COMMUNICATION AUDIT

Communication Audit

Communication Audit

The Purpose of Organizational Communication and Sherwin-Williams Company

Effective communication is a skill everyone should master, whether it is interpersonal or business. Interpersonal communication is important because it will allow everyone to communicate effectively with one's family and friends. Business communication is important because an employee needs to be able to communicate effectively with all supervisors and coworkers, along with any customers or clients' they may meet. A business can lose money if their employees are not able to communicate effectively. “A recent report concluded that small businesses in the United Kingdom were losing more than $5.4 billion per year due to ineffective business communication (Hooper, 2004).” Any form of communication should answer the questions: who, what, when why and where. The four elements that make communication effective are purpose, audience, structure, and tone.

Description of Company

The Sherwin-Williams Company has been one of the nations leading paint companies since its launch in 1866. Though the corporate headquarters is located in Cleveland, Ohio, Sherwin-Williams has hundreds of plants throughout the world and employees nearly 30,000 people. The company also has multiple divisions each with their own focus on specialized paint. For as large as The Sherwin-Williams Company is, they have done a great deal to ensure that everyone still has a voice no matter what their job description.

It was my assumption that being a large company would require more of a Classical Management strategy to conduct everyday business. After researching and interviewing both the plant manager and engineering manager of a local plant in the industrial coatings division was I able to understand that a complex mix of the Classical Management Theory, Human Relations Theory, Human Resources Theory and Systems Perspective was used to efficiently communicate throughout the company. While this mixture of theories is both deep and broad, the dominant perspective is the Systems Approach. The key to Sherwin-Williams' success is that it uses many of the features in this theory extremely well to conduct business within the company.

The Communication Survey Project

Methodology

Methods used in examining communication in Sherwin-Williams Company included an interview to identify the department's communication strategies, distribution of a written survey questionnaire for all department members, and conducting a cross sectional focus group. Strengths and areas of opportunity are highlighted for the focus group discussion and written survey results.

Identifying the Communication Strategies

One of the qualities of the systems approach is that it is an open system. An open system “encourages individual members to be mindful of the importance of the overall health of their industry…” (Organizational Communication p. 106). Within Sherwin-Williams, this characteristic is evident in many different places throughout the company. The most evident is within the sales division, in that sales must be very aware of the other divisions of the company in order to be knowledgeable about their product. Interaction between salesmen and their environment, in this case the plants making the paint, creates structure and a more organized working environment so that both parties can conduct their job more ...