Week 9 - percention and communication

When I successfully applied for my job at Waitrose, at first I did not think I would get on with my colleagues as I thought they would be bossy, know-it-all’s because they had been working there a lot longer than me. I thought that they would look down on me and think that I was not as good as them because I had only just started. However, when I actually had my first day working at Waitrose, I realised that most of my colleagues had also only just started, so we were all in the same boat. The other employees who had been working there for longer were also a lot different to how I had perceived them; they were in fact really kind and helpful, and willing to guide me in my first few weeks of working in the store. When I got settled down I realised I had had a completely wrong perception of my colleagues at first, and that perception is not always reality. A person has to have an open mind to gather the necessary knowledge needed for a valid judgement to be made.

Read the article below on “How to Improve Staff Communication.  Using the recommendations from the article, identify 3 ways in which the university can improve communication with the students.

As mentioned in the article, everyone needs to have a shared purpose. This means that the students need to know that the lecturers are on the same page, and that the shared goal is for them to leave university with a degree. To communicate this to the students they could make a short video to be shown at the start of the academic year. Video can be very powerful when trying to convey a message and can be a quick and easy way to get people motivated, the main message in the video would be that the university wants the students to walk away with a degree as much as they themselves do.

As much as 85% of students use Facebook (Arrington, 2005); therefore it would be an excellent idea for the university to start using Facebook too. One idea would be to make a Facebook group for each module, where students can share ideas and ask questions about that specific module and the assignments that they have been set. Students should also be encouraged to make their own Facebook page when participating in group work. This, alongside Blackboard, would make communication between students and lecturers a lot more efficient.

My final way in which I believe the university can improve its communication is to engage its students more; “The CIPD has identified three main drivers of employee engagement: having the opportunity to feed your views upwards; feeling well informed about what is happening in your organisation; and believing your manager is committed to the organisation,” Clake (2010). Therefore I believe there should be an easier way for students to express their views; this could be as simple as a suggestion box (Waddington, 2010). There should also be an easier way for the university to inform students of what is going on, as they do not always check Blackboard for updates. This is where Facebook is useful again, as all students would get notifications for events and other things that are happening.

References

http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2010/07/how-to-improve-staff-communication.htm

Arrington, M. (2005) [online] Available from: http://techcrunch.com/2005/09/07/85-of-college-students-use-facebook/ [accessed on: 04/05/12]

Waddington, A. (2010) how to improve communication. [online] Available from: http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=8436 [accessed on: 04/05/12]