Benchmarking: Global Communications

Benchmarking: Global Communications

Global Communications is faced with a variety of problems in its efforts to become a global leader in the telecommunications industry. The company is under economic pressure and a few years prior their stock traded at $28 per share and is now valued at $11. Furthermore, the company needs to institute steps to introduce more services to satisfy local and long distance customers. Global Communications also has internal problems since it has decided to outsource jobs to reduce cost and increase profitability. The company has not communicated well with it employees or the union that they plan for employees to take pay cuts after having given up other benefits. This paper will look at strategies other companies applied in their response to similar problems. The companies discussed in this paper are different types of industries, but all have experienced similar problems and found solutions to those problems. The solutions to their problems can be implemented by Global Communications so that the company might accomplish goals and remain competitive in the industry. One of the practices that corporations use is generic benchmarking. "Generic Benchmarking performance measures are concerned with specific work processes that are virtually the same for all industries that use these processes. Generic benchmarking can easily identify those firms that have adopted innovative processes, thereby providing targets that can be more readily acceptable by members of the organization" (Davis et al, 2003.).

Analysis

Four of the companies benchmarked with Global Communications use an open method of organizational communication. Johnson and Johnson, General Motors, Lincoln Electric, and 1-800 Flowers have communicated issues to their employees as informal communication, which is generally associated with interpersonal, horizontal communication. It has become more important to ensuring the effective conduct of work in modern organizations. Managers in these companies have traditionally spent the majority of their time communicating in one form or another, such as meetings, face-to-face discussions, memos, letters, e-mails and reports. At Lincoln Electric, for example, the work advisory board meets on a bimonthly basis with senior management to discuss any new issues on hand (Singer, 1988). Today, however, more employees find that an important part of their work is communication, especially now that service workers outnumber production workers and research as well as production processes emphasize greater collaboration and teamwork among workers in different functional groups (Baker, 2002).

Emotional intelligence played a big part in all four companies. Emotions are important in an organization especially one in the situation like Global Communications. When performing a job or interacting with coworkers, they experienced a variety of emotions that shaped longer term feelings toward the company. The more emotions that are positive, the more they form positive attitudes toward the organization and various aspects of it. All the companies experience emotional intelligence as a necessary component in making decisions, perceiving and expressing emotion, assimilating emotion in thought, understanding and reasoning with emotion, and regulating emotion in oneself and others. In other words, emotional intelligence represents a set of competencies that allow us to perceive, understand and regulate emotions in ourselves and in others. These emotional competencies are learned capabilities based on emotional intelligence that lead to superior performance (McShane-Von Glinow, 2004).

Organizational commitment is present as well. When the employees are attached to the organization and the people are willing to put forth effort on behalf of the company, changes and restructuring procedures are much easier to implement and to accept.

Compare and Contrast

In comparing Johnson and Johnson, General Motors (GM), Lincoln Electric and 1-800 Flowers, these companies apply the concepts similarly; they each use emotional intelligence, organizational communication and organizational commitment in ways that have helped their company progress through difficult times and big change. Unlike Global Communications, Johnson and Johnson chose to communicate and be up front about their problem with the Tylenol tampering. They were honest with their customers as well as their employees, and they rebounded nicely after the incident. This type of open communication in the organization and not becoming over emotional, but applying the right amount of emotion made Johnson and Johnson a success story, and one that maintained a good reputation after an unfortunate incident. General Motors was faced with a strike and outsourcing of jobs. Just like Global Communications, they too decided to send production to other countries, thus losing much needed jobs in the U.S. "Layoffs are not cost effective. The immediate savings of a layoff are usually outweighed by subsequent costs of recruitment, training, and demoralization," (Mink et al, 1990). For GM, after the inevitable strike that was later settled, the loss to the company was impactful and caused more jobs to be lost, due to of loss of revenue. The outcome of this situation was that GM and the union came to an agreement which included the outsourcing of less jobs and an agreement about the costs of health benefits that the company would be willing to contribute for each employee. In the early 1980s, Lincoln Electric went through an economic recession, but since they had a guaranteed employment policy, they did not layoff anybody. They did other things so as to keep the employees. They restructured and redesigned jobs and salaries. This led them to becoming one of the leading U.S. manufacturers. The use of their organizational communication was very effective and everybody benefited. Global Communications can definitely learn from Lincoln Electric and their style of management that has led them to success. 1-800 Flowers has a strong belief in brand name and improving service and technology, they believe in keeping their call centers in the U.S. This benefits their bottom line; and because of this strategy they enjoy a positive organizational commitment from their employees who in turn provide the company with greater revenues.

Conclusion

Organizational communication, emotional intelligence and organizational commitment are concepts that are necessary and present in good companies. Customers are the life-blood of a company; however, employees are critical. Without effective communication, any organization could become one with bad morale and high employee turnover. Global Communications can prosper in the future by learning from some