Introduction/ organization overview

For an effective understanding of corporate communication, its function, and barriers, of an organization will be taken for discussion that is “Vodafone UK.” Vodafone is considered one of the leading mobile communication provider worldwide, which is serving twenty-six nations.  The company has initiated this organization in 1985 from London. Considering the employees, there are more than 13000 individuals working across the UK (Vodafone, 2018). The mission of the company is to create and gain new opportunities each day using communication as a key, for which the company stands for. The company wishes to provide a positive contribution to the nation and society by making mobile network possible with a certain degree of freedom and flexibility to the customer that they have not experienced yet. The goals and objectives of the company includes customer-oriented working from the company’s employees and are ambitious, competitive, and innovative to achieve the vision and mission of the company. The values that company shares include simplicity, trust, and speed (vodafoneintegratedreport, 2014).

The company major focus includes creating recognition, positive awareness, and reputation of the company, achievement of distinctive, memorable, and relevant differentiation, facilitate trustworthy relationships between the companies, are its external and internal key audience. Moreover, the company considers building future asset value, brand equity, and bridge to new customers. In addition, the company believes that the brand must not be the outward expression of the inside commitment. The company sees, “Branding as communication, not decoration” (vodafoneintegratedreport, 2014).

Companies major concern is customers, which the company feels is a most important aspect. Corporate communication is a function of management like finance, operations, and marketing, involved in the dissemination of important information to key constituents. Moreover, it includes the execution of the strategy of the corporate and messages are developed for conveying it outside and inside the organization  (vodafoneintegratedreport, 2014).

For analysis the communication function of the company, the strengths, opportunities, weakness and threats must be well known, which are as follows:

1. Strengths

• Renowned brand name worldwide
• Integration of subsidiaries
• Providing a high level of infrastructure of networking
• Innovation through ringtone, chats, video messages
• High geographical exposure
• Customer focused strategy
• Total communication strategy
• New product development
• Advertisement with new brand ambassador
• Adding value through services
• Magazines promotions
• Good brand image

1. Weakness

• Lack of rural communication

1. Opportunities

• Conquering emerging markets
• Research and development
• Personal relationships with customers

1. Threats

• Competitive industry
• Competitors communication strategy

Vodafone through its marketing messages, conveyed a strong brand image and influence customers to enhance recognition of the brand, and increase brand loyalty. The messages include:

• Female appealing – through its messages and advertisements the company focuses to attract female customers. This will create a positive image of the company to influence people for women empowerment
• Fashion icon – through its campaign like Beckham campaign, the company focuses to change customer perception, as to use mobile with the best network as a fashion icon. This will influence people to use the network as a symbol status
• Empathetic and caring family man – through its campaign the company portrayed an empathetic and caring man of the family
• Brand migration – through its Beckham campaign, the support gained was to drive Vodafone for brand migration
• Enhanced internet browser – through its messages the company focuses to convey the enhanced browsing internet for mobile phones
• Small business approach – My campaign was to influence small business to established and run in a more cost-effective manner.
• Ease of use – the message through media is generally conveyed that the service is provided to become quick, simple, and easy to use(Griffiths & McLean, 2014).

Through its sustainability and corporate social responsibility, the message that the company coveys are:

• Power of connectivity – the company, is providing connectivity to millions of customers. Good connectivity is the heart of what the company is delivering to open up new opportunities for people, helping society in prosperity and response to major environmental and social issues.
• Technology for society – some of the environmental and social challenges are faced by the society, by enhancing technology for the society and enhancing the customer experience of connecting people, things and places to help to create a safer, healthier, and low carbon society
• Championing equality – the message of equality conveys through the sustainable business of the company. The company believes in equality and drive forces to do so. For this, the company uses its products, people, and brand to perceive a meaningful change for society. This will enhance women empowerment, and change customer perception as a positive brand image
• Digital future – in today’s world, where the digitalization is playing an important role in the society, the company through its CSR, and for suitability is encouraging digital future through kick-start bringing a revolution for mobile in the UK. The company focuses on helping people in operating organizations and unlocking government opportunities for a digital-focused future(vodafone, 2018).
• Youth skills and employment – for maximum jobs in near future, digital skill would be required, and the majority of school going children has indulged the digital skills through education itself. The company wishes to become the employer for youth and helping youth to build such skills. Therefore, the company is conveying a message to youth for employment and brand recognition.
• Transparency and ethical behavior – the company through its activities, covey the ethical behavior that is adopted by the company, and transparency within and outside the company. As the company is committed towards responsible behavior, and strive to work lawfully, with integrity, and ethically, in whichever country it is operating(n.vodafone, 2018).

Barriers to communication are responsible for conveying the message to the receiver either in a disrupted form or conveying different meaning or do not reach to the customers. These barriers to Vodafone include:

1. Semantic barriers

• Language issue – the major issue is language because the company is international, the meaning of a statement in one language is different in another language
• Use of jargons – too many uses of jargons, make the message unclear, or not understandable to the receiver, and acting as a barrier
• Clarity in the message – the message has to be clear enough to reach to the customers or another stakeholder in a similar way the company or management wishes to convey (Chung, 2015)

1. Organizational barriers

• Many transfer station – in case the communication is transferred through a long chain, it becomes difficult to transfer the same message from every level of the chain, it is the issue within the organization, and for outsiders as well
• Under or over communication – the information must be disseminated in the perfect quantity, the more of information, or lack of information, leads to the misleading and wrong message is conveyed.
• Negative tendencies – this depends on the work teams in an organization that leads to negative tendencies, like having similar values, opinion, attitude, and believes in the same team.
• Superior influence – the influence of superior for providing a different point of views can exist within the organization
• Inappropriate media – if the message is not conveyed through an appropriate channel of media, it may end up with non-delivery of a message to most of the customers or stakeholders(Gabriel, 2016)

1. Psychological barriers

• Wrong assumptions – the assumptions to convey message has to be right to an extent, in case it conducted to be wrong, it may lead to wrong delivery of messages
• Varied perception – the perception of every individual is different within the organization, and also to the customer, the messages are conveyed
• Resistance to change – this is the biggest barrier, as people within and outside the company are not ready to accept any change, and resist to adapt to something new
• Prejudiced views – these barriers are about making a judgment about a thing or some individual, and then want to see a similar impression.
• Communication selectivity – the selection of communication is also important, as it the combination of words and meaning of those words must be clear to the receiver, to make a message reachable to the stakeholders or customers (Hargie, 2016)

1. Other barriers

• Cultural difference – this is another major barriers, the company with numerous employees and serving to various countries, the culture is the major factor that can change the message meaning and relevance to the receiver
• Poor listening and retaining skills
• Conflicting information – the information that has been shared verbally or non-verbally, should not have a different meaning that conflict for their statement, as this can be a barrier(Libert & Gibon, 2015)

For analyzing and evaluating the communication of Vodafone, the relevant theory to study includes the Lasswell’s model of communication. This model was propounded in 1948 by Lasswell, according to which the mass communication process was explained and justified using a model. The model includes the combination of four factors that are a communicator, message, medium, and audience, that results into an Impact. According to his perception, the impact of an communication, whether it is positive or negative, depends on who is the speaker, what message is being sent by the speaker, what the media through which the message is been conveyed, and who is your target audience or who is the receiver of the message (Soranno, 2014).

Considering this model, one of the Vodafone communication strategy, through the campaign can be evaluated, and analyzed. The latest campaign conducted by Vodafone in 2018 for this discussion was “More than Mobile” (digitalstrategyconsulting, 2018).

• Communicator –  in this case, the communicators is the company itself, that is Vodafone
• Message – this part plays the most important role in communication, it is the words or a thing that creates meaning to the communication. According to this campaign, the key message includes the offering that the company is providing that is more than a cell phone, this message is to create awareness about the plans offered by the company. Through this campaign, the customer’s viewpoint or reviews regarding Vodafone was circulated, which majorly includes LifesKitchen, Moocall, CareTech and various other business operators. The perception about the company is that it is offering mobile networks and internet facilities, the awareness about the other than mobile service for low for the customers, which is to be aware. Moreover, the message includes the embraced innovation that the company is offering for day-to-day business. The message conveys the expertise of the company, in a range of industries, and blueprint for the working of digital technology, and the benefits are conveyed through the message. This includes building relationship of a business with its clients or customers and bringing them closer, and make them understand that how business challenges can have a solution through the products of Vodafone(Balmer & Abratt, 2016).
• Media – the source through this message or campaign has been reaching to the audience or customers are radio, social media platforms, print. The media also plays a vital role in effective communication, as the availability of the source will is important to reach out to the target audience(Kim & Edelson, 2015)
• Audience – the audience for this campaign is business decision makers, whom the company wants to influence to be connected to the brand for networking and communication purposes(Yen, 2017).

• Training and development – training of skills of the employees of the company may help the firm to enhance the communication skills of the employees. Moreover, the skills to create the best message and the appropriate use of words and language, for employees training can help to a large extent. This is especially recommended when customers are involved. For example, if the communication has to take place between the company and the customer, training could play a vital role while building a relationship and creating the campaign(Wang, 2016)
• Controlling – controlling is necessary for every aspect. considering controlling over the flow of information, it can be check if the proper and accurate information is flowing the organization, and in case of any deviations, the corrective action can be taken immediately
• Assessment of existing communication strategy – the internal communication strategy of the company must be assessed and check if it is as per the requirement or not
• Social intranet software implementation – through implementing the software through which the organization can interact easily with each other is a helpful tool to maintain effective communication across the organization
• Open door policy for the company – according to this policy, every individual of the organization has the right to speak and suggest whatever they wish to think is going right or wrong
• Take social media advantage – social media has provided an excellent platform to be connected to people. Through this, the personal relationship can also be maintained within the organization
• Dissemination of goals effectively – the goals of the company and individuals need to be shared with everyone, to understand the role of the person in achieving those goals.
• Internal newsletter – Vodafone must include the internal newsletter,  through which all the information can be effectively shared with the organization’s employees altogether
• Company culture focused – the culture of the company must be shared to the employees of the company so that they know in what environment they are working and existing so that the communication can be improved and are according to the organizational culture. For example, if the innovation is part of the culture of the organization like in the case of Vodafone, then the communication takes a more relevant role.
• Relationship building – the management must try to build a relationship with the subordinates. This will lead the superior and subordinate relationship to a more comfortable level. That will eventually lead to enhance communication among the organization
• Encourage two-way communication – the two-way communication must be encouraged with the employees and with the customers. There should not be a single person commanding and the Vodafone’s top management must license communicating with the employees and the customer, another party point of view.
• CRM platform usage – customer relationship management platform, is advisable to build a relationship with customers and communicate well with the customer to inform them about the offered products as per their requirement(Neil, 2015).
• Suggestions box – the suggestion box must be there at the company so that the ides or change requirement can get from the employees and customer, who is unable to share their thought face to face
• Celebrating achievements – this enhances the motivation and communication within the organization, by providing recognition to the employees performing more than they are expected by the management(Zerfass, 2015)

References

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