The Importance of Communication in the Workplace

Communication is an essential system in all organizations. Organizations depend on all aspects of communication from verbal to nonverbal to perform their daily business functions. An organization also depends on all communications being properly encoded and decoded to ensure that all communications are understood by the respective audience. A prime example of communication at the workplace brings Enron to mind. As described in our textbook, “Enron executives invested an incredible amount of time and energy , and literally spent millions of dollars on accountants and lawyers, in order to make their activities so complex they were not likely to be discovered, much less understood or successfully prosecuted against” (Hamilton, 2005, p. 32). I like this example because it clearly demonstrates how their complex practices led to very poor communications with the rest of the world. Enron’s complex practices were quite effective in fooling everybody but god for many years. My point here is to demonstrate just how powerful communication can be in organizations.

Communication is important in all levels of an organization. For example, co-workers may communicate amongst themselves. Effective ways to do so obviously depend on the environment. If it is a noisy factory, verbal communication would be ineffective so employees may communicate nonverbally with hand signals, gestures, or facial expressions. Employees also need communication with their bosses, this can be done in verbally in person, or in writing. If a supervisor is communicating the worker’s assigned work area, or desired production for the day, verbal communication would work fine, but if vast amounts, or important information needs to be communicated, written communication would be the best choice. It is best because it can be delivered uniformly and easily referenced back to. Communications used from middle management to upper management, or corporate headquarters is going to be dominated by the nonverbal style. Information transmitted at this level is often time-sensitive