MBA
Graduate School, University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce
MB001 English for Business
____________________________________________________________________
ABC Corp
Prayut Wongpairoj, ABC’s HR Director, is thinking about the complaints he recently received from the employee focus groups about their line managers’ communication behaviors. As HR director, he divides all employees into three groups: line managers, employees and administrative staff. He considers line managers the most important group as they are the main link connecting ABC and its employees.
Despite a lot of efforts on building teamwork and promoting aggressive internal employee activities, ABC still has problems with line managers. He believes that employee perceptions of line managers inform their relationship and shape communication outcomes. A line manager’s communication behaviors toward employees are directed to the frequency and accuracy of the upward communication he/she receives from employees.
Moreover, employees who have strong communication relationships with their line managers are usually better informed, more involved with decision making, and more satisfied with their jobs. Prayut asks himself, 'How could we change line managers’ mindset and improve them with more communication skill training?'
Company Background
Established in the 1990s, ABC Corp is Thailand’s leading provider of telecommunications services. Its registered capital is about 30,000 million baht and the company employs approximately 4,000 employees. Its customers are both businesses and individual consumers.
The company strategic vision is to be a leading provider of business information and communications technology, mobile and consumer broadband services. Its missions are to provide the best quality telecommunications and multimedia interactive services while satisfying customers, to contribute to society, to promote the well-being of the company's employees, and to ensure optimal returns to its stakeholders.
ABC developed a corporate value system based on the concepts of being Caring, Credible and Constructive or 3 C’s. Caring means that ABC treats its customers, colleagues and employees well. Credible means that ABC is honest with their
Bunga Posiw wrote this case based on part of her thesis entitled “Corporate Internal Communication (IC) Strategies of Thai Telecommunications Companies: An Assessment of Effectiveness of Current Practices.” It was prepared solely to provide teaching materials for class discussion. The writer does not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The writer may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality.
Copyright©2015, Bunga Posiw Version: 02-06-15
customers and stakeholders and Constructive means that ABC continually searches for innovative ways to provide its customers with quality products and services.
Policies concerning Personnel
Promoting the well-being of the company’s employees is one of ABC’s main aims as reflected in one of its core values, caring. ABC believes that its success depends largely on the quality of its personnel. One of the company’s objectives is to attract
the best human resources available and to make them a vital part of its whole operation. The company attempts to attract people of the highest caliber followed by an on-going training and skill improvement program to enable each employee to achieve their maximum potential.
Every single unit of the organization is recognized as important. A spirit of teamwork among all units and unity within the organization is necessary for ABC to be a leader in the field. The company has aggressive internal employee activities such as ABC Buddy and ABC Productivity Team.
ABC considers teamwork and cooperation across functions critical, and it is the company’s objective to make sure there is strong cooperation in and across departments and that everyone has the same target. Employees are supposed to be clear about the company’s goals and strategies and will be measured against them.
ABC maintains a strong commitment to personnel development. All employees are trained to be well equipped with proper knowledge, skills and attitude to be able to perform their present jobs effectively and to be competent for advancement in their careers. The company’s training and development policy focuses on:
1. Core competency
2. Role specific competency
3. Functional competency
4. ABC core business
ABC puts more weight on competency enhancement and creativity within the company.
ABC’s HR Director
Prayut Wongpairoj has more than 16 years of working experience. He divides his main targets into three groups: line managers, employees and administrative staff. He considers line managers the most important group as they serve as a link between ABC and its staff. They are also one of the ways to cascade the norms of the company to the staff.
He perceives that line managers' communication with their subordinates has a major role in conveying the direction of the company, promoting the staff’s understanding, creating their acceptance of corporate values and motivating them to act accordingly. The effectiveness of line managers' communication greatly influences the company’s performance because it helps identify problem issues (if any) and solves them, as well as encourages upward feedback for top management.
ABC has a policy of open communication based on 90% formal communication and 10% informal communication. Staff are able to send in their concerns through their line managers.
The main communication channels are internal bulletin, intranet and e-mail, and meetings.
Connections, ABC’s internal bulletin, is a weekly newsletter. The company uses both a traditional printed newsletter along with an online version through its intranet. Its electronic version is available on ABC's intranet every Monday.
Its purpose is to serve as a tool to communicate and provide knowledge to employees so that they understand policies, business activities, organizational development and lives of employees in the company with particular emphasis on communication between ABC and employees, the management and employees and employees to employees to create unity and collaboration for the progress of the company.
ABC manages its own internal web site customized with the company's content including employee handbook, policies, benefits information, job postings and online forms. The intranet is supposed to promote employee self-reliance by enabling interactive transactions such as benefits, enrollment, and personal data updates and changes as well as to let employees have instant access to company benefit plans and provisions, handbooks, policies, and company news. The electronic employee orientation program is conducted on the intranet.
ABC has invested a great amount of money on IT and Prayut employs three programmers for developing and updating its customized intranet. The company uses broadband technology in web broadcasts, which allows the President to hold a company meeting with 4,000 personnel in its headquarters and other service units at different locations simultaneously. The employees can log into its intranet video conference to ask questions. Prayut is also working on developing the company's customized e-learning process.
Prayut believes that every employee is a representative of the company. Every point that has contact with customers, though different in nature, such as service center, technical staff or investor relations must have clear standards. Every employee must understand that their own part in operations represents the organization as a whole.
Prayut has improved its training curriculum to be more in line with the evolving needs of its employees. Employee development has been emphasized with the aim to build the highest quality leaders for the future. The company has arranged more workshops and activities with emphasis on strategic issues and management. However, ABC has no communication training.
ABC’s Line Managers
Line managers play a critical role in specifying task and job requirements and allocating individual job roles for those in their immediate team. Their actions and behavior could have a very important impact on the quality of working life of their team.
They are the ones who ensure interventions specified in action planning are promptly and properly implemented. They could help maintain employee health and well-being and minimize the likelihood of stressful circumstances and situations arising for their staff. They could also foster both upward and downward communication flows.
ABC provides certain mechanisms in the form of internal employee programs so that its staff can express their concerns through their immediate line managers. ABC introduced ABC Buddy which was related to systematic coaching and creation of better work attitude. ABC Buddy aims to promote employee development and mentoring. It is the duty of a line manager to be buddy of his/her own subordinates and the part of his/her performance appraisal according to the company’s Balance Scorecard system.
The ABC Productivity Team has been organized to promote creative ideas and team work, and Service Excellence has been implemented to promote excellent service among different work groups.
The company also sponsored activities to enhance and strengthen relationships between executives, management and all staff. ABC has put a lot of emphasis on the “human touch” by promoting upward communication through various activities as follows:
Employees meet the President (at meetings conducted twice a year)
Employees meet the MD
'Happy day' activities in which the line managers have lunch or dinner with their subordinates
There are also employee sports clubs such as football and golf as well as corporate