Consulting Case

In the consulting case, we saw how knowing your constituents can help you determine how to communicate and what channel to use. If the company you work for wants to provide information to its employees, you must determine the best way to deliver that information. You need to determine if a meeting, an email, a web site or a newsletter would be the best way to deliver the message. You would need to know how many people you need to speak to and if your employees are older or younger, also their educational backgrounds would be helpful. For an older employee you may not want to use computer technology because this may not be the best source. You may also need to use many sources. When you look at the message, you also need to determine how to structure it and what approach to use. You must take into account the constituencies, communication, channel, structure, and approach when you send your message.


Personal Experience
I am a Girl Scout leader for a Brownie troop in my area. I need to communicate with the parents of these kids after every meeting. I was finding that the parents would come in, get their children so they could get home or to their next destination. They didn't have time to wait for me to talk with them after the meeting. I needed to let these parents know what we did at brownies and what else was going to be happening. They needed to know fund raising information and field trip information. One year I created a newsletter that I sent home with the children after the meeting. I was still finding out that some of the kids would leave the newsletter in their neighbors car or it would get stuck in their back pack and Mom and Dad never saw it. The following year I continued to send the newsletter home with the kids, however, I also emailed them the newsletter with any other information I wanted them to be aware of. This seemed to work well. Those without email addresses, I would then call and make sure they had the information. I only had to call maybe 1 or 2 children. The internet was the best channel for me to use. It was fast since I only needed to type up the information once and send it to about 14 parents all at the same time. If I would have had to call all the parents after or before every meeting it would have taken me a great deal of time. By emailing this information, the parents all received it on a timely manner and they had a hard copy to look back to if necessary.

References
Here is a web site concerning different types of business communication methods

http://www.fastrak-consulting.co.uk/tactix/features/commopts/comopt02.htm http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/absence_communication/

Here is a site for communication structure:

http://cnx.org/content/m0002/latest/