Workplace Communication

Regardless of the field in which one works or the position one holds, most people spend the majority of the workday communicating. This communication may include composing emails to managers, interacting with customers, or giving presentations. Because most workplace communication situations do not come with explicit instructions or detailed information on how others will evaluate delivery, learning how to analyse situations and develop communicative behaviours that are likely to be assessed positively should be a central part of a business communication course.

Competent Workplace Communication: Analyzing, Developing, Evaluating introduces a competent workplace communication framework rooted in research-based concepts that are easily internalised. To this end, it presents a process for approaching communication situations through acronym-based guidance on being a competent communicator. Rather than focusing primarily on how to write and format documents, this text takes a choice-based approach to workplace communication, focusing on providing frameworks for making decisions about messages. Using these models of the communication process equips business communicators with the information they need to make decisions about communication. In other words, the text provides the tools students need to consider their options, information on how to organise the messages, and formatting examples comparable to those provided in other texts.

This approach in Competent Workplace Communication makes the text unique. Most business communication texts focus on detailing specific prescriptive "how-to" instructions rather than a framework to aid in thinking about how to approach communication situations. The traditional approach of business communication texts focuses on prescribing specific techniques using outdated transmission models of the communication process. Such texts break up their chapters along different writing formats, with chapters for job seeking and presentation skills at the end. However, many complicated communication issues do not arise when presented with a clear format requirement.

Thus, this text does not follow the medium-based approach that other business communication textbooks follow. Formatting in a particular medium is a secondary concern. The second edition of Competent Workplace Communication uses the same innovative research-based models as the first edition to help students develop as a competent communicator. This edition has streamlined media-specific content to provide guidance on spoken and written communication. The first five chapters focus on contextualising research based frameworks summarised by acronyms; the next two chapters act as media specific guides; the final chapter summarises the frameworks provided in the text.

Woven into each chapter are useful recommendations and process ideas based on research findings. All frameworks are meant to be easily internalised so that they can be helpful as you think through "real-life" situations in the future, without having to reference a text. In short, this text focuses on equipping students with the tools to become a competent communicator-one who understands and is understood.