Business Communication Evolution: Grant Thornton's Case Study

This case study explores the evolution of business communication, highlighting the challenges and successes of implementing social media strategies within the workplace. It focuses on Grant Thornton's innovative approach to internal communication by integrating social media platforms like Jam to foster employee engagement and information sharing. The analysis reveals significant improvements in employee connectivity, transparency, and overall satisfaction. The study showcases how effective communication strategies can enhance organizational performance and address potential challenges in the modern business environment. Desklib provides access to this case study along with a wealth of other solved assignments and past papers to support students' learning needs.

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COMMUNICATION IN WORKPLACE
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Social media can be described as the best platform of online communication options. It
has become the best mode of allowing business organisations to participate in different types of
communication activities that increases profit for the organisation and helps to meet the
organisational goals (Cardon and Marshall 2015). This platform helps for offering feedback,
receiving of information and helps in sharing of ideas with employees, stakeholders and
customers. Social media thereby allow different organisations to have cost savings and improve
customer satisfaction (Pitt et al. 2017) . The use of social media will also be helping in better
targeting the customers and thereby creating reviews and loyalty. This assignment will show how
business communication has changed over the years, the challenges it faces, and organisation
that had developed this medium well.
Communication in business industry has undergone huge changes in the last twenty
years. If close analysis of the trends of business practices are done, it is seen that some of the
best practices have remain same but the other aspects of doing business have altered over the
years. Alteration of business communication procedures has affected the business practices
largely making huge amounts of profits in the different industries (Jussila et al. 2014). Unlike the
previous decade, this decade sees that communication had become an effective medium by
which different business are marketing to customers and engaging them in different business
transactions. If one tries to understand the changes with examples, the first would be live content
sharing. Forbes considers the live content sharing programs as one of the most significant form
of communication tools for business. This procedure in the modern generation has helped to
share projects and information within an organisation and with the customers. One example is
Blujeans.com that helps collaborators to not only communicate via the video calls but also helps
in sharing contents n the midst of the conversation. While ten years ago, human beings had to

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rely on PowerPoint slide, the modern business communication has helped this procedure by
simply joining a video conference meeting and thereby pulling up a relevant materials. Social
media in the present generation had acted as a boon to business communication procedures in
rapid flow of urgent information within the workplace as well as to the intended customers
(Schinivski and Dabrowski 2016). Another example can be cited where during the 2008
recession, business in the financial industry that could not effectively communicate with the
situation directly and frankly with that of the employees were seen to falter to large extent.
People in the earlier days used to panic when they could not understand a particular situation or
when they felt that important information reading them are not shared. Old school
communication were mainly about keeping the boss informed and subordinates only came to
know in a need to know basis. However, social media being one of the most successful platforms
in the present generation had helped in the information being more freely available, thereby
maintaining transparency and actively communicating with employees (Haylet 2016). The App
revolution can be of the best example about how social media has led to revolutionary changes in
the business world effectively helping in developing business communication. In the present day,
smart-phone technology as well as app driven communication is the heart of modern business.
Apps not only help to display products and effectively communicate with customers about the
marketing of the products, it also helps to communicate with them formally solving their
concerns and earning their trust. Thereby, effective communication through social media is
helping to develop business profits and thereby helping to easily advertise their products without
any extra costly procedures and initiatives (Vernuccio 2014). Besides, in the earlier days, when
passing of information through the different hierarchical level of a big organisation was a time
consuming process and was a great challenge during crisis period as it resulted in development if

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anxiety among the employees. In the present decades, circulating urgent information over the
social media of the organisation makes information available easily to the different levels of the
organisation and thereby crisis situations can be handled effectively.
The present day communication medium like the email, social media, web as well as
mobile devices and applications on them are allowing huge number of population to
communicate effectively with huge number of people all round the globe within a few minutes.
However, they are also seen to be associated with unique challenges. Social media and other
present forms of communication has reduced the necessity of face to face communication and
therefore this medium lacks nonverbal communication and the various cues that can be observed
from facial expressions as well as body language (Hassan et al. 2015). Often it is seen that
information that is posted online are taken out of the context and the sender may not be able to
clarify the message quickly. Often these results in misunderstanding of the statements and
conveying of information that are not correct. Another challenge that is also noticed is that new
companies or those who have very limited budget fail to compete with other companies who are
able to afford more sophisticated methods for communication with employees, distributors,
public and customers (Raunier et al. 2014). Therefore social media usage by the higher level
organisation may impose a threat on the profitability of small organisation through effective use
of social media. Another issue that is also observed regarding communication in the workplace
in the present century can also be stated. Businesses may find that communication through social
media as well as other technologies like email, fax and others may save time, energy and money
but they lack face to face communication and this may create conflicts and unrest among the
employees especially when emotion is involved (Geirgescu and Popescul 2015). Reliance upon

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social media and use of technology can thereby lead to various types of drama and dissent in the
workplace resulting in low morale, and low job satisfaction.
Grant Thornton is one of fifth largest professional services network of independent
accounting as well as consulting member firms in the world. They mainly help in providing tax,
assurance as well as advisory services to different types of privately held businesses, public
sector entities as well as privately held businesses. This organisation is mainly based in London,
United Kingdom and has other overseas branches in different regions of the world (Tiago et al.
2014). In the year, 2012, this organisation had taken an innovative decision to develop
relationships among the employees and thereby help each other to remain well connected with
various kinds of information that are circulated in the industry. In the year 2012, Grant Thornton
has decided to revolutionarize the internal communication techniques by the integrating social
media as the best platform. This required a huge overhaul of their social media policy and best
practices as these had been previously deterrent and forbidding (Wamba and Carter 2016). The
Chief Inspection officer named Greg Swift had been to report that “We wanted to change our
brand – not just our logo, but the way our people interacted internally and with clients.” It was
seen that with the help of great leadership, it became possible for Grant Thornton to develop an
“enabling culture” that had simplified guidelines as well as practical rules. With the help of this
“enabling culture”, the organisation had been able to successfully launch new platform of social
media that is called the Jam. Jam is seen to contain various kinds of things that may start from
the weekly blog of the chief executive officer to that of nearly 80 average daily pieces of
employee user-generated content. Jam also boasts of about 3500 self-enrolled participants at the
organisation. Moreover, the social platform has more than 2009 average daily visits. Previously,
they had fears regarding their old concerns that the team members would misuse the social media

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that might result in occurrences of legal woes and may also lead to different types of
embarrassment (Baptista et al. 2017). Jam saw immediate uptake in self-policing that might be
mainly due to involvement of senior leadership. An analysis conducted over the entire use of the
new social media platform of Jam helped it find that 59% of the employees have agreed that Jam
is indeed helpful to make them feel more connected to one another. About 67% of the
employees stated that they feel more connected to the business die to the use of the social media
of Jam. about 70% of the responses that had stated that Jam would allow them to express their
opinions as well as their ideas. About 51% of the respondents feel that the social media of Jam
had helped them to grow through their personal network. Moreover, 585 of the responses also
state that Jan had been in deed helpful in the development of a better sense of one firm
community (Gonzalez et al. 2015). 48% of the individuals clearly proclaimed that they feel to be
better informed than previous situations and can easily understand what the business is doing to
them. 80% of the people had felt that Jam had helped them by providing them a social way of
communicating with their work. About 25% of the of the people stated that the social media had
helped them to find information and develop their expertise that they need. 33% of the
employees are seen to state that Jam helps them to work more effectively by information
exchanging and sharing them efficiently. 54 5 of the employees had stated that they feel to be
benefitted from the asking of questions as well as sharing of information. About 76% of the
employees recommended their colleagues to join up the social media.
The company had been seen to take up ten important rules that they expected their
employees while using social media. According to the CIO, Swift had described these rules as
“really just common sense”. This social media platform had been successful in creating a centre
of excellence to support users in different ways and even helped in providing training. One of the

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fear that they had was that the employees may misuse the media that can become embarrassing
and also lead to different legally risky situation about that did about happen so (Means et al.
2015). The employees did not behave in any unethical way as they saw that even the CEO was
involved. This had been used as the better contraceptive as the employees knew that they were
followed by the higher officials. The employees were seen to maintain a healthy balance
between work related as well as informal chat that help them to be emotionally stable and handle
the work pressure successfully (Jamulanadaka 2015). Moreover Jam had been also found to be
successful in raising the awareness of the people behind the different parts of the business
(Farrell 2016). Many of the employees are also had stated that that "People seldom tell me
anything, so I have to go and snoop on Jam to find info and intel. In that respect it's been a
godsend!" another individual was seen to be stating "I like being kept informed of the stats from
other teams and seeing all the stories of the positive effect our work has had on clients."
Therefore, all these information obtained from the case study of the statistical analysis conducted
showed that this social media had been one of the best mode of internal communication within
the organization of Grant Thornton.
Social media is one of the most advanced mode of communication in the present world.
Besides the personal space, it had also become highly significant in the business communication
procedures. Researchers are of the opinion that social media helps to develop effective
communication among the employees and between the employees and the employer. This
information help them to overcome any crisis situation, easy passing of flow of data among team
members and keep them updated about the tasks they need to fulfill or have been completed.
Moreover, it is also seen that social media also helps to develop customer trust and customer
knowledge through effective communication, exchange of information, proper advertising and

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many others. The organization namely Grant Thornton had been successfully communicating
internally with their social media namely Jam that had helped the, to develop their productivity
and ensured employee satisfaction.

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Cardon, P.W. and Marshall, B., 2015. The hype and reality of social media use for work
collaboration and team communication. International Journal of Business
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Farrell, W., 2016. test 46. Frontier, (3).
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