in a particular manner so
as to achieve long term goals whereas present-oriented culture focuses on prioritization in
order to achieve the set goals and objectives of the business. Besides this, a past-oriented
culture is based on traditions and heritage value.
A culture space is an important aspect that decides the space between two people so as to
communicate. Some culture space is too close while some stand too far away. Apart from this,
the factor of context sensitivity also tends to impact communication. Communication is more
direct and explicit in low context culture and provides a necessary understanding with all clear
information. The form of communication is indirect and implicit in high context culture and it
tends to create communication breakdowns (Broadbent, 2013).
The cultural barriers leading to potential issues and hinders relationship in the workplace.
Therefore, it is required by the manager to find ways for overcoming cultural barriers. The
necessary steps should be taken so as to improve the operations and boosting marketing
efforts. The operations at the health care centre can be enhanced through reducing the
absenteeism and low turnover rate. Also, it is required by the manager at Blossom corner to

encourage the diverse team so as to come up with better designs and products and meeting the
customer needs. Besides this, it is also important to encourage the staff and also appreciate the
perspective of different people. It is also important to offer training to the diverse set of
workforce so as to achieve long term sustainable goals of the organization (Nørgaard et al.,
2012).

SECTION 3 SOLUTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO IMPROVE
COMMUNICATION
The use of ICT can provide substantial benefit to Blossom care in terms of providing effective,
fast and convenient care. It can enable the staff to deliver high standard services and achieve
the best possible outcome. The manager at Blossom care needs to devise a care plan for
managing the individual’s quality of care (Ambresin et al., 2013). ICT can also help in managing
electronic records and distributing information so as to provide better healthcare service. Thus,
the incorporation of ICT technology will lead to better care and streamlining different channels
of communication.
Effective communication system needs to be integrated across the organizational culture that
will help in improving patient care experience (Lauring, 2011). Blossom Corners can improve
the current system of communication by assessing its current efforts and identifying gaps so as
to make appropriate changes. It is important to arrange mandatory training programs so as to
ensure that staff at Blossom care understands the importance of two-way communication
process. The training sessions also make a clarification with respect to the manner of
communication and empathetic listening. It is important to spread positive communication
behaviour across the organization work culture and also encourage receiving feedback for the
purpose of evaluation.
Patient surveys could be another possible way of improving communication with respect to
Blossom Corner (Hong et al., 2011). It helps to receive valuable feedback from the patients and
also provide insight into existing facilities of the care centre. Moreover, the survey helps to
determine the reason for complaint and throws light on the action of the multicultural team
across the organization. Thus, management at Blossom Corner needs to conduct a survey that
will help in assessing the type of changes to be required so as to enhance communication.

Besides this, there is an important saying that effective listening leads to effective
communication. It is important that the staff at Blossom care corner should effectively pay
attention to the feelings and thoughts of patients. The staff should be encouraged to effectively
listen and also provide valuable suggestions to the challenges or problems faced by the
customer at care Center. Apart from this, it is important that the staff at Blossom care should
be encouraged so as to improve empathy and respond to the patient by putting themselves
into the patient shoes and understanding their perspectives leading to improve patient
satisfaction (Williams and Williams, 2011).

CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above report that communication plays an important role in
achieving business success. The effective communication can help the Blossom care to manage
good relationship with their staff as well as identifying the future areas for improvements
(Guffey and Loewy, 2012).
RECOMMENDATION
 The Care home should explore the areas of good communication practices.
 The manager of the care home should design an appropriate structure for an easy flow
of communication amongst the various staff.
 Adoption of appropriate strategies and practices for enhancing the effectiveness of
communication.
 Encourage the staff at care home so as to know the essential aspect of cross-cultural
communication.
 The Care home should use advanced technologies of communication in order to reduce
communication breakdown (Adler and Elmhorst, 2012).