Employee Communication: Impact on Organizational Performance & Growth

This essay examines the role of business communication, particularly employee communication, in influencing organizational performance and success. It posits that effective employee communication fosters a positive work environment, mitigates cross-cultural miscommunication, and enhances overall productivity. The essay supports this thesis by referencing studies that highlight the impact of social media on employee interaction and knowledge sharing. It also acknowledges the potential negative impacts of social media misuse on employee focus and productivity. Case studies of Google and Facebook are presented to illustrate how successful employee communication strategies can contribute to organizational growth. The essay concludes that while effective employee communication is vital for business success, organizations must manage its implementation to maximize benefits and minimize potential drawbacks.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Business communication
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Thesis or hypothesis:.......................................................................................................................3
Ideas to support thesis:.....................................................................................................................3
Context:............................................................................................................................................5
Outline:............................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................9
Recommendations:..........................................................................................................................9
Limitations:....................................................................................................................................10
References:....................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction:
Business communication refers to the sharing of information amongst the organizational
employees and the other parties involved with the organization, which results in organizational
success. A business communication, can either be conducted from the downward level to the
upward level or from the upward level to the downward direction. A downward communication,
generally involves the transmission of information from the higher authorities to the lower levels
whereas the upward communication involves the transmission of information from the lower
levels of the organization to the higher authorities. There are various ways, by means of which
information can be transmitted from one level of organization to another. The most commonly
used methods involve the use of social media, video conferencing, reports, presentations,
telephone meetings and various others. Social media provides various types of online
communication options that enable the users to participate in the communication process and
give feedbacks. Social media enables an organization to improve its interaction with the
customers and save costs. Employee communication is an important part of business as the
internal communication among the employees determines the organizational culture and
productivity of an organization. The more effective employee communication policy a company
has the higher will be the growth rate of the company as a positive work environment increases
the productivity of the employees. The businesses use social media in order to target a large
number of customers as approaching the customer individually is not possible for any
organization. Business communication is also useful in improving the relationships among the
organizational employees (McFarland & Ployhart, 2015). Business communication via social
media is not only useful in improving business to customer relationships but is also effective in
improving business to business relationships.

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Thesis or hypothesis:
Employee communication has significant impact on the organizational performance and success.
Effective and proper employee communication can help the organization as well as the
employees to avoid confusion and conflict. The absence of confusion as well as conflicts helps in
the creation of a positive work environment, which directly influences the productivity of the
organization("Forbes Welcome", 2017). The second significant impact that the process of
effective employee communication can have on the work environment is that it can help to
overcome one of the most commonly faced problem at workplace, namely, the problem of cross-
cultural miscommunication. Effective employee communication can help in overcoming the
problem of cross-cultural miscommunication and helps in the development of an understanding
between the different employees of an organization (Kinloch & Metge, 2014). The process of
intercultural communication, can be used by some companies to create an effective shared
understanding about the objectives as well as the goals of the company to its various employees.
This gives a clear idea to the employees about the job roles as well as the expectations that the
company desires from them.
Ideas to support thesis:
Bovee, Thill & Raina (2016), assessed the impact of employee communication on the
organizational performance and claimed that employee communication has a huge impact on the
organizational strategies of the organizations. The paper mentioned that there has been a recent
change in the trend as internet has gained huge popularity. More than 50% of the world
population has an access to internet and internet has become the backbone of more than 70% of
the organizations in the world (Jin, Liu & Austin, 2014). Social media has helped the
organizational employees to effectively interact with each other and create positive working

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environment within the organization. On the contrary, many a times, improper use of the social
media platforms tend to hamper the performance of the organizations. Therefore, proper care is
to be taken, so that the medium used for the employee communication process provides effective
benefits to the organization and does not becomes a cause of concern to the organization or the
company.
According to Jussila, Kärkkäinen & Aramo-Immonen (2014), the use of social media
enhances the relationship between the organizational employees as it enables them to develop
personal relationships with each other, which leads to effective employee communication within
the organizations. This tends to enhance the bonding between the organizational employees and
the team members, which also helps improving the team performance. The more is the mutual
understanding between the team members, the more becomes the efficiency of the organizations.
This also helps in overcoming the problem of cross-cultural miscommunication, which is a major
problem faced by companies as well as the organizations all over the world. In the present world
of globalization, it is often noticed, that the major companies or organizations of the world tend
to employee deserving employees from all over the world to increase their productivity(Goetsch
& Davis,2014). It is here that the concept of effective employee communication becomes the
most important as the removal of this communication barrier will enhance the individual as the
collective performance of the company as well as the organization. To overcome this problem,
most of the companies resort to the use of social media sites, where the employees can bond
among themselves despite their different cultural as well social backgrounds (Ward, 2016). The
most popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have helped the
organizational employees to come closer to each other. However, there have also been several
negative impacts of social media on the performance of the employees. Many a times, the

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employees neglect the work while using social media, which hampers the productivity of the
organization or the company. This has negative impacts on the organizational performance
(Vernuccio, 2014).
According to Aral, Dellarocas & Godes (2013), the changes in the technologies and the
use of social media by the organizations enable the employees to increase their knowledge
regarding the functioning of the organizations. It enables them to interfere in the necessary
activities and share their opinions. The shared ideas of the employees enable the organizations to
commence its activities accordingly. However, excessive interference of the employees in the
daily activities of the organizations, hamper the productivity and efficiency of the operations.
Therefore, it is necessary for the organizations to determine the level up to which the
organizations shall permit employee communication within an organization. However, this
process also offers an opportunity to the company as well as the organization to make the
objectives as well as the goals of the company, clear to the employees. It helps in channelizing
the collective energy as well as the efforts of the employees in a proper direction, which helps
the company as well as the employees in accomplishing their individual goals as well as the
goals of the company.
Context:
An organization where employee communication has been successful is Google Inc.
Google has been an excellent place to work in because of its excellent organizational culture.
The organization values the suggestions and opinions of the employees and ensures that there is
an excellent employee communication within the organization. This has enhanced both
employee- employee relationships as well as employee- employer relationships.

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Figure 1: Impact of employee communication on growth of Google Inc.
(Source: Vernuccio, 2014)
Facebook is another company, which uses social media for the process of effective
employee communication. The company has its various overseas branches in almost all over the
world and at the present moment the company employs roughly around 23,165 and most of these
employees rarely gets a chance to go to the main office of the company. Therefore, the use of
social media becomes paramount for various reasons. Firstly, it helps in the process of effective
transmission of the goals as well as the objectives of the company to the employees. Secondly, it
also helps in the process of social bonding among the employees of the company working in its
various diverse locations all over the world. The use of other forms of communication like
presentation, video conferences, telephone and even social gatherings organized by the company

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also helps in the process of effective social bonding among the employees of the company in its
diverse locations. These policies of the company is one of the main reason for the steady growth
of the company in the last five years-
Year Total Revenue(in million USD) Net Revenue(in million USD)
2012 5,089 53
2013 7,872 1500
2014 12,466 2,940
2015 17,928 3,688
2016 27,638 10,217
Figure 2: Growth of the company Facebook in terms of revenue in the past 5 years.
(Source: "Facebook - Home", 2017)
Outline:
The proposal introduced employee communication in business context. Nowadays,
employee communication via social media platforms is an important part of the determining
organizational strategies and a tool used for enhancing the relationships between the
organizational employees. Social media has also been an effective instrument for enhancing the
relationships employee relationships, which has resulted in the overall efficiency of the
organizations (Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2016). However, social media has both positive and
negative impacts on the employee performance and efficiency. The proposal mentions the
possible hypothesis and the ideas that support the hypothesis. However, after analyzing the
impact of employee communication on the organizational performance, it can be mentioned that
the efficient use of employee communication has huge impact on the organizational

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performance, which can be classified into both positive and negative impacts. The positive
effects of effective communication, can be summed up as the benefits, which the company
receives from the process of effective employee communication like the creation of positive
working environment, good understanding between the employees of the company from different
cultural as well as the social backgrounds. The negative impact of the process are the
disadvantages that the process of effective employee communication cause to the company, like
if the employees spend more amount of time on the social media sites rather than focusing on
their work then the overall performance of the individual employees as well as the company will
get hampered(Bovee, Thill,& Raina,2016). The impact of employee communication through
social media on the employee performance depends upon the extent up to which the organization
uses social media and permits the use of social media within the organization. The organizations
must ensure that the social media has a positive impact on its growth and performance. The
organizations must ensure that the employees do not misuse social media. The increase in the
trend of using social media has a significant influence on the performance of the employees and
the team performance.
Employee communication has also been effective in improving business to business
relationships. Social media not only helps in improving the communication process between the
organizations and their customers but also enhances the communication process between the
organizational employees. Employee communication enables the organizations to learn about its
organizational efficiency and identify the ways in which the efficiency can be further increased.
Social media enables the employees to share their feedbacks with the organizations, which in
turn enables the organizations to take appropriate corrective actions. Social media has been an
effective tool for the organizations in gaining organizational efficiency. Social media marketing

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is the most cost effective and economic way of increasing the brand awareness of the
organizations. The organizations are able to establish their business as an industry expert and
expand their professional network(Armstrong et al., 2015). The proposal mentions Google as the
most efficient organization in successfully using employee communication in enhancing the
organizational performance. Therefore, it can be concluded that social media plays a vital role in
enhancing the employee communication and the overall organizational performance.
Conclusion:
Therefore, from the above paragraphs it becomes apparent that effective employee
communication forms an essential feature of business communication and if effectively utilized
it leads to the overall growth of the organization or the company. However, the process also
consists of some limitations, which if not properly taken care of can directly affect the company
or the organization. It, thus, becomes very necessary to weigh all the advantages as well as the
disadvantages of the medium intended to be used for the process of employee communication
before its implementation.
Recommendations:
A company or an organization can increase the level of employee communication by the
effective use of different kinds of communication method. The overdependence on one medium
for the purpose of employee communication can prove to be harmful to the company or the
organization itself in the long run. Therefore, it is advisable that the companies used various
other kind of means like video conferencing, telephone meetings, presentation, social official
gatherings and other mediums for the purpose rather than solely depending on just one type of
medium.

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Limitations:
The process of employee communication consists of some weaknesses as well. It is often
seen that people from countries like Australia, New Zealand, USA and other places are very
individualistic and thus they do not feel comfortable working in groups or socializing in the work
place. The system of effective employee communication thus becomes ineffective in those
circumstances. Then there is another factor that might be considered as a weakness of the process
of employee communication, namely, too much communication in the work reduces the overall
productivity of the company as the focus of the employees tend to become divided and this leads
to a decrease in the level of productivity.

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References:
Aral, S., Dellarocas, C., & Godes, D. (2013). Introduction to the special issue—social media and
business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems Research, 24(1),
3-13.
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction.
Pearson Education.
Bovee, C. L., Thill, J. V., & Raina, R. L. (2016). Business communication today. Pearson
Education India.
Jin, Y., Liu, B. F., & Austin, L. L. (2014). Examining the role of social media in effective crisis
management: The effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis
responses. Communication research, 41(1), 74-94.
Jussila, J. J., Kärkkäinen, H., & Aramo-Immonen, H. (2014). Social media utilization in
business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human
Behavior, 30, 606-613.
McFarland, L. A., & Ployhart, R. E. (2015). Social media: A contextual framework to guide
research and practice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(6), 1653.
Schivinski, B., & Dabrowski, D. (2016). The effect of social media communication on consumer
perceptions of brands. Journal of Marketing Communications, 22(2), 189-214.
Vernuccio, M. (2014). Communicating corporate brands through social media: An exploratory
study. International Journal of Business Communication, 51(3), 211-233.

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Bovee, C. L., Thill, J. V., & Raina, R. L. (2016). Business communication today. Pearson
Education India.
Facebook - Home. (2017). Investor.fb.com. Retrieved 1 December 2017, from
https://investor.fb.com/home/default.aspx
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Forbes Welcome. (2017). Forbes.com. Retrieved 1 December 2017, from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2016/08/12/best-practices-for-
effective-internal-communications/#40b5ff877292
Kinloch, P., & Metge, J. (2014). Talking past each other: problems of cross cultural
communication. Victoria University Press.
Ward, J. (2016). Keeping the family business healthy: How to plan for continuing growth,
profitability, and family leadership. Springer.