How the Communication Process Impacts an Organization
By: Letícia Baie
Tags: Organizational Culture, Communication, Organizational Comm, Organization, Brand Identity

The act of communicating is inherent to all human beings. We express our ideas, share our emotions, speak about our thoughts and also relate with people around us, either in a verbally or non-verbally way. Existing an emitter, a message, and a recipient open to understand and also transmit its owns messages — that’s the basic process of establishing a communication channel. Also, that is a process that must be present in organizations, whether private or public, to establish relations with the society in which it operates, its stakeholders, and its internal public.

The existence of a communication process in an organization’s environment is extremely valuable for its maintenance since it is through communication that is possible to set operational issues as strategic planning and project management. Besides, that is a key to the establishment of more interactive ways to relate in the workplace, improving performance optimization while taking action as a strong element to convey the organization’s values and missions to customers, partners, and employees.

Those results will only be obtained based on the incorporation of concepts and techniques that embrace all the activities of the institution forming an integrated organizational communication.

“It is the communication departments’ responsibility to establish the decisions and conduct the practices of all communication actions in the organization. […] Allied to the established communication policies, the philosophy should guide the best paths for the fulfillment of the mission and vision, the cultivation of values and the achievement of the organization’s global objectives.” — Margarida Kunsch

Taking into account all the complex operations involving the actions proposed by an organization, the integrated organizational communication can be separated into three sub-areas to attend to each target audience. That fact considers the communication process, not as a technical tool where only information is given descending without considering each specificity but rather as a strategic performance to achieve an interactive, customized, dynamic, and effective relationship with all different publics.

1. Internal Communication

Is the one applied inside the work environment, in which the main objective is to establish a flow of dialogue between employees. Basically, internal communication assists in the development of organizational culture and in the construction of corporate identity by being a mechanism that promotes the organization’s values and actions among those who are directly involved in its functioning. The internal public must be the first to believe in the purpose in which they are working.

2. Marketing Communication

Unlike the first, this is an external communication — meant to promote the organization’s products and services to its consuming public by disseminating information based on the persuasion of their potential and reinforcing the advantages it has. Through tools such as publicity and social networks, the organization can connect with its target audience and with the market in which it operates, also reaching stakeholders such as partners and suppliers.

3. Institutional Communication

To remain in the market and society, it is not enough to just sell products, but also to have value. With this in mind, institutional communication seeks to promote its personality to the public, the organization’s mission beyond the material product it offers. What are the organization’s concerns? What is its social responsibility? How is it serving and changing the community? Activities such as public relations, press relations, and institutional advertising seek to convey this.