What Are the Effects of Poor Communication in an Organization?
The effects of poor communication in an organization include the suffering of employee morale, overall innovation and levels of efficiency. Communication in some ways represents the lifeblood of an organization, and when it is faulty, desirable outcomes are much harder to achieve.
Communication abilities have a significant impact on the motivation that employees feel to do a good job at work. When communication is vibrant in the workplace, employees are more productive, feel the freedom to be more creative and rely more on their inspiration to drive them. When communication breaks down, the amount of enthusiasm plummets because employees question the value of their assignments. Over time, morale goes down because employees have to endure presentations and projects that seem meaningless because of a lack of context.
When communication is not ideal, neither is organizational efficiency. Email messages that do not provide enough elaboration, documents with errors requiring rewriting, and speeches and presentations that show a lack of information all influence work flow within an organization. Leaders who desire the timely completion of projects use effective communication skills, and their employees understand their expectations and fulfill them.
Finally, innovation suffers as well when there is a breakdown of communications. The organization’s ability to make swift decisions for innovation suffers because no one knows what they have the freedom to authorize or attempt.
