Business Communications

1. Written – letters, memoranda, reports, notices.
2. Oral – telephone, face-to-face, meetings.
3. Visual charts, tables, posters, advertisement.
4. Electronic – facsimile, computer, e-mail, pager.
5. Non-verbal – body language.

Which method   is used depends on:

1. The nature of the information.
2. The speed in which it needs to be sent.
3. Whether it is the best in written or oral term, and
4. The cost.

Effective communication systems are important in motivating the workforce; it can be encouraging to employees lower down the chain of command if their views are heard. Effective external communication is an essential part of achieving customer service. Parents especially would like continuous communication with the school to know what is happening. But most importantly clear communication can lead to everyone doing their job properly as all instructions are clear. Effective communication allows an organisation to function and helps achieve its goals. Without communication everyone will be doing their own thing.

An organisation structure is the structure in which the company can communicate successfully. This structure shows the people responsible for making decisions and taking control. The structure also shows who has the authority to make decisions at each level and how the information is passed to everyone involved. It is important to have this structure so that everyone knows how the company works and how it is operated. The purpose of having an organisational structure is to

1. Make sure information can be passed down from one department to another, and it there are any faults during this process it can be traced.
2. Employees can see who has authority over them and who they have authority over (their position).
3. It is clearer to see how the company is organised (which departures are linked to each other).

The hierarchal structure refers to the pyramid looking structure (narrow at top and wide at the bottom). This shows the number of levels responsibility or management. The chain of command is also shown on a hierarchal structure. Chain of commands is the way in which decisions are made and new information is passed down or up. Obviously the person at the top has the most control. However, hierarchal structures usually have tall organisational charts, which have many levels (long chain of command). This can be dangerous to communication within an organisation because there could be a limited amount of contact with other people in the organisation and information may be passed down the levels very slowly and at worst conditions information may be distorted. Also employees may not be able to see of talk to their managers in person and their position on the structure could also cause less communication within an organisation. Therefore, to avoid these situations happening some organisations run through a flat structure which has less number of levels of management, so that managers of senior managers are close to the workforce. This makes the flow also motivates job satisfactions. There is also the span of control which refers to the number of people directly controlled by one person. The span of control shows who has responsibility or direct authority over their colleagues. A narrow span of control means that the person has authority or control over a small number of people. On the other hand, a wise span of control means that the person has authority over a larger number of people.

An example of the tall hierarchal structure of the school is:  

 

        

        Head teacher (Mr. Lantos)

        

                                                                         Deputy Heads

        (Mr. Rigby etc)

Chain

Of        Heads of Year/Dept

Command         (Mr. Wallman)

    Assistant head of year

      (Ms. Barichievy)

        Teachers

     (Subject Teachers)        

There is also an example of our span of control within subject departments: e.g. Business studies which has a narrow span of control:

        Ms Chopra

Ms                   Ms                   Ms                    Ms                     Ms
        Begum           Beene            Vanderpoter         Patel               Chaudri

        Span of Control.

Section 4

Theory of Communication

Communication is the passing of information or message (transferring) from the sender to the receiver.

As mentioned, communication is important to organisation because:

1. It can motivate the workforce. It can be encouraging and make employees confident if their views are heard higher up the chain of command.
2. External communication is important to parents because they want to know what is going on in the school and when.
3. Clear communication can lead to everyone doing what they are supposed to be doing and allows an organisation to achieve its aims and objectives. Is also decreases the chances of mistakes happening e.g. if a class is taken to a computer room by a German class, then a science class know that the room has booked already and know no to go in the class.
4. Together they can help Preston Manor achieve their objectives and can provide a good service to their stakeholders.

An example of communication done is Preston Manor is at everyday at 8:30am all staff meets in the staff room for a brief meeting. However this could be not be such a good idea of communication because some teachers may be forgetful and not so confident with speaking out in front of everyone. Most importantly some teachers may come late and miss any important announcements. Below is the table of all types of communication that can be used.

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Section 5

Communication and Stakeholders

As mentioned earlier. Preston Manor has many stakeholders which they need to go their best to make them happy or satisfied with anything to do with the school. Some stakeholders or Preston Manor are: Parents, Governments, Suppliers, Residents (community) Staff, exam boards, local authority, pupils and ancillary staff.

For Preston Manor to make themselves a better school or to achieve its aims and objectives they need to communicate with their stakeholders. However sometimes issues outside of their control may stop them from trying to communicate with their stakeholders. Examples of such situations are:

• Postal Strikes.

Postal strikes can happen at any time not expectantly. This leads to everyone in the country not being able to send or receive posts which could be important on many occasions.

• Equipment

However the amount of paper, ink and equipment used in the school is unaccountable. Sending out letters to thousands of parent’s uses up a lot of paper, ink and preparation. Also students could lose or deliberately throw away letters. This can also cause confusion between the school and parents.

• Language barriers

Another major importance of letters is language barriers. Some families obviously don’t have English as their first, second of third language. Therefore they can’t read or write English which can also lead to unsuccessful communication between the school and parents.

Part 2  

Section 1

Legislation  

The Data Protection Act 1998 aims to regulate the use of data about individuals held in files (written records) or computers. This act prevents data to be passed around without permission to other people and other organisations. Naturally, if the data is about the person then this person can access the information. This act is mainly related to employees because employers must keep all employees written and computerised reports confidential. This is why employers need to keep all employee information secure and accurate. Preston Manor uses the data protection act to look after student records and staff records secure and accurate and as confidential as possible this would be kept by the Human Resources department along with teacher records too, in result staff has to look after student data carefully.

Section 3

Primary Research

Primary research is often called field research which collects information directly or first-hand. The strengths of primary research are that everyone is asked the same question and it is easy to analyse the replies of questionnaires. It is easy to put into statistical graphs. The limitations of primary research questionnaires are that they don’t allow people to express their own opinions. They are brief and can be impersonal.

The strengths of my primary research were that I handed it out to many parents and teachers which gives me a more reliable result of communication in Preston Manor. However, I did have some limitations to this research such as:

• I didn’t get direct communication with parents, so any issues or concerns they may have had couldn’t be discussed.
• Other classmates failed to cooperate when giving results to questionnaires which may have lead to unequal amount of results.
• The teachers I had handed out my questionnaires to were all from one department, which can give little variety of answers given. This gives me them little choice of answers which can result to limited answers.
• Therefore I could have used focus groups. Focus groups are where a group of people meet together to provide information about a product or service that they have experience. In this case questioning a group of teachers on how they feel about communication at Preston Manor. This would have given me a chance to invite teachers from different departments.

The advantages of focus groups are: they are a relatively cheap way of finding out the views of customers, and customers are more likely to respond to these questionnaires than a postal questionnaire.

However, the disadvantages of focus groups are that: customers own opinions may be changed by the opinions of other people I the group, it could pressure them not to give their own personal answer. This will only be a small number of customers, who may not reflect to the views of the majority of customers. And it may be difficult to find customers who actually want to give up their time for focus groups (many customers have better things to do). .

I could have used random sampling which gives everyone an equal chance of getting chosen, this gives a true sample of the chosen population. However, some members may not want to fill out questionnaires because they don’t have time or they’re not interested which can lead to dissatisfaction. I could have also used secondary research, often called desk research, which looks at information already collected and published. So I could have looked at published reports of what parents and teachers thought of communication at Preston Manor rather than doing primary research myself. It is cheaper than primary research and can be instantly available to see. However, published reports may not contain all the information I need and can be out of date, which will lead to my answers not being accurate.

Analysis of parent’s response to questionnaire on communication

1. In what ways does you child’s school communicate with you?

I learnt from this question that Preston Manor communicates with parents mostly through letters and least through school website and emails.

2. Which current method of communicate is used by PMHS do you think is the most effective?

I learnt from this question that parents find letters the most effective method of communication from PMHS and that they find the school website and Emails less effective.

3. Are there any methods of communication that you feel can be used?

This question was an open ended question, so we can hear the parent’s thoughts on other methods of communication. However, none of the parents had suggested any other method, which tells us that they are happy or satisfied with the method being used already.

4. How often does the school communicate with you?

I learnt form this question that PMHS communicates with parents mostly every few months and they don’t communicate with parents more than once a week or every month.

5. Are you satisfied with the amount of information from the school? If no, what problems do you face?

I learn from this question that all parents are satisfied with the amount of information received from the school and that they do not face any problems.

6. How could you improve the communication between the school and the parents?

This is an open ended question so that parents can express their views on what they think. The parents that filled in this questionnaire didn’t think that there could be any other way that communication can be improved, which means that they think communication between the school and parents is very good.

7. Do you feel it is easy to communicate with your child’s head of year or tutor?

I learnt from this question that parents mostly find it easy to communicate with their child’s head of year or tutor, and that they never find it hard to do so. This means that parents are most likely to be happy or satisfied with communication between themselves and head of years or tutors.

Analysis of teacher questionnaire on communication at Preston Manor

1. How do you communicate with pupil’s parents?

 

Letter                email         telephone         other

All three teachers ticked the letter and telephone box.

I learnt from this question that all the teachers used letter and telephone to communicate with pupil’s parents because this is the most popular type of communication used to get in touch with parents, and is used all the time. However, this doesn’t mean that letters and telephone calls aren’t time consuming for teachers.

2. Would you prefer any other communication methods? If yes, please specify

                                                

        

Some teachers wrote that they would prefer to use email as another type of communication. They may think this because it is easier for them as there is a quicker response, in addition teacher’s call parents during the day when they are working so it is unlikely for them to get a hold of parents so in this way they can get a direct response and is less time consuming for the message to be sent and feedback to be received.

3. How reliable do you think communication from the school is?

• Very good
• Good
• Satisfactory
• Not so good
• Awful

All the teachers circled "good", which means that they are fairly happy with the reliability of communication from the school.

4. Do you find it easy to communicate with other teachers from different departments?

        Yes                no

All the teachers ticked the “yes” box, which means they are happy and find it easy to communicate with other teachers from different departments, which results to there being no internal problem of communication in Preston Manor.

5.   Do you always get feedback from parents directly?

        Yes          Mostly        

        No        Sometimes

All the teachers had a different response to this question, one ticked the “yes” box another ticked the “sometimes” box and the last ticked the “mostly” box, this shows us that some letters are sent out with a response however, sometimes they are just to inform so teachers wouldn’t necessarily get a response.

                

Part Four

Section 1

Fact and opinion

The purpose of constructing this questionnaire was for me to find out what method of communication parents and teachers find most convenient and effective and what they would want to see improved with the communication process at Preston Manor.

I expected to find out that most teachers and parents are happy with the communication process at Preston Manor and that they mainly used letters and telephone calls as a method of communication.

After completing my questionnaires and analysing them I in fact found out form parent questionnaires that:

1. From parent questionnaire: question 3-Are thee any methods of communication that you feel can be used?

Most parents said none, but the remaining parents suggested emails, text messages and more one to one interviews with teachers.

2. From parent questionnaire: question 6- How could you improve the communication between school and parents?

50% pf parents did not comment, but the other remaining 50% suggested having more letters and phone calls home. Having more meetings with teachers. Making phone calls at the right time of the day, preferably evenings, since parents are working during the day and cannot take phone calls. Arranging workshops or events for parents providing information on GSCE courses and what the exam board expects for students to do. More frequent short reports and a more detailed website.

This information will now help me to advise Mr Lantos with improving Preston Manor’s communication, I can also suggest some recommendation that Mr Lantos can take into account, based on my evidence.

Recommendations

From my various sources of research, I can now recommend improvements to Mr Lantos about communication, with the backing of my evidence form my research.

Because Preston Manor is a public sector organisation it needs to take care of its stakeholders. Preston Manor has many stakeholders such governors, government, exam board, community, parents, teachers, pupils, local authority etc. But the main communication that needs to be done to maintain the high level of Preston Manor would be communication with parents and teachers.

Therefore, my first recommendation is to vary the methods of communication externally. Such as using emails, phone, reports, and using more of the school website. This would help improve communication form Preston Manor because using more of phones and emails can make Preston Manor more environmentally friendly and can also benefit the school financially so that they don’t waste money on paper. Emails can be used to keep records of information; the school website can also be made more interactive, showing the school’s achievements, information and talent (One World talent show, drama plays video’s and art work could be put up on the website). Also by suing phones and mobile phones teachers can text parents about information, so they can still have contact with them, rather than telephone calls it is more likely that teachers ant get in touch with parents during the day because most of them are working, so by sending text messages to parents can look at them when they are free during work hours. With reports teachers and parents can ask questions and get immediate response. Teachers can also send reports through email as an attachment.

However, these recommendations do have some drawbacks that need to be taken into concern. The drawbacks are that emails and phone use and be time consuming for teachers. Emails can be lost or there could be problems (such as having the wrong email address, or receiver not receiving the email) , There could also be technical problems which leads to the fact that everyone need to have access tot the internet. Another drawback that may arise is that there could be language barriers, maybe some parents don’t know how read or talk English, or maybe they don’t know how to use the email system.

The reason that I am recommending this is because 50% of my primary research suggested these improvements being made to communication at Preston Manor.

My second recommendation for improving communication at Preston Manor is to install speakers in Preston Manor. This would help improve communication internally because teachers don’t always have time to check their emails. If too many emails are sent then it can be time consuming for teachers to read especially if there are a lot of unnecessary junk emails that teachers have to go through. Emails could also get lost and if the school is having technical problems then it is difficult for teachers to stay in contact with other. Also the morning briefing (face-to-face) that takes place in the staffroom every morning can be too long and impersonal. Some teachers may arrive late so they miss the important notices given in the briefing, also the fact that there are too many teachers in the briefing, some notices may not refer to them, so they are in result wasting their time, therefore the briefing being impersonal to them. Notices that are also handed out internally to teachers can waste a lot of paper, so installing speakers can reduce environmental and financial costs too.

There are however some disadvantages to installing speakers, which are that messages can be made impersonal if every one is listening to it, and it can be hard to make speaker messages personal too. It is very costly since you may have to employ more IT staff, and responses are not seen by the receiver of the message. It can also be embarrassing if the message has something to do with someone getting told off.

The reason that I am recommending this is because many teachers have complained about the junk email and impersonal meetings. It is also a way that Preston Manor cans save money on paper, rather than wasting it, making Preston Manor an environmentally friendly school.