Table of Contents
Executive Summary..................................................................................................... 2
Introduction.................................................................................................................. 2
Current Processes of
Communication (LO 3.1)........................................................ 3
Communication Processes
Available for Voluntary Organizations (LO 3.1, 3.2, 3.3) 4
Improvements to the Existing
Approaches to Collection, Formatting, Storage and Dissemination of Information
and Knowledge (LO 4.1, 4.2)................................................................. 5
Improving Access to Systems
of Information and Knowledge (LO 4.3)................. 7
References..................................................................................................................... 7
Executive Summary
The report was aimed at
identifying various communication issues that prevail in the voluntary
organization and the finding of report indicated that the issues seems to be
associated with the verbal communication which does not create any records in
the organization. Further, scheduling activities is also identified to be an
issue in the organization and in order to solve these issues, various
techniques were suggested in the report. Further, report also identified
various improvements that can be made to the way in which information is
collected, formatted, stored and disseminated within the organization. In the
final section, the emphasis was given to identifying means to improve the
access to information in order for better utilization.
Introduction
Voluntary organizations
operate on not for profit basis with the effort of the volunteers who do not
get paid for working for the organization. Since there are various stakeholders
involved in the managing operations, it is essential to have a proper communication
strategy for the organization. This report is compiled based on the information
provided in the case study regarding the loopholes of communication in a
voluntary organization, which had led to issues within the organization. This
report identifies the communication issues in the organization and make
recommendations to improve the process while managing the learning/knowledge
within the organization.
Current Processes of Communication (LO 3.1)
There are various
communication processes used by the voluntary organization, as explained in the
case study and these communications process are identified to be very
primitive. The communication methods used in the voluntary organization can be
identified as follows:
Verbal interviews – Verbal
interviews are used to conduct interviews to recruit volunteers to the
organization. These interviews are aimed at understanding the skill levels of
the volunteers prior to the recruitment. However, the case study also indicates
that the organization involves high level of written work, where most of the
volunteers join the organizations as writers. In order to evaluate the skill
set of a writer, using verbal interviews is highly questionable, as the verbal
interview does not evaluate the writing skills of the prospective volunteer.
Therefore, this process is ought to give rise to various problems and some of
those aspects are already discussed in the case study.
Verbal Communication of
Voluntary Schedules – The organization uses a verbal system to communicate the
voluntary schedule to its base of volunteers and according to the schedule
provided by the organization, volunteers are expected to perform their duties. The
volunteer supervisor, who is responsible of managing the schedules of
volunteers, carries out this verbal communication. However, this verbal
communication of schedule has not been consistent and some of the volunteers
have not even received the message of their schedule. This has created various issues in the
process and some of the volunteers also have given up their voluntary work, as
there is no proper mechanism to communicate their work schedule.
External Publicity – The
voluntary organization also engages in various public awareness-building
campaigns, which are identified to be external communications of the
organization where the aim is to create awareness about the activities that
they carry out within the organization. This activity is carried out by the
marketing and communication division of the organization, and it seem to have
been effective in driving message.
Communication Processes Available for Voluntary Organizations (LO 3.1, 3.2, 3.3)
The section above discussed
the communication processes that are used by the voluntary organization at the
moment and these processes seem to be highly primitive. There are various other
communication methods that are available for small voluntary organization and
they can be explained as follows:
Email – Emails are identified
to be the most common communication tools that are used in organizations at the
moment as almost all the stakeholders have exposure to Internet. The skills
required to communicate through emails is very minimum and limited to the
writing skills and basic Internet skills required sending out the emails.
Compared to other methods of communication, this method allows the organization
to send document as attachments making the task easy for volunteer who would be
sharing so many documents in their day-to-day activities at the organization.
Email is also considered to be a legal communication tool, which is accepted as
binding communication and therefore, in a organization with voluntary
responsibility, such privilege is essential in terms of delegating tasks. There
is a significant issue in terms of disconnection of communication department
from others and in order to solve this issue, emails offer the best solution
compared to verbal and other written communications where the emails have the
feature of copying (CC feature) the same emails to related parties to keep them
in loop. (Stucken, 2010) This feature creates connection and integration
between departments of the organization, which is highly essential for this
organization at the moment. (Stucken, 2010)
Memos – Memos are the short
reports written from a person to another person regarding a specific subject.
Compared to emails, memos are highly concentrated on a specific subject matter
and they are written mostly as reporting from one division to another.
Considering the application of this to the organization, these memos can be
used to communicate with volunteers and supervisor on the progress of the work,
which is also essential in terms of managing relationships.
Calendar Notes - This is an online tool that is attached to
most of the email clients that are used to communicate. In this method, the
calendars of other users can be blocked for a certain time period while
creating meeting appointments or task deadlines. (Matteson, 2013) This feature
can be used well to communicate the volunteer schedule to all the volunteers
where the calendars of volunteers can be blocked and deadlines for deliverables
can be set using flagging feature on the calendar. This methodology has
additional features such as recurring appoints for submission of reports and
other sequenced activities. (Matteson, 2013) However, compared to emails and
memos, this is highly concise and since the aim is to communicate and arrange
schedules, sharing lengthy message is not allowed in these features. However, it
allows the organization to allocate resources to each task, which is highly
essential based on the current situation.
According to the analysis
made above, following recommendations can be made to improve the communication
processes of the organization. To solve the most crucial communication issue;
scheduling the voluntary activities and communicating to volunteers is
recommended to be carried out through the online calendar managing applications
such as Microsoft Outlook as it would solve the issue of lack of communication
as well as resource allocation. Further, the supervisor is advised to use to
emails for communicating with volunteers replacing the normal verbal
communication. In order to standardize reporting, it is essential to adapt to
memo style, which should be submitted to the supervisor indicating the task
completed and the progress of each task.
Improvements to the Existing Approaches to Collection, Formatting, Storage and Dissemination of Information and Knowledge (LO 4.1, 4.2)
The company does not have any
formalized mechanism of collecting, formatting, storing and disseminating the
information and knowledge. As a voluntary organization that is highly dependent
on volunteers, there can be high labour turn over as volunteers work in an
organization for a limited time period. As they leave, there can be significant
issue in terms of knowledge and information and therefore, organizational
knowledge should be created. In this process, following process should be
adapted:
Collecting Data- The
organization’s current method of collecting data is currently at the discretion
on the volunteer who is involved in the task and the data collection is heavily
impacted by the personal values of the volunteer. However, in order to collect
unbiased information, the organization should eliminate the personal
preferences in data collection and therefore, it is essential to draft a policy
for data collection. While this process would outline the data requirements and
unbiased methods to collect such data, volunteers also will be provided basic
training on how to collect data that are relevant for the task ignoring the
personal preferences. These activities would ensure that the organization has a
collection of unbiased and high valued data, which can be used for decision-making.
Formatting Information –
Prior to storing information, it is essential to exclude non-value adding
information and convert the information to a standard format. Therefore, it is proposed to introduce a
format to standardize the data collection process as many of the organization
currently do not have any standard format. Further, the organization also
should keep in mind to conduct the formatting to keep information short and precise
as storing data is a limited facility for the organization.
Storing Information - The
organization should be open towards facilities that are available on internet
and considering this opportunity, there are various file sharing systems that
are called document clouds available online. Dropbox and Google Docs are two of
the examples, and these platforms allow organizations to save their data in
versions. As an when the document is updated on computer, the database gets
updates online and this is seen as a healthy way to take back up of the
documents that are used in the company. These faculties are available free of
charge for voluntary organizations making it financially feasible investment.
Dissemination – As
document-storing platforms allow companies to share stored data, information
dissemination is made easy using the above-mentioned recommendation. Even when
there is a change in volunteers, the replacement volunteer can login to the
system, trace documents and continue on the work. Further, file sharing
platforms allow these files to be accessed from anywhere whether it is PC,
mobile phones, laptops or even table PCs. Hence, the information dissemination
is made easy as the information can be shared through the cloud anywhere and
anytime.
Improving Access to Systems of Information and Knowledge (LO 4.3)
As the information and
knowledge will be stored in online file sharing cloud, the access can be gained
through anywhere through Internet. However, since there can be confidential
data, it is essential to control access and to do this, the organization can
introduce a password system to each folder which is already available in file
sharing cloud. (University of Ottawa, 2013) These passwords should be shared
among the users who require access to specific folders and thereby providing
required access while avoiding unauthorized access of information. (University
of Ottawa, 2013) Further, to make it easy for the users to understand the
structure of file sharing cloud, a n index should be created indicating the
files stored in each folders and parties that have access to each folder. These
processes would ensure that the access for data would be provided to right user
at right time.
References
Matteson, S . (2013). Quick
Tip: Work with your Google Calendar in Outlook . Available:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/google-in-the-enterprise/quick-tip-work-with-your-google-calendar-in-outlook/2404.
Last accessed 12th July 2013.
Stucken, A . (2010). What are
the email CC and BCC fields? . Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/guides/email-cc-and-bcc.
Last accessed 12th July 2013.
University of Ottawa .
(2013). Why are passwords so important? . Available:
http://www.ccs.uottawa.ca/accounts/password-tips.html. Last accessed 12th July
2013.
