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    The Cost of Poor Communication

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    Poor communication in businesses and organizations can result in significant financial losses each year measured in billions. A single poorly written memo that was difficult to understand led to 26 confused phone calls from employees seeking clarification, wasting over a week of time to resolve. Clear communication is important to avoid wasted time, effort and ensure understanding between parties.

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    The Cost of Poor Communication

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    121923601018
    3K views2 pages
    Poor communication in businesses and organizations can result in significant financial losses each year measured in billions. A single poorly written memo that was difficult to understand led to 26 confused phone calls from employees seeking clarification, wasting over a week of time to resolve. Clear communication is important to avoid wasted time, effort and ensure understanding between parties.

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    Poor communication in businesses and organizations can result in significant financial losses each year measured in billions. A single poorly written memo that was difficult to understand led to 26 confused phone calls from employees seeking clarification, wasting over a week of time to resolve. Clear communication is important to avoid wasted time, effort and ensure understanding between parties.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    3K views2 pages

    The Cost of Poor Communication

    Uploaded by

    121923601018
    Poor communication in businesses and organizations can result in significant financial losses each year measured in billions. A single poorly written memo that was difficult to understand led to 26 confused phone calls from employees seeking clarification, wasting over a week of time to resolve. Clear communication is important to avoid wasted time, effort and ensure understanding between parties.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    The Cost of Poor Communication

    Summary:
    We can summarize that the Poor communication may costs huge loss in business
    or industry and for a government each year in billions. In fact, poor
    communication involves

    - Inefficient emails,

    - Careless reading or listening to instructions,

    - Documents that go unread due to poor design,

    - Hastily presenting inaccurate information,

    - Sloppy proofreading — all of these examples result in inevitable costs.

    The loss due to above reasons in any business or industry is not counted as regular
    losses of balance sheet. It has been used and adapted widely to illustrate the perils
    of poor communication during a project. In more personal terms, the losses are
    measured in wasted time, work, money, and ultimately, professional recognition.
    In extreme cases, losses can be measured in property damage, injuries, and even
    deaths.
    CASE 1: One garbled memo – 26 baffled phone calls

    Joanne supervised 36 professionals in 6 city libraries. To cut the costs of


    unnecessary overtime, she issued this one-sentence memo to her staff:

    “When workloads increase to a level requiring hours in excess of an employee’s


    regular duty assignment, and when such work is estimated to require a full shift of
    eight (8) hours or more on two (2) or more consecutive days, even though
    unscheduled days intervene, an employee’s tour of duty shall be altered so as to
    include the hours when such work must be done, unless an adverse impact would
    result from such employee’s absence from his previously scheduled assignment.”

    After the 36 copies were sent out, Joanne’s office received 26 phone calls asking
    what the memo meant. What the 10 people who didn’t call about the memo
    thought is uncertain. It took a week to clarify the new policy.

    Questions
    1. Define the rhetorical situation: Who is communicating to whom about what, how, and
    why? What was the goal of the communication in each case?

    2. Identify the communication error (poor task or audience analysis? Use of inappropriate
    language or style? Poor organization or formatting of information? Other?)

    3. Explain what costs/losses were incurred by this problem.

    4. Identify possible solutions or strategies that would have prevented the problem, and
    what benefits would be derived from implementing solutions or preventing the problem.

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