Walmart: Enhancing Productivity Through Professional Communications - Essay Sample

Introduction

Walmart is the largest retailer in the United States can have its productivity enhanced through proper professional communications. The company has employed 1.5 million individuals internally and 700, 000 people all over the world. The company has also ensured a more comprehensive market share by establishing over 11, 000 retail which is spread across the US alongside other foreign countries internationally. The operations within the company imply that it has a significant workforce; thus it requires effective communication to facilitate the daily operations. Fortunately, the company has employed a multifaceted community strategy incorporating internet, intranet and extranet platforms and these have been important in bridging the geographical gap between its branches, stores, and the employees. Efforts to ensure effective face-to-face communication at the workplace are also underway. For instance, there is extensive use of social media, websites and executive blog targeted at providing a continuous flow of information between the management, employees and the customers. As an acting consultant, the paper will be a business proposal to the Board of Directors outlining how the company should utilize education, training as well as professional development to improve its professional communication.

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In as much as Walmart Company incorporates intranet and extranet communication strategies, there is a need for the company to factor in education, training and professional development to enhance the communication within its operation. The company has a massive number of employees making it challenging to use face-to-face communication. The installation of intranet and extranet being upcoming technologies, require adequate training to make the employees and the staff well-conversant with the communication strategies. Excellent communication is essential in planning, coordination, and implementation of operations within the organization. Training, education and professional development are critical in advancing communications within Walmart Company, and they can involve formal learning such as coursework, apprenticeships, and internship as well as informal learning. Furthermore, achieving effective training for better communication within the company would require activities such as the employees attending seminars, networking and conferences.

The Board of directors of Walmart Company needs to know that achieving professional communication would require a comprehensive education for professional development that incorporates observation, and mentorship (Nithithanatchinnapat, Taylor, Joshi, & Weiss, 2016). The training can also factor in graduate classes, the employees observing how mentors use effective communication and spending time together in classes while practicing how to communicate effectively. Attending conferences and workshops can avail opportunities to the employees and the entire staff to learn about the current developments in the field of communication thus equipping them with skills up to date. Workshops and seminars also avail platforms for the employees to exchange ideas with other professionals. The Board can have a past review on the performance of the previous seminars and conferences as a guide towards selecting most effective ones for the employees (Nithithanatchinnapat et al., 2016) Most importantly; the Board must be in the front line in encouraging the employees to attend the workshops even if they are not willing. Achieving this is possible when the Board put in place strategies that persuade the employees to have developed a curiosity in enhancing their communication skills

The Statement of the Problem

The proposal is prompted by the present challenges affecting the company which continuously derail communication process. The first challenge is lack of time between the employees and the staff to engage with each other thereby they are not in a position to share their experiences as well as to put across essential points affecting the progress of the organization. Face-to-face communication is poor within the organization, and the consequence is felt in the form of persistent complaints by the employees on the working conditions and remuneration. Moreover, over-reliance on electronically transmitted messages is another challenge that makes it difficult for the acquisition of non-verbal messages which is always an integral part of communication and messaging. The use of electronic message by the executive leadership discourages face-to-face communication and by extension derails decision-making process within the company since it is difficult to gather information and act on when face-to-face communication is not involved.

With an electronic system of communication, the company experiences poor upward communication that is continuously depriving the staff and employees opportunities to air their views (Nithithanatchinnapat, et al. 2016. Consequently, this has resulted in the accumulation of complaints in as much as the company is progressing well. Lack of face-to-face communication has led to bad internal communication thus derailing the operations of the retail shops established by the company. For instance, miscommunication is familiar with the use of electronic communication, and this affects the operations of the entire company as well as the retail shops. Nevertheless, electronic communication does not address language diversity within the company provided that the staff and the employees come from different places. The communication, therefore, does not cater for diversity in languages, time-zones, and hierarchies since the spread of information within the company are complicated and difficult without face-to-face communication (Nithithanatchinnapat et al. 2016). The company also experiences a lack of an effective way to stay up to date with the company news and announcements since there is a poor connection between the employees and the departments. In some instances, documents go missing, and some get poorly transferred in the email, and this sometimes leads to unclear standardization and orientation policy for the newly employed individuals. Unfortunately, the frontline employees spend most of their time within the company with minimal opportunity for training and briefings as well as education for effective communication.

Objectives

As a result of the communication problems experienced within Walmart Company, it is essential for the Board of Directors of the company to utilize education, training and personal development to improve professional communication within the company. The essay is going to identify various ways through which the company can educate, train and instill professional development for the employees to learn effective communication methods.

Recommendations

Achieving professional communication within the company will require the Board of Directors initiating education, training and personal development through various approaches targeted at employees and the entire staff.

Use of Education to Enhance Professional Communication

Before educating the employees, it is the responsibility of the management to put in place a central portal where all the employees, as well as the staff, can access the relevant information, documents, and communications. This can be followed by educating the employees on the basic concepts of electronic communication including the intranet and the internet. Moreover, the employees can be educated on the operations of the intranet to facilitate airing of their complaints and feedbacks.

With electronic communication, face-to-face communication within the company can still work when the employees are educated adequately. For instance, they can be taught on how to use team and collaboration tools which are effective in enhancing personal communication (Nithithanatchinnapat et al. 2016). These include collaboration tools such as group messaging and chats ideal for fostering the working together of teams within an organization. Furthermore, they can be educated on the importance of such tools in the provision of easy ways of seeking feedback and reporting complains. With adequate education, the employees will learn the importance of electrical communication during updates about the organization internal progress.

With the multiple retail shops under the company, the employees can learn the need for intranet communication system because the technique is suitable for spreading information across various geographical locations and different time zones. Another important aspect of electronic communication is its features such as Facebook which is intranet chat service and in this employees can learn through proper education how such services are effective face-to-face communication means. With this in mind, employees can get education illustrating the usage of this medium of communication in sharing files to foster conversation between individuals.

Use of Training to Enhance Professional Communication

To enhance the flow of communication within the organization, the Board of Directors can initiate training approaches to the employees and the entire staff on how to raise complaints and send feedbacks. This is important as it will enable them to proceed with communication without necessarily waiting for face-to-face communication method. Establishing a welcoming and friendly training environment is an important step that the Board of Directors need to consider before the commencement of the training for the employees (Doyle, 2017). This can employ the use of language that reinforces appropriate signal alongside instilling the corresponding attitude amongst the employees. The first step before training the employees on how to use the intranet for professional communication would involve personalizing employees' workspaces and customizing their profiles.

Moreover, the Board of Directors can open employee's message boards to facilitate the update of their status as well as introducing user-set-alerts and subscriptions (Doyle, 2017). Walmart management can also make the intranet and other electronic communication methods collaborative to make the conversation within the company lively and inclusive. Also, the collaborative intranet will eliminate one-way communication thus minimizing the build-up of information within the company. Nevertheless, the Board of Directors can implement two-way communication approaches such as establishing avenues where team members can dedicate time to collaborate, where the management can be devoted to create time for processing employee feedback pertaining their complaints and platforms where the continuous conversations between the employees and management are interactive and constant (Nithithanatchinnapat et al. 2016). The initial step for training should involve the Board of Directors ensuing top administrators are offered one-on-one training. This is because they are essential in strategic direction, governance, and budget formulation and also they are representatives that the employees can emulate. For the step to be useful, it might require setting up a mentoring program where younger and skilled employees can make the training experience comfortable (Doyle, 2017).

Interactive and intuitive tutorials are some of the effective training methods that the Board of Directors can consider to foster professional communication within the company. The training, for example, can incorporate steps to teach the employees through videos and tutorials. Use of tutorials is useful in training because they create mental imaginations which are memorable thus making learning easy and fun. With tutorials, they can build their profiles and can also learn how to complete online communication by practicing with online forms to make them well-c...