Communication in the workplace
Communication in the workplaceCOMMUNICATIONS IN THE WORKPLACE
During spring and summer of �98 I underwent a six month internship in the information services department of a major company in my country Botswana. The company , Botswana power corporation is the sole producer and distributor of electricity in Botswana. As a company with branches all over the country it is easy to understand why communication would be crucial to the day to day operations of this company as a whole. For the sake of clarity however I�m going to limit the focus of this paper to the Information servives departmentin which I worked.
My internship position was at the companies head office in Gaborone .As intern it did not take me long to realize that almost all the departments needed the services of the IS department in one way or the other.The IS department was essentially responsible for user support,themaintainance ,repair and upgrade of computer systems and training of company personnel.
By far the greatest responsibility of the department was user support.Employees from departments all over the complex would call in any problems they had with their computers. These problems would be written down on a work order form and the handled in due course.Because of this members of the department staff had to have effective listening skills .I realized that when dealing with a user it was important for me to solicit as much feedback as possible from them. I would ask questions and paraphrase what they were saying so as to better understand the nature of the problem.This was important because many a time the problem would be Just a simple matter of rebooting the computer and could easily be resolved over the phone.When trying to get to the root of the problem it was important that I display as much patience as possible with the users often vague responses to my questions. I made a conscious effort not to interrupt them and to refrain from distractions that would hinder my ability to listen effectively.Effective listening was also important because it allowed take notice of paralanguage signals in a persons voice allowed us to judge the urgency of the situation .We were also conscioutioas of the paralanguage signals that we relayed to users.We use a phone friendly voice ,being careful to maintain an even steady tone of voice.
Verbal communication within the department was limited because most of the time members of the department worked outside the office attending to various service requests.Some semeblece of communication was however maintained through pagers, and email.The members of the group communicated about work orders through workorder forms.By reading these work order forms group members had access to information about orders that were pending,had been completed and those that needed the specialized expertise of one of the staff members.The members also had a notice board in the office were each member...
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