Organizational communication diagnoses are showing two major focuses of communication problems in the organization, on the one hand those related to technology and on the other the communication problems between the areas or dependencies that make up public institutions.
Faced with the challenges and changes that globalization and new markets bring, it is necessary for companies to develop modern management processes and consolidate themselves as solid organizations that project growth through time.
In the same way, public entities should not be oblivious to this transformation, since it will always be essential to work for their strengthening, which guarantees the sustainable development of a nation, hence looking at different alternatives in order to improve management processes. and user service.
This is how in our days the implantation of effective internal communication processes in these institutions has taken vital importance, allowing an improvement in their organizational climate.
In the first instance, it is necessary to determine the functions of horizontal communication, since in the same way that top-down communication aims to direct the efforts of collaborators, horizontal communication intends for them to coordinate with each other to optimize efforts and resources.
Furthermore, communication must take advantage of shared resources, generating synergies. One effect of this is that horizontal communication must “tie” the management dynamics of the different parts of the organization, generating a certain synchronism that from a macro point of view is involved with the general management dynamics of the institution.
Although the main problem is communication between the areas and the lack of a culture of recognition that contributes to the organizational climate from communications, it is worth highlighting the need for technological improvement, understood not only by the purchase of technological tools but the joint work between the communications and technology areas, especially in relation to the communication of processes and those that are focused on providing a better service to citizens.
It is also worth highlighting the need to strengthen the communicative culture of leaders so that they can use internal communication as a strategic resource that is focused on directing, coordinating and adapting the organization to the needs and expectations of citizens.
In addition, we must refer to continuous improvement, which requires not only obtaining information from customers, but also adapting the organization to these requirements and for this it needs strengthening communication between areas and teams job. Kaizen refers to this as "cross-functional communication."
This type of exercise is based on debugging processes and making them consistent with the expectations that customers have about the services or processes of the organization.
In this sense, the work of “Interfunctional Teams”, “Improvement Meetings”, “Quality Logs”, etc. is common.
The cross-functional teams are made up of people from different areas and their purpose is to focus the organization's processes towards a certain work unit or project, reducing waste and errors of congruence between the areas.
Improvement meetings, on the other hand, are generally meetings of only two areas where mutual collaboration is sought to reduce errors and establish production improvements (times, efforts, development of synergies, etc.)
Finally, the quality logs are records of requests that one area makes to another to improve a certain procedure and thereby optimize the work being done. There one area makes a request to another and that other must offer a response to know if it is possible to make the change or how what the requesting area requested can be achieved.
As previously mentioned, the well-known Weberian model that divided processes to specialize them and thus make them more efficient, all it did was interrupt the flow of information in organizations.
For this reason today, when that flow is the vital competitive sense of the organization, the organizational structures are shaken looking for new ways. The specialization of the work by departments isolated the parts of the process, that is why today communication is the fundamental tool for the reduction of time and errors and for the global understanding of the process.
A survey of 57 public institutions to determine how their internal communication is, indicates that the main problems are: poor communication between areas, lack of expressions of recognition and technological deficiencies, since they resulted in an average of 3.4 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Very close follows: lack of double-track channels and generalized attitude problems with an average of 3.3; interpersonal relationship problems in teams with 3.2; Lack of information from the directives and geographical distances with 3.0.
And lastly, processes whose design prevent communication between the parts of the organization and poor communication between the immediate superior and the collaborator with 2.8.
On average, the public organizations surveyed indicated that the origins of their management problems are 80% related to internal communication problems, which is comparable to the Latin American survey carried out by students from the Sergio Arboleda University to private companies and where the average for the continent was also 80%.
Finally, given these different problems that daily afflict public institutions, it is necessary to point out the importance of implementing adequate internal communication processes that allow these entities to have a much more effective management, a more acceptable image and establish a more cordial relationship with its users, who in the end are the ones who will qualify and recognize their work, it is there, from the goals set and the airs of change, that this great challenge is born, which communication is ready to overcome.
