Importance of Effective Communication Strategies to Improve Workplace Communication!!!

Abstract

This paper discusses the importance of effective workplace communication for a professional business graduate aspiring to join the industry. Communicating at workplace is a skill, and can be developed by training on specific strategies used in the communication process. Previous studies have highlighted the importance of skill to communicate effectively and its impact on the employability of engineering students. The secondary data review done by the researcher asserted on the need for training the students on skillful communication while they are in their education years. This will support in their work preparedness, and help them in making productive discussions at workplace. This paper describes the detailed process of a pilot study conducted by the researcher on 102 professional business undergraduates to assess them on their effective communication skills and train them on their preparedness for workplace communication. A pre and posttest method was used to study their responses. The pretest responses highlighted that there were evident gaps in their speaking skills. The researcher devised some communication intervention/strategies that can be used to communicate effectively at workplace with each other. She introduced this intervention to a group of 51 business undergraduate students which were a part of the Experiment group, and trained them on these strategies. A pre and posttest assessment method was used to map the improvement. The results show a significant improvement (more than 45%) in the effective communication style of the Experimental group in understanding the communication strategies which added to the work preparedness for these students. This paper is an attempt to discuss the experiment and describe strategies to improve workplace communication between two/more members of an organization thereby enhancing productive business communication.