99 ways to improve business communication

Click here to read a very interesting article on 99 ways to improve your business communication. The tips I like most are:

Resist the temptation to finish other people's sentences.
Stand up if everyone around is standing and sit down if everyone is seated. Be on a level playing field.
Watch for cultural differences in communication styles.
Use smiles as positive reinforcements.
Understand the importance of making small talk.
Connect with human emotions by using real-life examples and sharing stories.
Stay on message.
Turn off your technology at professional business meetings and events.
Avoid criticizing, complaining, and judging.
Listen to what is not being said.
Look for similarities, not differences. This bridges communication gaps.
Ask the question. Then be quiet.
Follow the 5 Ps: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance (public speaking).
Focus conversations on other people, not yourself

And last, the most important one: Choose your words carefully.

It's all about... PR in the tourism industry

Why use PR for the tourism and hotel industry? In advertising, a tour operator or hotel can publish its perfect scores on customer service or 95% occupancy rates year over year, but these messages are taken by customers these days with a proverbial grain of salt, because they know that in advertising, the hotel’s messaging is censored . PR generates stories written by trusted, third parties. Customers are more likely to trust a journalist’s integrity because they must remain unbiased.

Think about it this way: you could spend a couple of thousand euro’s for an advertisement in a newspaper or you could use PR to generate a FREE article in that same newspaper that consumers are much more likely to read, believe and act upon. Seems much better for your return on investment?

Done properly, public relations is a highly effective tool for generating awareness and visibility for a tour operator, hotel chain or brand. It can deliver a message of credibility that no advertising program comes close to. Public relations is so much more than the distribution of press releases: it’s about telling a story, an appealing story, that will generate interest and enter into the consciousness of potential customers. It’s about gaining recognition and mitigating negative attention. It’s about defining who and what a tour operator or hotel is and delivering that message to the public. Compared with advertising, PR can be a lot less expensive. Whether you choose to do PR in-house or hire a specialist agency, the cost of PR can be much lower than a traditional advertisement campaign.

Building a solid public relations strategy is important. Unlike marketing or advertising, PR is not as resource-intensive; there are no media buys or direct mail blitzes associated with it. But effective PR requires the ability to tell great stories, that come from the best aspects of a tour operator or hotel’s operations, as well as creative and strategic thinking from people who understand the tourism market and who also understand media’s needs.

Five important PR rules:
• Be newsworthy and think big
• Emphasize your best assets
• Know your audience
• No comment is no answer at all
• Understand PR and manage your expectations

To be sure, PR is labor-intensive and is not automated process like sending out a mass email to a customer database. There is a lot of writing, a lot of strategizing, a lot of communicating and a lot of relationship-building with hundreds of media outlets. But these outputs can result in great outcomes if you put in the time and effort, which can continue to grow and expand over time. And in time, media will be calling you for comment, instead of you calling to pitch stories.

What is your style of communication?

In communication between people there are often misunderstandings that can't be explained. Why don't you understand me? I asked you politely? Am I not clear to you? If people understand each other depends on their way of communication, also known as "communication styles". If people communicate to each other on different levels, misunderstandings occur.

Snavely and McNeill (2008) created a model to explain these misunderstandings. The model is called the "transactional style model". The authors examined the relationships between communicator style and social style with the goal of integrating both concepts into one model. They factor-analytically confirmed the social style dimensions and some of the communicator style dimensions and reduced the resulting components to three dimensions: emotive, assertive and relaxed. Research on communication style in cross-cultural communication has yielded a two-level model that integrates first-order and second-order dimensions. The model was not tested by Snavely and McNeill, but the University of Groningen took the chance and the testing of the model showed significant results.

The different communication styles each have their pitfalls. But changing a communication style is not easy, because it's shaped by the enviroment your grew up in, your friends, the way your parents communicated with each other, the shows you watched on tv, etc. These factors learned you unconsciously what "normal" communication is. Research of Schrodt showed that if parents are not able to communication sufficiently, their children will not be able to as well. Besides these aspects also the "downing effect" is of influence. This phenomenon explains how people overestimate themselves by for example thinking that their IQ is higher than it actually is, or that they think of themselves that they are more friendly, honest and patient that the "average" person. Statistically this is impossible and will decrease the need of urgency to change ones communication style.

Given that it is hard to change your communication style, meta-communication (communicating about the communication) helps in understanding each other when communicating on different levels. Questions can be asked such as: I have the feeling that we do not understand each other? Do you feel the same? You stress the situation and therefore are able to find a solution. Providing insight in your communication style and invest in styles that are not your own, will benefit you in your ability to communicate effectively with other people. Practice makes perfect!

Social media @work improves productivity (and much more!)

Feeling guilty when visiting Twitter or Facebook at work? Don't be! Research of the University of Cophenhagen (2011) showed that the usage of social media at work has a positive effect on concentration and productivity. Tip for managers: Don't block the internet, but replace coffee breaks for internet breaks, where employees can surf on the web during working hours.

There are more reasons why stimulating the use of social media at work can benefit business:

1. Younger employees, the so called Y-Generation, values social media as one of the most important technologies of today. Therefore, they expect their employers to have the same vision and they will choose an employer who does have that vision. Valuing this vision, will make the workplace more attractive for new generations.
2. Social media is used by employees to contact their co-workers. This will improve internal communications and an improvement of decisiveness.
3. The use of personal social media channels at work for the execution of work related tasks, leads to a higher commitment of the employee in relation to work and organization.

Change: Punish of Reward?

Why is it so difficult to change? It's not that people do not want or like to change, but they do not like to lose. A potential loss hits 2,5 times harder than an opportunity.

What is it that an organization does when their employees do not want to change? They "punish" their people in various ways, because the organization is afraid to lose something valuable to them. Research showed that punishment is not effective in the long term. Employees will not work harder or give that extra bit when it's necessary. Besides this, punishment encourages people to change only for a short period of time when they feel threatened. Furthermore, punishement results in disturbed relationships. People will not relate punishments to their own behaviour but they will associate it to the person who is giving the punishments.

Rewarding is better. People automatically link a reward to behavior. This will result in a natural tendency to behave in a certain way. Research shows that rewarding people is positively associated with appropriate behavior. As we stop good behavior when the punishment is "gone", we will continue our good behavior when rewarded for it.

Two-step flow and your communication strategy

According to the two-step flow the direct influence of the media is limited. The effect that media has on the public, flows via interpersonal communication. The interpersonal communication takes place between opinion leaders and followers. In these conversations the opinion leaders influence the followers. The opinion leaders are capable of distributing the announcements of the mass media to the "normal" public. The two-step flow basically presumes that the influence of the mass media goes in two steps. First, the media influences the opinion leaders. Second, the opinion leaders influence the followers.

Who are those opinion leaders? Opinion leaders are people in our society that are capable of having more influence than others on the opinions of people in their surroundings. Personality, competenties and knowledge, and the position of someone in a social network are the three most important dimensions that determine if someone is a opinion leader or not. Besides this, they have their own area of expertise.

The media landscape is changing and opinion leaders have more power to influence others nowadays because of social media. It is easier to reach a lot of people. If we look for example at opinion and review websites such as Zoover, Cheqqer and TripAdvisor, we can see that it is relatively easy to find the opinion of others about their experience with a destination/hotel/touroperator, etc. Research showed that people value the opinion of others on the internet more than the information that touroperators, hotels and travel agency's are giving to them. One opinion leader can easily spread the word. Organizations should be aware of this change and adapt their media strategy on that. It can go both ways; opinion leaders can make your company and give your communication strategy a boost if they believe in your message, because of the coverage social media has, but it can also break communication strategy by ensuring it will have no effect at all.

(De Boer, C. & Brenneke, S. (2006). Media en Publiek)

Will the trend in intranet be NO intranet anymore?

I'd like to make you aware of a very inspiring, interesting and critical article on internal communication.

You can click here for the article (only in Dutch).

Network Communication

An interpersonal network is a social network which is focused on face to face communication, but nowadays this also takes place online via social media. Like a social network the idea is to provide an easy way to communicate between friends, colleagues and those with common interests. Unlike a typical social network an interpersonal network usually focus on a narrow set of interests and tries to draw people together into a local, more personal face to face meeting.

Networks are another aspect of direction and flow of communication. Research has shown that communication patterns, or networks, influence groups in several important ways. Communication networks may affect the group's completion of assigned tasks on time, the position of the leader in the group, or they may affect the group members' satisfaction from occupying certain positions in the network.

Network communication is especially important whenever individuals are involved in exchanging information in order to reduce their uncertainty; when they are in a new job or organization, when they are learning about a new idea, when a major news event has just happened. In all of these situations where individuals want information, and where the information is especially likely to change their behavior, they depend heavily on interpersonal communication messages that are transmitted through networks (Rogers & Kancaid, 1981).

Therefore, during organizational change network communication plays an important role in the reduction of uncertainty and stress. It is known that stress is related to sickness. A relation may exist between netwerk communication, stress and sick-leave. Subsequently, it might be wise for organizations to have a clear picture of their network communication. They can see exactly how communication flows occur and evolve within their organization. As a result, several points can be improved and issues can be solved. Organizational communication will be much more effective and efficient.

It is silent in here...

Fear is a prominent reason for corporate silence. It is possible that employees keep their opinions and ideas to themselves because they believe that it is a waste of time to speak up. As a manager, do not expect automatically that your employees will open up to you. If the staff does not believe that management is interested in what they have to say or that management cannot do anything about it, employees may conclude that speaking up is not worth their time. Studies show that people are silent because of a sense of futility rather than a fear of personal consequences. This is mainly the case in large multinational corporations.

A sense of futility mostly derives from the perception that management does not even want to hear comments/opinions/ideas from employees. If management sends signals to employees that they are already overwhelmed or even totally satisfied with the situation as it is, then it is not surprising that employees doubt if management even wants to hear about their ideas for improvement. Another reason that employees touch upon, is that due to the broader organizational and economic conditions, they do not want to speak up, because the company is in tough times. Actually, this might be the best time for corporations to receive new ideas from their employees!

The desire to speak up is fundamentally about the wish to change something and make a difference. But, if management continuously cements employees' belief that speaking up is a waste of time, they'll save their breath.

The communication barrier

Communication is necessary in every organization. Clear communication creates awareness, is just in time at the right place. Good communication is valuable within organizations and should be seen as the most important asset.

Nowadays, communication can be too much and fragmented. It becomes vague and ambiguous. This is not a surprise, as we have access to loads of media outlets. We email, twitter, talk, ping, text in our daily and working life. At work; agenda's, minutes, action plans, "for your information" emails are shared daily, because it so easy to do. With one click on the mouse we share everything with each other. This causes an information overload. This overload results in the inability to absorb information anymore. Besides this, the information that is send in times of information overload causes that the information that employees receive, is not effective anymore, because employees cannot absorb the information.

Information overload causes a barrier. Is the communication that is shared really understood? Absorbed? Heard? Done? Barriers are there to break. A little change in communication flows and processes can have great effects. Not everything needs to be shared with everyone. Furthermore, personal - face to face communication is still the most effective way of communicating in organizations, as well as in daily life. The most important information can then be shared and people will absorb, hear, understand and do someting with it.

Social Media 2.0

We all know that social media is an instant hype. Twitter, Facebook, Hyves and LinkedIn are used by millions of people all over the world. Research about social media gives scientific insights on the role, purpose and meaning of social media. Therefore, organizations, communication-PR professionals and marketeers can apply the knowledgde gained from research within their own company.

Research showed that half of the companies in the US start with the integration of social media within their organization, without a plan or strategy. Making a blog or twitter account does not cost any money and is very easy to do. The effects of these "free" applications can have less effect than carefully tailor made social media applications that suits the company. Organizations do see the benefits of the use of social media internally, but do not have enough resources to produce an effective social media strategy. Besides this, "old fashioned management" do not even want to make (a little) money free to invest in social media.

Companies with young employees can definitely benefit from the implemenation of social media within the company. Blogs can show the real feelings, problems and other issues that employees face during their daily work, Twitter can be easily used to spread important information within 2 seconds, Yammer can be used as a forum where everyone can give input and feedback on whatever is going on in the organization and LinkedIn can be actively used for recruitment and sharing knowledge.

Besides using social media internally, it has external benefits as well. When visitors of the website of an organization see that the company is actively involved in social media, it sends the message that the organization is keeping up with the trends as they are nowadays and are open for new ideas. It shows that the company has an open culture, involves their employees, gives them a voice as well, and is fresh and young. It might be difficult to start with applying social media in business, but social media will become and is the future, it cannot be denied anymore. To keep up, organizations need to apply social media rapidly, otherwise they will get behind, so don't think about it, just do it!

Application of the job demands-resources model during organizational change

From February to the end of June 2010 I did a research among 211 health care workers working for different health care institutions in the Netherlands in order to examine the validity of the job demands-resources model for the wellbeing of health care workers during organizational change. The main focus was on organizational communication and its role during change. Below you can find parts of the total research report. Would you like to receive the research report or read more about it? Contact me on danielle_lek@hotmail.com

Theoretical Framework
Many organizations are continuously implementing changes to the way they do business in response to competition, a changing work force, increasing complex and changing work environments and other external pressures (Lawler, 1986; Manz, 1992; Ployhart & Bleise, 2006). Employees constantly need to adapt to these changes. Stress and increased work pressure occur in periods of change, which can cause depression, sleep deficit, and a deteriorating health (Head, Kivimaki, Martikainen, Vahtera, Ferrie, & Marmot, 2006; Vahtera, Kivimaki, Pentti, & Theorell, 2000). More organizations have to deal with changes and dynamics in their environment. It makes it necessary for organization to continually change and adapt to their environment (Boonstra, 2000; Boonstra, 2004). Research has shown that it is important to involve employees in the process of organizational change (Clampitt, De Koch, & Cashman, 2000; Elving & Bennebroek Gravenhorst, 2005).

Research of Boonstra (2000) showed that more than 70% of organizational changes in the Netherlands fail or are aborted in an early stage because the intended results are not reached. Change processes are complex and are related to factors such as the existing organizational structures, the organizational culture, distances of power within organizations and individual insecurities (Hofstede, 2005).

According to Parish, Cadwallader and Busch (2006) it is important to manage and control an organizational change properly. Employees will be ought to adapt to changes within the organization. In many cases this will lead to a disturbed work sphere (Parish, Cadwallader, & Busch, 2006). The continually going processes of change causes emotional and physical pressure to employees. Stress at work is therefore a common factor that is related to organizational change (Vakola & Nikolauo, 2005). Stress is causing less work satisfaction, more absenteeism and bad functioning in the work place. In other words, the wellbeing of employees becomes of less quality (Vakola & Nikolauo, 2005). Furthermore, stress is directly and indirectly related to organizations who work less efficient and effective (Vakola & Nikolauo, 2005). According to McHugh (1997) organizations need to take the wellbeing of employees into account when planning changes, especially in relation to the amount of stress that employees might experience during the change process. When employees are confronted with high job demands at work, such as work pressure, it induces a health process, meaning that it can result in health problems and a diminished wellbeing (Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2003; Bakker, Demerouti, & Verbeke, 2004).

Communication is beneficial for effectively implementing and organizing change. The communication climate consisting of the quality of the relationship between the managementand the employees, the quality of the communication within the organization and the amount of feedback, input and advice that employees are able to give is essential during organizational change (Abbasi & Hollman, 1993; Ford, 1999; Hofstede, 2005; Wanberg & Banas, 2000; Smidts, Pruyn, & Van Riel, 2001; Elving, 2005).

Organizational changes which are communicated insufficiently might lead to detrimental informal communication processes, such as rumors (DiFonzo & Bordia, 1998; Bordia, Jones, Gallois, Callan, & DiFonzo, 2006). This might reinforce resistance against the initiated change, where the negative aspects of the change are exaggerated (Elving, 2006; Elving & Bennebroek Gravenhorst, 2005; Putnam, Grant, Michelson, & Cutcher, 2005). Communication is an instrument to create an interactional bonding. It is therefore important that employees receive correct, consistent, and clear information about the reason of the organizational change, how to change, why to change, what to change, and when to change. The ways formal communication processes develop are of importance by the effects on employees in terms of the correct interpretation one has about the organizational change, which might lead to resistance or willingness to change (Mack, Nelson, & Campbell-Quick, 1997). Subsequently, this may be of influence on the employees’ commitment to change (Mack, Nelson, & Campbell-Quick, 1997; Elving, 2006).

Besides formal communication, informal communication plays a role during processes of change. Informal communication differs from formal communication, because informal communication is not necessarily coming from the management of the organization and is mainly important to the preservation of the organization as social entity (Elving, 2006). Informal communication is seen as an interaction between employees, where the communication is not from official sources within the company, such as personal conversations between colleagues. The quality of the communication climate is associated with commitment to change (DiFonzo & Bordia, 1998). When organizational communication is carefully managed, this will contribute to the employees’ concentration, motivation and enjoyment at work (Salanova, Bakker, & Llorens, 2006). This might lead to the experience of flow at work (Karasek, 1979; Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Shaufeli, 2001; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). Flow contributes to an increase in the wellbeing of employees (LeFevre, 1988; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). When employees are provided with job resources, such as clear organizational communication, it induces a motivational process, which can result in commitment to change (Bakker, Demerouti, & Verbeke, 2004; Elving & Bennebroek Gravenhorst, 2005).

Communication is an important factor for commitment to change and the wellbeing of employees during organizational change, but there are also other factors that are associated with commitment to change and the wellbeing of employees, such as the job resources and job demands introduced by the job demands-resources model (JD-R model). This research is based on the assumptions of the JD-R model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Shaufeli, 2001). The model provides a framework for studying processes by which work environment factors determine wellbeing. Job resources might lead to an increase of commitment and the wellbeing of employees. As mentioned earlier, communication is related to commitment to change and the wellbeing of employees as well (DiFonzo & Bordia, 1998; Elving & Bennebroek Gravenhorst, 2005). Good communication processes within organizations will therefore be considered as job resources. Job demands can be seen as work pressure and work overload, whereby employees need to perform a lot of tasks in a high pace, emotional workload, whereby issues at work occur that touches employees personally or physical workload, referring to tasks that require physical efforts (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001).

This research explores a relation between job resources (formal communication, informal communication and the communication climate) on the wellbeing of employees during organizational change mediated by flow. This is seen as the motivational process. Moreover, this research explores a relation between job demands (physical workload, emotional workload and work pressure) on the wellbeing of employees during organizational change, mediated by stress. This is seen as the health process. The motivational process might buffer against the diminished effects of the health process. Several research studies are already done within organizations, whereby the JD-R model is applied (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Shaufeli, 2001). However, these studies do not apply the JD-R model is cases of organizational change whereby organizational communication namely; formal communication, informal communication and the communication climate are emphasized as job resources. Therefore, in this research will be endeavored to gain more scientific knowledge and to create more understanding of job resources and job demands as predictors for the wellbeing of employees during organizational change. The research contributes to the literatures on organizational change, organizational communication and the wellbeing of employees. Furthermore, organizations may use the research as a guideline to create a way of communicating organizational change in a manner which will be effective for both the management as the employees, taking into account the relation with job demands and employees’ wellbeing.

Results
The theoretical framework was successful in revealing two different processes responsible for commitment to change and depression. The first process can be described as the motivational process starting with the perceived satisfaction of healthcare workers about the communication climate, formal communication and informal communication as job resources, which is related to commitment to change partially mediated by flow. Healthcare workers who are satisfied about organizational communication within the organization are experiencing higher levels of flow, which results in more commitment to the organizational change. In this research flow is partially mediating. It can be stated that organizational communication is essential in cases of organizational change and results in higher levels of commitment to change when employees are satisfied with the communication processes. The second process can be seen as the health process, describing how high job demands stated as physical workload, emotional workload and work pressure are associated with depression, which is mediated by stress amongst healthcare workers during organizational change. Healthcare workers experiencing high job demands are experiencing higher levels of stress, which ultimately can result in depression. Furthermore, the level of flow healthcare workers are experiencing during organizational change at work, is buffering for the effects of stress that is associated with commitment to change and depression.

These findings integrate and expand previous studies (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Shaufeli, 2001; Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2003; Demerouti, 2006) in which the JD-R model was applied. In this research the model is applied during organizational change in the healthcare industry. This study gives therefore more in depth theory on the application of the JD-R model during organizational change.

Pracical Implications
This research offers important practical implications regarding the organization and their employees. During organizational change, organizations tend to use different communication strategies in order to communicate the change to its employees. The choice for certain communication strategies is dependent on the character of the change process, which are frequently combinations of several strategies and forms of communication (Elving, 2006). This research suggests that the communication climate, formal communication and informal communication during organizational change have a relation with the employees’ commitment to change. As such, it is proposed that managers take into account the importance of organizational communication, to be carefully used as beneficial resources during organizational change. For example, managers can create a supportive communication climate, can provide clear and unambiguous formal communication and might be able to control and guide the informal communication flows during organizational change.

Furthermore, this research suggests that physical workload, emotional workload and work pressure have an association with the development of depression among employees in times of organizational change. This relation might be taken into account by managers and may be controlled in periods of change.

Refreshing inside on internal communication as it is today

Organizational communication gets high priority

For the coming years European communication professionals will expect that organizational communication will get a higher priority within organizations. As a result of the economic crisis, organizational communication has become more important. Employees do not feel secure about keeping their jobs anymore. Furthermore, reorganizations and other forms of organizational change are happening more often. For example, organizational communication can buffer the effects on job insecurity and stress. Moreover, organizational communication can directly contribute to the organizations' goals and the realization of the companies' policies.

According to several communication professionals there are important challenges in relation to organizational communication, which are:

1. The connection of organizational communication and the organizations' policies.
2. Facilitating organizational change.
3. Controlling information overload.
4. Making use of social media, giving employees the opportunity to give feedback on ideas and initiatives of the management by using social and interactive media.
5. To increase the perception of the credibility of the management according to the employees. Employees need to believe in the management again.

Research has shown that there is also a "to do-list" for communication professionals with the following activities:

1. To train the management in their communication skills. Better communication is needed between the management and the employees.
2. Making use of authentic communication messages instead of smooth management talk.
3. Facilitating online communities in order to create a dialogue within the organization (for example between the management and its employees or between several departments).
4. Seperating facts from gossip and rumours
5. Replacing text for video messages
6. Trying to decrease the amount of information channels.

In my opinion, clear organizational communication is an essential part of every organization. When everything is organized internally in terms of communication, you will defenitely see the benefits that is has externally.

Communicating organizational change

Organizations are collaborations created by humans. People have an idea of what is possible, desirable, practicable and achievable and reflect these ideas towards the organization. An organization is therefore a human relational construct (Gerrichhauzen, Kampermann & Klytmans, 2001; Putnam & Nicotera, 2010). Organizations experience both internal and external pressure to change. Technological and production processes, laws and regulations initiated from the government, political and social events, globalization and the complexity of the current economy contribute to the pressure. An organizational change entails a series of attempts to change certain aspects within an organization concerning structure, technology, work related tasks, goals and strategies. Think of the flexibility of an organization, innovation, the development and implementation of new and/or existing ideas, processes, products and services (Iverson, 1996). An organizational change is seen as change management in relation to planning and thinking. Furthermore, organizational changes are happening systematic and aware by means of interventions to improve the organizational system (Cozijnsen & Vrakking, 2003).

An organizational change is mostly relevant to several departments within an organization. In many cases a change strategy is prepared. The organization needs to deal with various tasks during the process of change namely; to determine the new situation, to determine which changes are needed in relation to the functioning of the organization and planning, stimulating, coordinating, controlling and correcting the change process. By this approach organizational communication is used in order to decrease the amount of resistance by employees and to increase the willingness to change (Putnam, Grant, Michelson & Cutcher, 2005). Employees need to get conscious of the change and need to see the benefit and necessity of the change before even willing to change. Moreover, a proper basis needs to be created for the character and direction of the change. By using internal communication, thresholds such as (emotional) consequences and insecurity for employees can be reduced (Alblas & Wijsdam, 2005).

How to communicate?

The communication climate plays an important role in the process of sense making (Ford, 1999; Hofstede, 2005). Research has shown that sense making can be beneficial to both emotional and physical health and commitment to change (Frankl, 1963; Taylor, Kemeny, Reed, Bower & Gruenewald, 2000). The perceptions of the employees about the quality of the relations with the management, the quality of the communication within the organization and the amount of feedback, input and advice that employees are able to give is also known as the communication climate (Abbasi & Hollman, 1993; Wanberg & Banas, 2000; Smidts, Pruyn & Van Riel, 2001; Elving, 2005).
A good communication climate during organizational change consists of the opportunity for employees to communicate personally with the management, to have the opportunity to give feedback, input and advice related to the change. Sufficient space is needed to ask questions, to start a discussion and to criticize the change process. Subsequently, formal and informal communication, part of the communication climate, play an important role during the process of change (Hofstede, 2005; Elving 2005).

The information spread within the company about the organizational change is important for the employees. Important matters concerning employees are: What is actually changing within the organization, in which way, with what kind of consequences and what is the influence of the change on the individual? Sharing information with the employees about the goals, the planning and the content of the change are essential within the process (Elving & Bennebroek Gravenhorst, 2005).

Research showed that the most fruitful and effective way of communicating organizational change is to create a climate where employees have the opportunity to have a voice in the change process, where feedback can be given and where there can be negotiated and reflected on the change process. Furthermore, searching for dialogue is an important aspect of the communication process (Van Ruler, 1998; Clampitt, De Koch & Cashman, 2000; Elving, 2005). The choice for certain communication strategies is dependent on the character of the change process, which are frequently combinations of several strategies and forms of communication (Elving, 2006).

Organizational communication: The power of informal communication

Besides formal communication flows coming from the management, their are also informal communication flows, such as rumours and gossip between co-workers. Why is this so important within organizations and what is the effect on employees?

Informal communication is a natural process consisting of interaction between people. Informal communication consists of all forms of communication which are not explicitly determined by means of communication structures. Moreover, informal communication exists from non official sources from the organization and is mainly important to the preservation of the organization as social entity (Elving, 2006). Informal communication is created out of a social need. Issues are frequently discussed (DiFonzo & Bordia, 1998; Bordia, Jones, Gallois, Callan & DiFonzo, 2006). Furthermore, informal communication plays an important role for the need to belong to groups within an organization. Personal relations are maintained by means of informal conversations. When people do not have the feeling to belong to a certain group, this has negative effects on the physical and emotional wellbeing of people (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).

People are motivated to belong to a group. This is a natural process in order to start and maintain interpersonal relationships. People have the need to search regularly to affection and positive interaction with the final goal of creating a mutual feeling. The mutual feeling exists within informal communication processes (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Moreover, people make sense to changes by using informal communication. Communication within organizations are networks of conversations where sense making processes are involved and where a reality is created (Ford, 1999; Ford & Ford, 1995). Informal communication functions therefore as a way for employees to make sense out of the change process. Sense making can be of influence on the attitude and the feeling one has about the change (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld, 2005).

Informal communication can shape itself into rumors and gossip. Rumors and gossip might exist when there is no clear and unambiguous formal communication. As a result it is necessary for employees to make sense out of the situation on the work floor in order to understand it (DiFonzo & Bordia, 1998). People tend to make use of tactics in order to decrease insecurity, which has a strong relation with gossip and rumors. Gossip and rumors can result in insecurity, stress and being unproductive and unmotivated. This can have negative effects on the organization. In this case, employees construct their own reality when they do not receive accurate information out of formal communication lines. The more informal communication is produced out of this, the more employees are going to stand back from reality. This makes the situation ambiguous, which makes it difficult for an organization to keep everyone on the same page (Elving, 2006).

Research from DiFonzo and Bordia (2000) showed that managers are at least once a week confronted with gossip and rumors which can damage the organization. Employees receive information about the organization more frequently out of informal communication flows than out of formal ones. Besides this, the information coming out of informal communication is accurate in 90% of the cases. According to Bordia, Jones, Gallois, Callan and DiFonzo (2006) rumors and gossip can be transferred to a way organizations can anticipate to the change. The content of rumors and gossip can predict the direction a change is heading towards. Furthermore, gossip and rumors are known to be spread quickly within organizations and they have a high reach. Crampton, Hodge and Mishra (1998) do not see the benefits of gossip and rumors. Rumors and gossip can damage the management as well as the employees. According to the authors damage is seen as individual stress and insecurity. Employees formerly trust rumors and gossip when the informal communication around the change is unclear and ambiguous. Even though the information obtained via informal communication is for 90% accurate, it is the 10% of inaccurate information that causes the problems (Crampton, Hodge & Mishra, 1998).

Research from Bordia, Jones, Gallois, Callan and DiFonzo (2006) showed that people experience more stress when surrounded by negative rumors and gossip. Furthermore, the authors also demonstrated relations between people who do not belong to a group or have the feeling to be alone and their physical and emotional wellbeing. People who do not have the feeling to belong to a group and have the feeling to be alone, had more physical and emotional health problems than people who did have the feeling to belong to a group. Informal communication and therefore the need of the individual to belong to a group, has an important and necessary function for the wellbeing of people (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).