The New Road to Effective Communications

In the article "The New Road to Effective Communications" (Parsons and Groh 2006), the authors argue the effects of new techniques for communications, especially between employers and employees.

According to the authors, there are five reasons proving that Human Resource communication strategies and procedures are failing today. Firstly is the changing of learning styles in the workforce. Today's environment requires short, simple and personalised messages to employees. Secondly, Human Resource programs with benefits and compensation have become too complicated. Thirdly, there is competition between Human Resource communications and other messages. Fourthly, new techniques, such as podcasts and instant messaging, are being used to gather employees' attention. However, these are not used for benefits communication. Finally, the purposes of Human Resource's communication have changed (Parsons and Groh 2006, pp. 57-58).

The authors point out that technologies, such as e-mail, teleconference, videoconference, and webcasts have shown that these are effective to reach a targeted audience and to collect immediate feedback. They also demonstrate that new technologies, such as blogs, instant messages, podcasts, and streaming media have been difined by the academic words in order to prompt their impact. An illustration of this is one of the recent studies by the University of North Carolina, "Blogs affect workplace trust, satisfaction, and commitment" (Parsons and Groh 2006, p. 60). Moreover, there are some reasons why new technologies are improving within workforces; helping connect between employees and the organisation by other means of learning and in turn, making it easier to send information.

In addition, Parsons and Groh (2006, p. 60) comment that many companies are worried about launching new technologies because answering and supporting issues is difficult. It is also accompanied by leadership support, credibility, liability, and staffing. Even these have the ability to increase the process (Parsons and Groh 2006, p. 61).

Parsons, A. & Groh, K. 2006, 'The New Road to Effective Communications', Compensation and Benefits Review, July/August 2006, pp. 57-64.