ORGANISATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Communication is the sharing of information for a variety of purposes including informing, persuading, motivating or influencing. There are two general ways of delivering the information: formal and informal communication channels.

Formal communication is organized and managed information that is shared with relevant individuals in order to secure coordinated action throughout the organization. Formal communication channels are based on an individual’s role in the organization and distributed in an organized way according to the established chain in organizational charts.

Examples of formal communication within an organisation would be meetings, conferences, reporting and presentations.

On the other hand, informal communication in the workplace satisfies a variety of social and emotional needs, and are not based on the positions individuals occupy within the organisations.

Informal communication is casual and spontaneous in which does not follow the organisation’s chain of command. Examples of informal communication would be e-mail, phone calls, office talk, or gossip.

An effective and efficient communication system requires managerial proficiency in delivering and receiving messages. A manager must discover various barriers to communication, analyze the reasons for their occurrence and take preventive steps to avoid those barriers. Thus, the primary responsibility of a manager is to develop and maintain an effective communication system in the organisation.