The Communication In Business

As I study, organizational behavior and specifically communication topic seems to be more relevant for my future career. Communication is a significant part not only in everyday life, but also in the worlds of business. As a matter of fact, communication is really important in the worlds of business because in a way, it is power; one wrong word or phrase could make or break a deal. In the far away future, I plan to get in the healthcare management business school, in hopes of working in healthcare fields. I believe the communications lecture will be the most beneficial for my future career as it will help me not only further improve my communication skills, but also help form good working relationships between me and my coworkers. Marketing perspective of communication, public relations perspective of communication

human relations perspective of communication, and power perspective of communication are just few of the theories of communication under organizational behavior. The human relations perspective and power perspective of communications would be the most beneficial in terms of my future career. In order to build connections and be in good terms with people, there has to be a good form of communication. As Professor Ingram stated in his communication lecture, communication helps to: manage, provide feedback, share emotion, persuade, and exchange information (Ingram). All of this is in needed for healthcare administrators to form good relations with people to ensuring the smooth operation of a hospital, hospital system or healthcare organization.

Face-to-face and telephone conversations have high channel richness in which they can handle many cues at the same time, facilitate quick feedback, and it tends to be personal, as well, which helps aid in forming a good bond with clients (Ingram, Communication slide 13). For healthcare administrator, I would have meetings with investors or governing boards and those investors want businessmen to be trustworthy, and one of the only ways to know if somebody is trustworthy is to have an in-person conversation with them as emails and letters could be written from anybody. Hence, emails and letters having low channel richness.

This communications topic will also help me in my future career because it will help me stay away from the eight barriers to effective communication. These barriers are: filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotions, language, silence, communication apprehension, and lying. Nobody wants to be in the lines of business with a liar and working with someone that always make a rash decision. Therefore, good communication will definitely boost morale. Communication will benefit my future career in many ways since it is important in the business to be in constant communication with their investors and partners.

It is also the key to success as it handles any misunderstanding an organization or people might have due to misinterpretation. Healthcare administrator needs to get into small groups in order to discuss cases, projects, and any upcoming changes within the hospital or healthcare facilities. This will also help clear any miscommunication. The only way I can see communication not being relevant in my future career is if there will not be there sort of trouble with communicating throughout my work. However, as stated above, communication is key to success and is always needed. Even if it is to explain the simplest thing. A good, strong, and healthy working environment needs to have strong communication.

Motivation in Business

I used to work for boba tea cafe, TenRen. TenRen.Com features products from Ten Ren Tea Company, the largest and best-known tea manufacturer in the Far East. Owned and operated by third generation tea producers for over 40 years, Ten Ren’s goal is to promote the art of Chinese tea to discriminating consumers worldwide. Each location is a franchise that is individually owned and managed. Being a franchise location gives owners and manager a lot of freedom to run their stores however they see fit. From personal experience at my location, corporate is not really involved in each store except for the corporate rep that is sent out every three or four months to check up on the store. This adds to managers and owner’s freedom because they only take tips from the rep that could help the store bring in more revenue.

Other than this rep, corporate does not give much feed or tips on how managers should run their stores. This, from what I have seen at my location, creates an issue for employees because they do not have much motivation to excel at their jobs. When running a business, motivation is an extremely important quality for managers to be able to gradually but firmly estaiblish in their employees. Implanting motivation in employees will guarantee that each employee is working to their best skill to make the most revenue possible. The two theories that were covered in Ingram’s lecture on motivation that be the most important in a franchise corporation like TenRen’s are the Self-Determination Theory and the Goal Setting Theory.

The self-determination theory focusses on getting employees to want to excel at their jobs instead of feeling like they have to do their jobs to make money. According to the self-determination theory, employees that are intrinsically motivated will excel at their duties more than those that are just working to get money. This is because those that are intrinsically motivated love their job and want to perform well, while those that are only working for a paycheck will only perform well enough to not get fired. The goal setting theory calls for setting “clear, specific, measurable, and challenging” (Ingram, Week 4, slide 19) goals for employees to instill motivation.

According to this theory employees will be more motivated if they are able to focus on reaching small goals every day that will lead to them completing one big goal. Small goals are more obtainable and create less stress in the work place. Also, the fact that employees will be able to meet these small goals faster than completing one huge goal, means they will continue to stay motivated with every goal they successfully achieve. Both of these theories have received criticism because individuals feel that they may not be the best way to achieve instilling motivation in employees. However, I feel that after working in a corporation like TenRen’s, following these two theories would be incredibly beneficial to my location.

From personal experience, being a shift manager at my location I can see there is a major lack of motivation in the employees to excel at their jobs. However, while this is true for my location it is not true for all stores. The corporate stores I have visited are very efficient when it comes to motivating the employees at their location. Their employees have the opportunity to obtain promotions, and they have the opportunity to get a bonus every time they work if they meet their daily revenue goals. The daily revenue goals motivate employees to upsell and always keep fresh products available for customers. If the daily revenue goal is met, employees will earn an extra dollar per hour that they work.

While this doesn’t exactly line up the self-determination theory and focusses external motivation rather than intrinsic motivation, it does line up with the goal setting theory. Each day there is a new goal for employees to meet and achieving this goal allows them to obtain extra money. This motivates crew members and shift managers. This motivates crew members to up sell each transaction while they are on register and it motivates them to work fast and efficiently to guarantee that the customers are satisfied and will visit the store more often. The daily goal motivates shift managers to always have fresh boba coming out of the oven every thirty minutes. If the boba are always fresh, there will never be a customer that requests a refund. A refund takes away from our daily revenue and will lead to missing the daily goal by just a few dollars.

Because freshness and great customer service are both qualities that TenRen guarantees each customer that visits our stores, having the daily revenue goal to motivate employees accomplishes more than just increasing revenue. For this corporation specifically, utilizing the goal setting theory has shown to be extremely beneficial. By setting goals, employees are motivated to excel at their jobs and in turn, TenRen’s gets a good reputation for having great customer service and fresh product. The self-determination theory also benefits TenRen’s because by setting goals each employee is forced to create self-determination within themselves in order to meet the daily goal.

While the corporate stores effectively utilize the self-determination theory and the goal setting theory, the same not can be said for my specific location. At my location I have seen that all employees lack self-determination. This could largely be due to the fact that promotions are not common at my location. My location is very small and has approximately two shift managers and five crew members. Becoming shift manager is the only promotion an employee can obtain, and after that you cannot move up. Becoming a shift manager is the highest promotion you can achieve and the only way to get the promotion is if one of the current shit managers were to quit or get fired. This is actually how I was promoted to shift manager.

One of the shift managers quit and of the crew members at the time, I was the most qualified to take the position. I personally feel that after becoming a shift manager my motivation is decreased more than I’d like to admit. Because there is no more moving up, I am the highest position I can possibly achieve, I don’t see the need to try harder and be the best at my job. In the beginning I did try to be the best shift manager at my location but I got no recognition for correctly doing my job, so I stopped. Not getting recognition for excelling at my job demotivated me more than anything. I would get my team to reach the daily goal and there was absolutely not recognition from my supervisors. We simply just got the promised bonus.

So much as a “good job, thank you for reaching the goal” would motivate me and my team, but because we’re not even getting that, we have stopped trying so hard. I have seen that my team and I are just doing enough to not get in trouble. No one is motivated to work hard anymore. I believe the main things my managers can do to change this is make promotions smaller, say not go straight from crew member to shift manager, but maybe create a middle position. That way once a crew member is promoted they still have a reason to work hard.

My managers also have major issues with instilling motivation in their employees through the goal setting theory. At my location we have a daily goal that we earn an extra $0.75 if we meet. However, we recently lowered our prices and the goals were not adjusted to match the new prices so our goals seem almost impossible to meet. This does not meet the goal setting theory because it requires for goal to be obtainable and setting a goal that is too high for employees to achieve demotivates employees rather than motivating them. I have personally seeing how making goals unattainable demotivates the employees at my location. In the past all crew member and shift manager worked hard to meet the daily revenue goals.

However, I am currently seeing that the goals are too high and the employees are less motivated to make fresh products and deliver excellent customer service. Because it is unlikely that we will reach the daily revenue goal, I see shift managers waiting 45 minutes to an hour to make new products instead of 30 minutes. Also, crew members are not motivated to be nice to customers. I have noticed that crew members no longer care if we have to give a customer a refund. The amount of refunds done daily has increased since our prices increased. I definitely thought my manager would try to lower the amount of refunds that are given out each day, but we have had these new lower prices since before the holidays and nothing has been changed to motivate the employees.

I believe this is happening because not only have the employees lost motivation, but I believe my managers have lost motivation as well. Because corporate is not really involved in how each store is run (personal experience), my manager specifically has no reason to motivate her employees. I believe to fix this TenRen’s corporate office needs to more involved in how each franchise location is run. If the corporate stores were to share how they motivate their employees and possibly even require that other locations start utilizing their motivation techniques, locations like mine would benefit greatly.