A friend told me many of his workmates “can’t spell and can’t string two sentences together … but they don’t care”. It was the ‘don’t care’ part of his statement that pricked my ears. I wondered, do they truly not care or are they doing their best and simply don’t know any better?
If you receive an email from someone in an organisation that contains spelling mistakes and barely coherent sentences – how does this affect your opinion of that company and, in particular, your opinion of the person who sent it?
How many businesses or organisations really work to improve the communication skills of their employees? Do you think they should, considering the damage poor communication can do to a company’s reputation?
Huge resources are used to produce ‘official’ business communication. Writers, graphic designers, photographers, editors and Managers – to name a few – all contribute to ensure everything from brochures to websites, and advertisements to announcements are of the highest quality. Why? So that people understand what the company does or what the business offers. Why the focus on quality? The level of care taken reflects the value that organisation places on how the business is perceived.
Why then is so little care taken with the most prolific form of business communication – employee email. There was a time when only the CEO or Managing Director of a company communicated externally on behalf of that company. If the business logo appears on the bottom of the email then the content of the email is being sent on behalf of the business. Today everybody has a work email address and therefore everybody speaks on behalf of the company.
So is it that employees really ‘don’t care’ or do they not care because ‘Management’ doesn’t care?