Effect of Bad Communication Between Various Departments in Hotels - Research Paper Example

Effect of bad communication between various departments in hotels and its impacts on overall employee and satisfaction Question-based Research paper user [Pick the date] Contents Importance of Communication 2 Positive aspects: fluent communication 3 Negative aspects: between employees 4 Problem statement 5 Aims 7 Objectives 8 Reason of lack of communication in hotels 8 First Language 9 Culture 10 Literature Review 12 Research Question 14 Research Design and methodology 15 Participant observer Journal data and analysis 17 Conclusion and Recommendations 22 Chapter 1 Importance of Communication Communication is of colossal and immense importance in the human life and culture. Communication is defined as the exchange of feelings, emotions, gestures, thoughts and any other type of diverse feelings human beings possess. Communication is the sole and only mean of transferring of thoughts between the living beings and importance of communication is magnified due to this factor. Communication is derived from the word “"communis” which means to “share” (Tyagi & Misra, 2011; Bhattacharyya, 2010). A conventional communication takes places with three main constituents known as sender, receiver and the main content message. Communication takes part between one or multiple human beings. Apart from that, the communication is deployed not only by human beings but also by all the living beings in one form or the other. Even the animals use the communication in their own form because day to day survival cannot be sustained without communication. The immediate benefits of communication include the depletion of the gaps between the human beings so that they can understand each other without any difficulty and with immense ease. The communication must be strong enough and smooth so that the stake holders can take full part in the understanding process and communication development phase can be carried out easily. Communication is the key source of conveying the feelings, news, expressions, updates and any form of happenings in the human life. Communication is not only used by the human beings but also by the animals in their own form and kind. Communication must be effective and useful in order to serve the purpose of the interaction. Similarly the formal communication must follow some kinds of standards and norms of the organization. No useless sentences and words can be tolerated. Informal communication can have casual sentences and words. There are different types of communication messages which are used according to the situation in the practical life. Communication messages must be used according to the audience and the nature of the news, content and any other forms of communication that are needed to be done in order to convey an update, feeling or emotion (Plooy, 1995). Positive aspects: fluent communication Positive aspects of a good communication involve fluency and minimized hurdles in the overall content of communicative display. The fluent communication always tends to take all the interested parties in the communication on board and tries to implement the best practices of the communication at a broader level. The communication must be fluent in a sense that it should be adaptive in nature and the receiver should be able to grasp the theme of the message being conveyed to him. The instigative approach is working behind a fluent communication that tends to convey the ideas and thoughts in the best ways possible (Rizvi, 2005). The speaker always delivers the message in the best form and the message content is delivered in the optimal fashion. Similarly, the receiver end is also excelling in the communication process and always try to get the gist of what is said to him rather than focusing on the complex and minute details that are not of high importance. A good communication has always the best available resources and it is always made sure that people who are being undertaken in the communication process can understand what is said to them. Clarity of speech with extra emphasis on the delivery is the key in the fluent communication. It is not always mandatory to excel in the language of communication another many people can have volatile level of skill in delivering any message depending upon the text. The most important thing that matters the most is the high profile level of learning that can place as a result of this communication. Many a times a person who is excelling in the language might not be able to convey the overall message whereas the person who has some loop holes in the language but know the effective importance of clarity in the communication process might deliver the message with optimal clarity within les time. The fluent communication is always full of body language. The body language is probably the most important factor in determining the effective caliber of a communication session. If the communication is being taken with a good body language then the outcomes will be more fruitful because body language is the main source of depiction of the emotion and feelings and it tells the people about how you feel, what is the exact content and intention you are trying to share to the receiver. The body language must be precise and figurative enough so that the listener can anticipate the intention behind your message and it also gives you an opportunity to perform the effective communication within less time. Negative aspects: between employees Negative aspect of communication between different entities occurs when the communication is misused or misinterpreted. As this paper focuses mainly on the employees within the organization, the negative effects are the results of the bad communication. Employees may find it difficult to convey their message because of the strict rules and regulations of the company and there can be other problems for this which will be discussed in this paper. Employees can also misuse the freedom of expression and can sometimes break the intention of the freedom of expression that is facilitated to them. They can be very articulate to share the secrets of the organization. Thus the communication must be balanced and with best intentions. The preciseness factor of the communication is of grave importance because when employees start to communicate very informally, this can elevate the organizational problems and the progresses of the day to day transactions are lowered because of this. There is also a strong and authoritative factor about the increasing personality crisis within the organization and bad communication can cast a lot of negative effects. The employees can feel disturbed if there is not hierarchal structure of the organization and they cannot communicate their intended feelings to the authorities. This can weaken the structure of the organization and employees can also inculcate a negative impression. Problem statement Tourism industry is experiencing a huge boost in the modern corporate world of today where a lot of people tend to explore the world and see the diverse horizons globally. Hospitality factor of human socialism compels to host the tourists and visitor in hotels where the customers can find themselves safe and sound. A tentative establishment or facility that provides residential and meal services for the guests and tourists (Gilje, 2004); A hotel is a place where guests, tourists comes and stay in order to carry out their personal activities, business activities and any form of multifarious act of transactions. The main problem with the high class hotels is the magnitude of strength of communication and how does the internal communication loopholes can cast detrimental effects to any guest who is residing in any hotel. The problem statement tends to focus at the root causes of the lack of internal departmental communication in different hotels and what can be the consequences the hotels have to face due to this lack of internal communication in the monetary as well as the good will domain. There are a lot of hotels which are becoming popular despite their normal or average performance but the reason behind this elevation is this strong communication and feeling of security they give to the visitor whereas the hotels which lack the strong internal communication between different departments do not give any good impression to the visitor and thus the performance graph defoliates swiftly. The problem statement is also to grasp the possible factors which are normally responsible for this lack of communication and how the hotel management can deplete this gap or lack of communication. The internal communication in hotels can really determine the future course of action for any hotel because with the advancement of the human resource relation activities, there are increased chances and opportunities and also there is an increase variable of threat that can harm the tentative growth of any hotel. This paper will try to investigate the real consequences of the internal communication of the customers’ satisfaction and how the strong inter-departmental communication in the tourism domain of hotels can become a really important factor for the further satisfaction of the customers. The world is not the same as it was years ago and the emerging technological trends have rocked the conventional trends of the communication. This paper will also look forward to recommend the means through which the communication can become more faster and reliable and different technologies will be discussed that can be efficiently deployed in order to increase the satisfaction of the tourist or any person who is living in the hotel. There is also an increased grave problem of the employee relationship with the top hierarchies and we will take a look into the matter that how the relationship between the top management of any hotel can be improved. The customer satisfaction will also be elevated if the employee management relationship will be strong and effective. Chapter 2 Aims The aim of this study is to highlight the importance of the communication within the departments of hotels and highlight the fact that how a good communication strategy can really help to gain the competitive advantage in the modern corporate world of today. There are a lot of issues in the modern hotel management communications domains and a lot of experts argue that the internal communication must be strong enough if the management is really looking to get the good image of their company and if they want to gain the competitive advantage within less time. One cannot possibly sustain the competitive advantage just by looking beyond the window not realizing that the sticking to the conventional windows cannot always promise the successful results. (Fletcher, 1999). There is a great need to understand that lack of good communication will harm the overall image of the hotel because the tourists come to the hotel from all parts of the world and their feedback can really decide the future course of action for any hotel. A hotel can also increase the fact that the promising nature of hotel and tourism industry can be a real factor of increasing the competitive advantage of any hotel. If the internal communication is itchy and teasing, then the tourists will feel a sense of insecurity and they will not give a good feedback. Some of the top worst effects that can damage the hotel image due to the bad internal communication are the customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is regarded as a factor of colossal importance in every business these days. This loyalty will be lost if customer feels that the communication means in between the employees and hotel management are not state of the art. The diversified integration of technology with the hotel management also compels the hotel runners that they introduce some of the most advanced features of the communication on which we will take a look further in the next stages of this paper. Objectives The customer satisfaction is always derived from the employee satisfaction and the communication process is the sole responsible factor that determines the employee satisfaction. If the employee communication with the managerial level will be upwards, that means that employees will be able to communicate their problems and issues effectively to the leadership, there will be a good outcome and consequence on the customer satisfaction. According to experts, the customers in the hotels are more satisfied with the staff which is kind, confident and provide the services on time (Kurtz & Boone, 2009). The customers never run in argument with the management which is famous for their good service and on time delivery of products. Similarly, there are a lot of confusions and problems that can surface due to the weak communication of the inter-departmental communication in hotels. The hotels can no longer argue that there was any miss-happening in the service. A good communication can always compensate for the bad. Reason of lack of communication in hotels The main causes and reason for the lack of good communication are numerous and multifarious in nature but some of them are identified to be playing a key role in the loop holes in the overall communication process and they are as follows First Language As language is the most important constituent in the communication process, it is responsible for playing a key role in the development of the good communicating process. In hotels, especially of the high class caliber, the employees come from different backgrounds because of the diverse nature of works and the hotel administration find it difficult to reform a uniform style of communication within different department for example if the finance department people are native language speakers and the food and beverages department people are not used to the native speaking of the language then there will be different problems in the internal communication. The employees will not be able to meet the required level of communication and there will be a communication gap placed because of this deficiency. Similarly, as the hotels are open for every kind of person and in the inter-continental hotels, people from diverse backgrounds and countries visit the hotels in order to enjoy the facilities provided there, if the hotel staff is unaware of the language of the visitor then there will certainly be increased problems and the managerial staff will find it absolutely difficult to go through the communication process. The visitors and customers will feel that their requirements are not being effectively fulfilled and there will be a lack of customer satisfaction. The first language or native speaking language is a great competitive advantage and if the hotel administration really gets lucky in hiring the right people who can speak the native language of the people who are mostly coming to the hotel then all the communication process will take place very smoothly. Similarly, the native language is identified because of the increased importance of the place where the hotel is located so the hotel administration should look into the fact that the people who are being hired in the hotel are totally from the local background and they can speak the native language. Culture Different cultures have different ways of communicating with each other and cultures have promoted some protocols of communication from time to time. The hotel administration has different kinds of employees who come from multifarious and diverse range of cultural backgrounds. It is natural that not every person is culturally competent and there can be many problems that can arise due to lack of good communication in a culture. For example in some cultures, it is favored that the person speak less and use the body language effectively and in some other cultures like the western culture, it is more appropriate to use the words effectively for the communication. When different people gather at the hotel environment, they get difficulties in organizational hierarchies of the communicative practices. People who belong to diversified cultures speak easily but there are many incidents when the cultural gaps cease the smooth communication. If the person from the eastern culture is reluctant to speak English then he will not be able to serve the customers of the hotel who are from the western background because the cultural perspective will surface different hindrances for him. There will also be increased and magnifying fears between different cultures because the historical differences can create a lot of problems. The cultural aspects also cause many different relational attribute concepts and people may fall to lack of communication in the hotel environment due to this problem. The best practice is to hire people from different backgrounds and who are also culturally competent. The people at the leading positions in the hotel management must be able to lead by front and they must be aware of different languages because the managers are the ones who will have to interact with the customers. If the managers will be good at communication and culturally competent then there are increased chances that they can immediately increase the profits of the hotels in the monetary terms. The bad example of internal communication within different departments of the hotels is the absence of contact officers in different departments. The departments like food and beverages, accommodation, general staff needs to communicate with each other on regular basis. There must be regular hiring of translators so that the low level staff can easily talk to the non native language speakers so that the customers can feel at ease. If the customers are speaking some other language and there is no one at the hotel administration who is able to understand this language then there will be a lack of competitive edge and the customer satisfaction can never be achieved. The tourism scenarios all around the world are compelling different people to share the communication aspects so that no matter from which country the customer comes, he must be able to feel comfortable in the hotel and the internal communication must also be state of the art. The internal communication between different departments and the communication between the staff and the customers are interred related to each other. If the internal communication is good and up to the mark then the customer satisfaction will also be good because the services will be provided within the right time and with good quality. If the internal communication is not good and state of the art then there will be conflicts. Every employee will throw his work on the next level and at the end of the day the customer’s needs will not be satisfied. The satisfaction of the needs of the customers are really important because of the fact that the hotel image is solely based on the value added services so if the people are not getting for what they are paying then definitely they will not come to the hotel again. Chapter 3 Literature Review The literature used for this research paper will be taken into account in order to inculcate the requirements of the research question. The importance of the customer satisfaction and its relation to the internal communication is the main problem statement as discussed above so in order to inculcate the research question, data finding and other required instances of the research paper, the academic journals, online resources and books will be taken into account. Some of the literature items that will be used to cite the evidence based research will be Proquest internal Communications in order to shed some light on The better hospitality service Importance of internal communication,. The primary literature that will be used in this research paper is “The Impact Of Internal Communication On Guest Satisfaction In Hospitality Establishments In Cape Town, A Master’s Level Academic Journal By Abdallah Seif Bamporiki”(Bamporiki, 2010) that provides immense research outlet on the discussed topics of this research paper. Similarly another research paper will be used to provide evidence based methodological perspectives which is named as “The Importance Of Communication Within Organizations: A Research On Two 5 Star Hotels In Antalya Region” by Dr. Samel Boyaci (Boyaci, n.d.). Previous works instigate the fact that the hotel’s management should focus on the real communication at different levels of the hotel dynamics because the internal communication quality determines the guest satisfaction. Both the things cannot be seen in different contexts and if the internal communication will be up to the mark then there will be increased level of security and satisfaction for the guests that are residing in the hotels. (Callan et al 1992). Experts like Wolvin argues that the internal communication can be increased with many different ways and the management should use the employee satisfaction as the first rule of thumb in the process o the customer satisfaction. There should be periodic rewards, day to day meetings with the employees who are facing some problems so that the employees can really feel that their pain is being shared by the upper level organizational hierarchies. If the employees are given a unique sense of responsibility then there are increased chances that they will perform well and the internal communication will take place very smoothly. In case of any problem, the employees will try to solve it without exploiting the hotel resources and they will try their best to perform well in front of the customers because they will know that they will get their rewards from the administration otherwise things will get worse and ultimately the communication will gets weaker as a result the overall company benefits will get depleted. The hotel management needs to understand the fact that the low level employees are the first to serve their customers and if the employees are not satisfied then there will be no value added services. Interface communication is another very grave problem identified by the experts in hotel management communication (Griffin, 2011). Interface communication means that the foreigner talk methods are deployed by the local staff with the customers who are not native but they staff fails to perform the required level of satisfaction of the customers because of “fake” behavior thus the customers are not satisfied and thus the all important factor f guest satisfaction gets depleted (Sparks and Callan, 1992). This factor can be minimized by using customized solutions for the foreigner customers and hiring people who can speak multiple languages’ just like the person who is living in the native space. This will not only give the hotel management, a feel of confidence, the customers and guests of the hotels will also be satisfied. Chapter 4 Research Question The research question will be focusing firstly on the nature of the internal communication and how it can affect the guest satisfaction in hotels. What are the volatile variants which can determine the magnitude of the quality of the internal communication and how it can be improved? The research question will be supported by a lot of arguments and the evidence based approach will be used. The all important factor of the increasing dissatisfaction of the hotel management with the new hires and the perspectives of the customers from all around the world will be discussed. The research question will depict and hold the evidences from the different research based resources and then the final output will be revealed and it will be revealed that what are the ways which can really be used in order to get the problems of the internal communication within the hotel departments can be solved. Chapter 5 Research Design and methodology Research is designed with the intention of getting the most correct results out of all the research methodologies in order to refine the results of this research paper. The qualitative approach was used which has the sole intention to get the experiences, cultural aspects, analytical motivations, aspirations and cultural lifestyles of different people involved. Sample populations were used in order to take the respondents of the research process on board so that different people can share their experiences about the internal communication and how it can be improved. Conventional and both non-conventional means were used in order to increase the evidences based research process. Different five star hotels were targeted for the research and the questionnaires was developed in order to gather the requirements of the research based question. The five start hotels were available from the main stream cities and they were present in the busy areas that gave us the opportunity to transform the people’s thoughts into well defined ideas. Firstly, the hotels were targeted at the administrative level and the low level staff was interviews. Then the senior managers were taken into account and there were different questions totally in regards to the internal communication and how they think that this communication can be increased. The main intention was to grab the staff and the people who serve the guest from the first place and that is the reason why the questionnaires were distributed all over the place. There were different problems while targeting the guests and visitors of the hotels because the administration was reluctant to let the question paper reach the visitors of the hotels so there were different online forms that were designed and thus the research was carried out in order to gather the results. The questionnaires were designed specifically for the visitors and the user level input was taken and their thoughts were inculcated in the different domain of increasing the internal communication. The questions and answers were compiled and then the detailed analysis was carried out in order to gather the results of the research and evidences of the main problems statement. Figure a Chapter 6 Participant observer Journal data and analysis There were different classes of people that took part in answering the research questions at different hotels. Of the total of around 106 respondents that answered and returned the questionnaire, the majority were young rather than old and from the middle ages and 9% were younger than 20 years old; 44% (the largest group) comprised young managers aged between 21 and 30 years old; 38% were 31to 40 years old; 7% were between 41 and 50 and 3% were over 50. Different questions were asked step by step and the low level staff answered it with ease and comfort. Many results are depicted in the form of tables. The first question was about the importance of communication and how do you see that communication can really turn the things around and the senior managers and staff were asked the same question in order to take the input from their sides. Figure 1 In answer to the above question around 49% of the people said that the communication has the most important role to play in defining the image of the hotel and if the communication is good then the overall customer satisfaction level will also be up to the mark whereas the 9% of the sample population said that this is not the case where 3 % of the people were uncertain and were unable to give any kind of answer. The answer to the above question shows that the importance of communication in hotels is a well established fact and all the heed should be given to the important aspects of increasing the communication process in the internal communications. Gone are the days when people used to think that internal communication is not important for the improvement of the services offered for the customers. The importance of communication is a well established fact now in all the departments of the hotels. Another question was asked about the important channel access for the communication in order to increase the communication rate in the internal departments and more than 80% of the people said that the hotel communication channels must be given access for the upbringing of the major communication procedures. The most important aspects of the channels for the communication are telephones and thus most of the population said that the telephones are used a lot in the hotels for the communication with each other. Many a times the department of one place has to communicate with another department so that people can be notified about the new happenings. Figure 3 Another question was about the relationship of the internal communication and the effect of this factor upon the service delivery. More than 80% of the people “strongly agreed” with this and they said that if the internal communication will be up to the mark, the people will be able to enjoy optimal services from the hotel service providers. 8% of the peopled did not give any answer as they were unsure about the orientation of the question and only 2% of the people disagreed. This shows the importance of the relationship between the internal communication and service delivery in hotels. The next question was about cultural competence and it was asked that the cultural competency and diversity can affect the image of the hotel. In answer to this question around 45% agreed with this statement that culturally competent staff can really boost up to the services of the hotel whereas the 35% of the population voted for “strongly agreed”. This was in fact the most important answer that decided the course of the research because the cultural factor is not known and adapted in many hotels and the hiring process is also not done keeping this factor in view. The next question was asked about the identification of the factors that can affect the inter communication of departments. In answer to this questions the first and the foremost factor that was identified to be playing a key role in the communication is the cultural diversity. Around 44% people said that if the staff is more culturally diverse then the communication will be good and optimal. The second biggest set of population said that the lack of communication structure within the organization can deplete the effective communication or internal communication in any hotel. Figure 3 Following were the results when question was asked that either the manager gives feedback to the performance of day to day activities in hotel to employees or not. Figure 4 Chapter 7 Conclusion and Recommendations The importance of effective internal communication is proved through an evidence based approach with a detailed analysis of the question based research paper. There is a great need to inculcate the results of this research paper so that the service related outcomes can be aligned with the requirements of the customers who come from culturally diverse backgrounds. There is also a strong need to inculcate the fact that the hiring process must be devised such that the low level staff that is being hired is aware of different cultures. Knowledge of different languages should be preferred because there is a much intended need to enhance the important aspects of the culturally diverse orientations. The employees in the hotel must be facilitate with the state of the art facilities so that they can communicate with the higher authorities and senior managers of the hotels whenever they feel that things are getting out of their hands. The senior managers should also try to inculcate the bottom up approach for the communication instead of the up to down communication as this approach is totally designed to suppress the low level employees. If the internal communications will be strong, the service delivered to the customers will be optimal and satisfying in all aspects. References Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bamporiki, A. (2010). The Impact Of Internal Communication On Guest Satisfaction In Hospitality Establishments In Cape Town. Faculty Of Business At The Cape Peninsula University Of Technology. Bhattacharyya, D. K. (2010). Cross-cultural management: Texts and cases. New Delhi: PHI Learning Ldt. Boyaci, C. (N.D.). The Importance Of Communication Within Organizations: A Research On Two 5 Star Hotels In Antalya Region. Akdeniz University School Of Tourism Administration And Hotel Management. Callan, J.V. (1992). Internal communication and service encounter: The value of convergence. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 11(3):213-224 Fletcher, M. (1999). The effects of Internal communication , leadership and team performance on successful service quality implementation. Team performance management.5(5):150-163. Gilje, F. L. (2004). Sharing emotions and experiences of care. Nursing forum. 39 (4):36-39 Griffin, R. W. (2011). Management. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Kurtz, D. L., & Boone, L. E. (2009). Contemporary business. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Plooy, G. M. (1995). Introduction to Communication . Rizvi, M. A. (2005). Effective technical communication. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill. Spark, B. & Callan, J.V. (1992). Internal communication and service encounter: The value of convergence. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 11(3):213-224. Tyagi, K., & Misra, P. (2011). Professional communication. Read More