Effective Business Communication Strategies at Mark and Spencer

This report provides an in-depth analysis of business communication practices within Mark and Spencer. It begins with an introduction to business communication and its significance, followed by an examination of interdepartmental cooperation, emphasizing its importance for organizational success. The report then delves into various forms of organizational communication, including internal operational, external operational, and personal communication, illustrating how Mark and Spencer utilizes each to enhance its operations. Furthermore, it explores principles of effective communication, such as clarity, quality, consistency, and integration, and how these principles can improve intra-departmental practices. The report also identifies and analyzes several barriers to communication, including semantic, psychological, organizational, and personal barriers, offering strategies to overcome these challenges. Finally, the report concludes by summarizing the key findings and emphasizing the impact of effective communication on a company's profitability and overall success, referencing relevant literature and online resources to support its analysis.

Business
Communication

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................1
Inter departmental cooperation ..................................................................................................1
Barriers of Communication and strategy to overcome them......................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................5
.........................................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Business communication is a special branch of general human conversation. Hence, when
information is exchanged between two or more parties concerning business affairs, it is known as
business communication. Through this, owners, managers, employees, customers, investors,
suppliers, bankers and general public interchange their views, ideas relating to company's
activities in order to achieve organisational goal in an effective manner (Mai and Hoffmann,
2014). This report is based on Mark and Spencer, one of the multinational retailer headquartered
in UK that deals into clothing, home appliances and food products. In this study, it include
effectiveness of communication within inter department as well as barriers of communication
and strategies to tackle with them .
MAIN BODY
Inter departmental cooperation
Communication is the lifeblood of business and management process as it enable the
leader or manager to build a healthy relationship with internal or external parties of firm for
attaining high level of productivity and profitability without any hindrances. However, it is
regarded as an essential platform to perform management function and tom ensure organisational
success. Moreover, it starts with transmission of information related to business and ends with
feedback from the receiver. In order to accomplish organisational objective efficiently, company
should mainly focus over building a better working culture for providing increased level of
employee satisfaction. In regard of Mark and Spencer, communication plays a crucial role within
various business function which leads them to obtain profit maximisation (Steele and Plenty,
2015).
Various forms of organisational communication
The communication is an important management function as it closely associated with all
other managerial role. It bridges the gap between individuals and groups through flow of
information and understanding between them. According to Bruce Berger,copyright @ 2019,
organisational communication is a process which includes transmission and accurate replication
of ideas ensured by feedback for the purpose of eliciting actions for achieving business objective.
There are various forms of communication which Mark and Spencer implies in their business
activities which are as follows:

Internal operational communication:It occurs while carrying out operations of
organisation as its internal members are workers, managers, board of directors, trade union etc.
which exchange their views among each other. Under this type, conversation take place in the
form of oral (face to face, meeting, speech) and written communication (orders, reports, memos,
letters etc.) which helps Mark and Spencer to enhance the speed and reduces cost, time, length of
communicating. Moreover, internal communication occurs in several patterns depending on the
flow of information such as horizontal and vertical and also upward and downward
communication (Jackson, 2014).
External operational communication: It generates with the external parties or groups i.e.
customers, suppliers, government agencies, general public etc. in order to achieve organisational
goal (EMPLOYEE / ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS, 2019).
Personal communication: It refers as transferring personal ideas, feelings rather than
business related content. Hence, it is a crucial part of an organisational communication but it
does not deal with operational plan, rather it influences attitudes of employees within workplace.
The above mentioned forms of communication enable Mark and Spencer to enhance its
proficiency by adding value to manpower and also to its brand image.
Principles of effective communication to enhance intra departmental practices
Impressive and accurate conversation act as an integral factor to grow as an efficient and
successful leader or manger. On the other hand, lack of proper communication renders company
into huge problems and it directly reflect over firm's profitability ratio. Some of the principles or
measures to improve Mark and Spencer's connection between various business function are as
follows:
Clarity: The foremost measure is that information which to be communicated should be
transparent and easy to be understand by communicator. Moreover, words that uses for
connecting with each other should be simple and unambiguous so that there will less chance of
confusion and miscommunication among employees or departments (Roth 2014).
Quality and Consistency: Under this, communicator take into account that the ideas or
views to be exchanged in a complete and adequate in all respect. In addition, it help Mark and
Spencer to accomplish their plans, objectives within the prescribed time limit in an effective
manner.

Integration: It portrays that communication within business function should be integrated
towards achievement of corporate objectives. Thus, Mark and Spencer should aim at
coordinating activities of people at work to attain workplace objective in an innovative or
productive style.
However, the preceding mentioned measures to improve workplace communication, it
helps Mark and Spencer to build a healthy working culture as well as enable them to gain
competitive advantage without any obstacle.
Barriers of Communication and strategy to overcome them
According to Carl R. Rogers copyright @2019, The success of every organisation
depends largely upon good and transparent communication. This is because, effective
conversation wipes out all kinds of hindrances and allow firm to obtain their targeted profit
margin within ordained time frame (Barriers and Gateways to Communication, 2019).
Moreover, in this age of globalisation, complexity and competition are common aspect for
majority of companies and there is a high possibility of arising miscommunication, conflicts that
effect negatively over business productivity. Additionally, some of the barriers of
communication which Mark and Spencer faces within their business function are as follows:
Semantic Barriers: This issues arises during the process of encoding and decoding
message into words or impression (Aten and Thomas, 2016). Normally, this type of barriers
result due to use of wrong words, faulty translation, different interpretation etc. For e.g. if
manager has to communicate with workers who has no knowledge of English language and on
the other side, the are not well conversant with Hindi language. Here, language is a barrier of
communication as manager is not able to communicate properly with employees which decrease
company's productivity.
Psychological Barriers: It is directly linked with emotional state of mind of both sender
and receiver of communication that reflect in communication. However, worried person cannot
communicate properly and an angry recipient cannot understand message properly
(Kankaanranta, Louhiala-Salminen and Karhunen, 2015).
Organisational Barriers: This factor is related to organisational structure, rules and
regulation authority relationships etc. may sometimes act as barriers of effective communication.
Furthermore, in an organization with a highly centralized pattern, subordinates may not be
encouraged to have free communication which influence business proficiency rate.

Personal Barrier: This occur when sender and receiver lacks confidence to talk to each
other which restrict both of them to interact and sometime it disturbs the entire ambiance of
working environment. Also, in such case subordinates not be willing to offer useful suggestion in
the absence of any reward or appreciation which create huge gap between employer and
employee and decreases company's brand image.
Strategies and practices to tackle with barriers of communication
Some of the ways which Mark and Spencer applies to improves the business
conversation in order to attain high productivity and probability ratio which is described below:
Concise: It means to be the point without using a lot words. Thus, Mark and Spencer
avoid using filler words like 'you see', 'at this point of time', 'kind of' etc. in order to capture the
attention of listener towards them. Therefore, with the help of this tactics, it enable Mar and
Spencer's employer to saves time of both the parties and add value to message (Lauring and
Klitmøller, 2015).
Concrete: In this strategy, it allow superior to provide messages in a clear manner as well
as enable them to make it more specific through various facts which enhance the standard of
conversation and generate better working relationship.
Consideration: Under this, manager keep in mind the audience requirements and views
while formulating message. Hence, it create positive interaction among manpower and manager
and there will less possibility of arising confusion or ambiguity within business function and it
help Mark and Spencer to accomplish their task in an appropriate way.
Courteous: It is considered as most important attribute of connection. However, it assist
Mark and Spencer's manager to be always friendly and honest with employees as well as allow
them to respect the speaker while communication. Furthermore, while handling a feedback or
issue of subordinates, it should be conveyed in a constructive manner which builds positive
mindset over both the groups rather than negative (Ceschi, Dorofeeva and Sartori, 2014).
Hence, the above explained strategies helps Mark and Spencer to build a better and
transparent relationship between superior and subordinates which leads them to attain high level
of productivity as well as allow them to gain competitive benefits in an industry.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussed report, it has been concluded that communication has a great
impact over company's printability and volume of sales as it is regarded as a source of

transferring information or sharing ideas from person to another of various departments in order
tom achieve business goals in an trenchant way. Along with this, while interacting with
employees, employer should not be bias in nature rather provide all kind of information clearly
which generate good working environment within business premises.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Mai, R. and Hoffmann, S., 2014. Accents in Business Communication: An integrative model and
propositions for future research. Journal of consumer psychology. 24(1). pp.137-158.
Steele, G. A. and Plenty, D., 2015. Supervisor–subordinate communication competence and job
and communication satisfaction. International Journal of Business Communication.
52(3). pp.294-318.
Jackson, D., 2014. Business graduate performance in oral communication skills and strategies
for improvement. The International Journal of Management Education. 12(1). pp.22-34.
Roth, S., 2014. The things that go without saying: on performative differences between business
value communication and communication on business values. International Journal of
Business Performance Management. 15(3). pp.175-191.
Aten, K. and Thomas, G. F., 2016. Crowdsourcing strategizing: communication technology
affordances and the communicative constitution of organizational strategy. International
Journal of Business Communication. 53(2). pp.148-180.
Lauring, J. and Klitmøller, A., 2015. Corporate language-based communication avoidance in
MNCs: A multi-sited ethnography approach. Journal of World Business. 50(1). pp.46-55.
Ceschi, A., Dorofeeva, K. and Sartori, R., 2014. Studying teamwork and team climate by using a
business simulation: how communication and innovation can improve group learning and
decision-making performance. European Journal of Training and Development. 38(3).
pp.211-230.
Kankaanranta, A., Louhiala-Salminen, L. and Karhunen, P., 2015. English in multinational
companies: implications for teaching “English” at an international business school.
Journal of English as a Lingua Franca. 4(1). pp.125-148.
Online
Barriers and Gateways to Communication, 2019 .[Online]. Available Through;
<https://hbr.org/1991/11/barriers-and-gateways-to-communication>
EMPLOYEE / ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS, 2019 .[Online]. Available Through;
<https://instituteforpr.org/employee-organizational-communications/>