August 1, 2024 Improving Communication Culture within Manufacturing

Improving communication culture within manufacturing operations can positively impact production operation and team morale.

by Kurtis Gens

Executive Summary

Central Shops is a manufacturing warehouse that employs both in-house and virtual located employees. Established in the 1960’s, Central Shops has always been able to adapt and adjust its resources to produce a flourishing business that leaves an economical footprint on the industry. Although there have been no significant direct changes to the processes or methods within Shops, technological and cultural shifts within the industry have continued to change.  After recently experiencing dramatic declines in regard to the production rates and team cohesion, we seek to understand if these ubiquitous disruptions can be mitigated through a series of team and leadership implementations. This report determines if indeed a robust communication culture can enhance performance and reinvigorate a diminishing work environment.

By analyzing prior research and studies that focus on best practices for employee retention as well as the impacts of communication culture on employee performance, it was determined that there is correlation between poor organizational collaboration practices and business success measures. Supplying a culture that utilizes communication technologies to promote collaboration and streamline teamwork efforts will in return create a more prosperous work atmosphere. Embracing coaching techniques to proactively develop workers while simultaneously engaging in feedback conversations provides relational and morale support.

With these thoughts in mind, it is highly recommended that Central Shops rework their technological infrastructure to better accommodate the crossover between virtual and nonvirtual workers. Implementing training classes to provide teamwork activities as well as coaching and feedback protocols will strengthen the internal bonds to encourage joint partnership.  

Introduction

If someone were to offer a single way to increase manufacturing production rates while at the same time also enhancing work team morale, would you be interested? According to a recent survey, simply improving aspects of communication culture can promote an increase in production by nearly fifty percent and boost team morale by over forty percent (Hoory, 2023). The purpose of this white paper is to discuss how a lack of internal communication culture negatively impacts team cohesion and production rates within Central Shops. We will look into the signs of a healthy communication culture that should consist of reliable collaboration channels, effective coaching and feedback, and well-grounded communication processes to support team needs. Without proper implementation of these key aspects, utilizing teamwork to achieve the overarching business goals becomes nearly unachievable (Hemamalini & Jyothi, 2024). In addition to this, other factors such as technological advancements and virtual team environments can add another layer of difficulty to navigating into a healthy culture.

Background Deep-Dive

Central Shops has been in the manufacturing business for over sixty years. What was once a thriving organization leading the way against its competitors, has unintentionally created an internal culture that is repressing itself from achieving full potential. Understanding how to adapt, modernize, and integrate has never been more important to the manufacturing industry than it is right now. With the recent emergence of work from home and remote access positions, it can be challenging to build and maintain a cohesive workplace environment. Virtual and remote access teams can add another layer of complexity to managing a team and requires increased collaboration efforts (Abudi, 2012). Moreover, most industries do not even have the capabilities to identify this issue or understand how to go about making a change.

Communication Culture

Communication culture is described as the way an organization engages with its employees and stakeholders (Liston, 2020). Communication from the top down is interdependent with achieving an effective communication culture. Whether it means improving the communication skills of each employee or implementing new ways of communicating, everyone from the manager level all the way to the lowest level position in the company need to have the opportunity to share information with each other as needed. As described by Pumble Research in figure 1 below, engaging communication remains a high priority to nearly all workers.

According to some researchers, sixty percent of internal communications professionals do not even measure their internal communications (Doan, 2024). The problem with this is that if we are not consistently monitoring our internal communications, we may never know there are issues until it is too late. A healthy business with a strong communication culture will consistently strive to maintain and develop their internal communication skills and communication processes in order to achieve organizational goals. After monitoring and identifying the issues, then you can begin to implement the necessary changes to correct them. These changes can potentially direct the actions and behaviors of individuals in the workplace to become more communicatively aware.

Embracing Teamwork

Like most things, teamwork and communication go hand-in-hand to commence success. If one does not work well, we cannot expect the other to. It can be attested that without one, you cannot have the other. That is because in order to progress a team-oriented environment, communication compatibility must be present. For an organization’s vision and purpose to be achieved, they must direct and motivate the team to accomplish the desired set of goals together (Sohmen, 2015). So, teamwork must feel easily obtainable for workers. If teamwork feels unachievable to employees and changes are not being seen, the tasks become independent and team morale is negatively impacted. Rather than being led by example and set up for success, this may cause employees to feel isolated in their work or even worse, that their efforts are not important.

It is not hard to fathom that many heads together are better than just one. In fact, “there has been empirical research reported that organizational teamwork has positive direct effects on manufacturing processes and increased productivity levels” (Realyvasquez et al., 2015). In other words, when employees feel they have the support of their leaders and peers, they are empowered to perform their job at the highest level.

Adapting to Virtual Team Environments

At some point in our lives, we have all heard someone tell us that machines are taking the jobs from us. Well, not all technology is out to get us. In fact, there are many aspects of technology in the manufacturing industry that are there to help us. Research by Turner et al., (2010) suggest that an organization that adopts multiple forms of technologies will benefit from building stronger interpersonal relationships. This holds even more true in businesses that either have or deal with clients that are virtually located. While there are several benefits to having virtual teams, it also requires the entire team to communicate in an uncommon way. According to Walsh (2019), “the entire virtual team structure is built on the communication that is impacted by the ability of the team members to engage with integrated collaborative technology” (3rd para). If the entirety of the team does not have the necessary means to effectively collaborate with each other, a standard cannot be upheld to achieve an effective communication culture.

The Central Shops infrastructure is set up to meet the needs of in-person interaction and does not have any specific form of face-to-face interaction for team members. Utilizing platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom will allow for videoconferencing amongst the team and allow for a more personal connection (Walsh,2019). In addition, adopting these communication solutions will provide a way for the team to instant message with each other despite being in different areas. Not only does this allow for information to be relayed instantaneously, but it also provides a quick and easy way for leaders to provide feedback when appropriate.      

Initiating Feedback and Coaching

To help maintain an effective culture that promotes production, communication, and positivity, a leader must initiate and maintain routine feedback and coaching to their employees. A poor communication culture will often lack in direct feedback as it may be seen as negatively effecting the morale of a team. Often times, however, this can actually be used to stimulate the morale within a culture and lead to more growth and development in the long run. Giving and receiving feedback will build bonds that create relationships by supplying trust and promoting an energy of motivation to the team (Thean, 2023). That relationship building is crucial for performance improvements. Learners are typically more receptive to coaching from leaders who are perceived as credible and trustworthy (Atkinson et al., 2022).

Although timing and location can both inhibit feedback and coaching opportunities, it is important that a leader establish those communication channels to ensure that they are always taking place. Currently, Central Shops does not have a direct way to initiate guidance to the virtual team members other than by email. This opens the door for more cultural issues stemming from miscommunications. Without the instant feedback of body language, people are more likely to misinterpret information, which can lead to misunderstandings in a virtual environment (Pullan, 2016). So, the content of the coaching and feedback report is not the only important aspect, but it is also how the message is being delivered. Not having the technological capabilities means losing opportunities to listen to valuable feedback and produce indescribable coaching moments that are used to mold a strong communication culture.

Conclusion

Recently, employees have been seen as an extension of organizations and not as important assets that should be developed and grown to contribute towards creating a thriving business culture. The goal should always be to build a communication culture in a way that encourages collaboration and equips each individual with the necessary tools to flourish and play a part in the overall success of a company. In some cases, that requires refocusing priorities and adjusting to industry changes and advances.

Now, by understanding the repercussions that stem from a company lacking in communication culture and the vast number of ways to influence a change, we can begin to see why there is a need for Central Shops to rethink its approach towards how we intend to improve methods and processes to achieve business success. Homing in on ways to embrace teamwork, prioritize virtual team needs, and initiate coaching and feedback techniques can all be applied to drastically improve the Central Shops communication culture and ultimately increase business success.

References

Abudi, G. (2012). Best practices for managing and developing virtual project teams. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2012—North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

Doan, A. (2024, May 6). What is business communication? why do you need it? Nextiva Blog. https://www.nextiva.com/blog/what-is-business-communication.html?v=2

Hemamalini, V., & Jyothi, P. (2024). Enhancing communication and teamwork skills in Young Adults: An Intervention Study. Indian Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(ISSN-p-2229-4937, e-2321-368X), 10–14. https://iahrw.org/our-services/journals/indian-journal-of-positive-psychology/

Hoory, L. (2023, March 10). The State of workplace communication in 2024. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/digital-communication-workplace/

Liston, K. (2020, December 23). Workplace culture and communication: How one affects the other. ContactMonkey. https://www.contactmonkey.com/blog/workplace-culture-and-communication

Realyvásquez, A., & Avelar-Sosa, L. (2018). Effects of Organizational Culture and Teamwork on Manufacturing Systems’ Performance. Springer International Publishing. researchgate. https://doi.org/DOI%2010.1007/978-3-319-56871-3_17

Sohmen, V. (2015, July). (PDF) leadership and teamwork: Two sides of the same coin. Leadership and Teamwork: Two Sides of the Same Coin. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302496350_Leadership_and_teamwork_Two_sides_of_the_same_coin

Thean, P. (2023, June 30). How to Give (and Receive) Critical Feedback. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/06/how-to-give-and-receive-critical-feedback

Turner, T., Qvarfordt, P., Biehl, J. T., Golovchinsky, G., & Back, M. (2010). Exploring the workplace communication ecology. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753449

Walsh, T. (2019). Virtual team success with the power of technology advancements. Advances in the Technology of Managing People: Contemporary Issues in Business, 99–107. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78973-073-920191009

Workplace Communication Statistics in 2024. Pumble Learn. (2024, April 22). https://pumble.com/learn/communication/communication-statistics/

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