1. Longwood Admissions Office Communication Audit
Presented by Acadia Communications
Courtney: Hello Gina and Lauren, Thank you so much for coming to our presentation today for the communication audit on the Longwood Admissions office. We hope you find all of the information we provide today helpful for the longwood admissions office’s communication future.
Longwood University
December 6, 2012

2. About Us Katee Locke Courtney Carnevale Team Manager Team Leader
Catherine Marrin
Creative Designer
Meghan Roan
Team Assistance Coordinator
Courtney Carnevale
Team Leader
Abby Glascock
Interview Coordinator
Tori Spooner
Survey Coordinator
Courtney: we are just going to start out by introducing ourselves and telling you what our role in the Audit process was.

3. Agenda Brief Overview Communication Strengths
Opportunities for Improvement
Recommendations
Conclusion and Questions
CatherineThe presentation today will consist of five separate parts. First we are going to give you an overview of the whole communication audit and how we collected our data. Then we will tell you all the communication strengths that we found in your department. Then we are going to touch on some opportunities for improvement. Then we will suggest a possible recommendation for your department. And we will finish with a time for questions.

4. Research Overview Observations: 3 separate observation days and times.
Interviews: 6 interviews with key members of the department
Survey: 17 total respondents and 12 finished surveys
Catherineour group team acadia started this communication audit by observing your office on different days and at different times during the day just to get a full picture of what normal communication looks like in your office on a day by day basis.
Then after we did our observations and took notes on your communication styles we did 6 interviews with key members of the department. These interviews lasted about minutes and we were able to get a more personal view of the communication in your office.
After the interviews were done we sent out a survey to your whole department and asked them to take 10 minutes to fill out questions about communciation in the office. We had 17 employees start the survey and a total of 12 employees finish the whole survey.

5. Strengths Communication with the Dean and Coworkers
Employees knowing their primary objective and goals and being satisfied with their personal productivity
CourtneyAfter our observations, interviews, and surveys we found that your department had a lot of communication strengths and that you all reallly enjoyed working with one another and enjoyed your jobs. We just want to focus on two of those strengths for the presentation today including the communication with the dean and coworkers, and how employees know their primary objective and are satisfied with their personal productivity working towards that objective.

6. Communication with the Dean and coworkers
“Informal communication with the Dean, even within meetings everything is easy going, everyone feels free to communicate their ideas, beliefs, and concerns”
The first interaction we saw happened between a supervisor and an Admissions Counselor. The Admissions Counselor was in the supervisors office having a conversation. The non-verbal seemed open and positive towards the two. The Admissions Counselor was standing at the front of the supervisors desk asking a question.  They were using face-to-face communication.
MeghanThe first strength that we want to focus on is the communication with the dean and between coworkers is truly outstanding. There is two quotes that really stood out to our group when it came to this communication strength. The first quote is from an interview and it says “ Informal communication with the Dean, even within meetings everything is easy going, everyone feels free to communicate their ideas, beliefs, and concerns. The second quote from an interview says this when explaining the department as a whole, “ relaxed, team-oriented, goal-oriented, but family like atmosphere” We also have an an observation note that supports this communication strength, “ The first interaction we say happened between a supervisor and an Admissions counselor. The admissions counselor was in the supervisors office having a conversation. The non-verbal seemed open and positive towards the two. The admissions counselfor was standing at the front of the supervisors desk asking a question. They were using face to face communication.” This observation again is just showing us how easy it is for employees to communication with the dean about a variety of topics.

7. Communication between employees
“Pollock, Whitbred, and Contractor (1996) found that employee satisfaction was predicted by the satisfaction of people in their communication networks. The satisfaction of their communication linkages was more important even than the job characteristics or employee dispositions” (Downs p. 190).
Meghan:The communication theory we used to support this communication strengths is what is called communication networks. Downs and Adrian explain communication networks by saying that “In a network there are different types of communication roles that employees play, “Isolates are members who get little information and have few contacts. Group members are those who have a majority of interactions with each other. Bridges are members of groups who also connect with other groups. Liaisons are people who interact with several groups but who are not actual members of any group”. We also found a quote from pollock, Whitbred, and Contractor that said “Employee satisfaction was predicted by the satisfaction of people in their communication networks. The satisfaction of their communication linkages was more important even than the job characteristics or employee dispositions” It is important that people feel a part of the organization or department they are working for, if someone is an isolate then they are probably going to be have low job satisfaction. We have seen that in your department everyone has linkages to their coworkers and the dean which makes them feel like part of the team.

8. Goals and Productivity
“The big goal for the office is to get prospective students here, to tour the campus, want to make sure the student feel like they fit here, try to get students information about Longwood. Get students where they feel comfortable”
CourtneyThe second important strength that we found was that everyone knew what their objectives and goals were and people were really pleased with their productivity overall. The graph you see on the slide is from the survey results and it shows on a 6 point scale how satisfied employees were with their personal productivity. You can see the blue line is really close to 6 which means almost everyone who answered this survey question answered very satisfied. We also found an interview quote about an employees goal for the year, “the big goal for the office is to get prospective students here, to tour the campus, want to make sure the student feel like they fit here, try to get students information about Longwood. Get students where they feel comfortable” This quote looks very similar to all the other quotes from interviews about the offices main objective for the year which is great because that means everyone is on the same page. Then an observation we found supporting this strength is when one of the recruiters came in and thanked one of the receptionists for giving him a heads up about the location of a school and how to get inside without having problems. This shows employees working together for the same goal
One of the recruiters came in and thanked one of the receptionists for giving him a heads up about the location of a school and how to get inside without having problems.

9. What employees are saying
5 communication functions:
task/ work,
social/ maintenance
motivation
integration
innovation
“Taken in combination these five communication functions characterize a healthy organization. Although auditors differentiate among them for analytic purposes, none of them really stands alone” (Downs p. 62).
Courtneythis second strength is supported by a communication theory called communication functions. Down and Adrian tells us that there are 5 communication functions in an organization. The five functions include the task or work function, the social or maintenance function, the motivation function, the integration function, and the innovation function. This strength of everyone knowing their primary objective and goal for the year goes under the task/ work function which is used to inform, to instruct, to command, to solve problems, to identify goals, and to announce controls. This strength also falls under the integration function which is defined when, “Communication can build links so that members know what is going on, identify with the organizatrion, articulate its values, participate willingly in its processes, and feel pride in working there

10. Areas for Improvement
Employees want more information through newsletters, telephone, and meeting minutes
Information that needs to be received by employees about promotion and advancement opportunities as well as how organization decisions are made that affect their jobs.
KateeEven though there were a lot of communication strengths we saw in your department there are also two opportunities for improvement we are going to focus on today. The first opportunity for improvement is that employees want more information through newsletters, telephone, and meeting minutes. Also we saw that information needs to be received by employees about promotion and advancement opportunities as well as how organization decisions are made that affect their jobs.

11. Information through newsletters, telephone, and meeting minutes
“In writing, no formality of minutes in the office, University communication with the Dean is more formal than within the Admissions office”
KateeThe first opportunity for improvement we are going to focus on is how employees want to receive more information through newsletters, the telephone, and meeting minutes. There is a quote from one interview saying, “ in writing, no formatlity of minutes in the office, university communication with the dean is more formal than within the admissions office.” So from this quote we are hearing that there is really no distribution of meeting minutes to employees. These two graphs are from the survey results and we can see that a lot of the pie charts say that the many employees say the information they receive through these channels is about right, but because on the other channels your department scored pretty much a perfect on the survey which made these three channels including meeting minutes, newsletters, and telephone go under an opportunity for improvement because a few people in the organization thought there was too little information being received through these channels

12. How to Convey your message
Media Richness Theory: Channels and Ambiguity
Adler and Elmhorst (2010) describe the telephone as a communication channel that could be a very helpful tool for the organization, “ When using the telephone as a way to communicate, it can lack in the rich visual feedback because it often discloses how a message is getting across, vocal signals, tone of voice, pauses, interruptions, pitch and rate.” Even though face-to-face communication is always a good first choice to communicate important messages, the telephone can be a way to communicate with people who are across the state or even the country.
KateeThe theory we used to back up this opportunity for improvement is media richness theory. This theory says that every communication message or “ the content of your message” has an ambiguity level. So if something can be easily misinterpreted and has high importance than it is has high ambiguity. Also the channels we use to communicate our messages has a scale from rich media which is face to face communication and skyping, to lean media which is interoffice memos and flyers. So the theory says that if you have a highly ambiguous message you should use a rich media and if you have a low ambiguity message your only need to use a lean media. So since employees are asking to receive more information through newsletters,meeting minutes, and the telephone which are all on the lower end of the media scale which means they are lean media, you should only convey low ambiguity messages in these forms, like facts about upcoming events. The quote on the screen is specifically about telephone communication from Adler and Elmhorst, They are talking about how using the telephone is helpful but they are also saying that it is easy to misinterpret a message over the phone because you can not see the other person’s nonverbals.

13. Recommendation Weekly Newsletter
Examples include:
Elsie Angus weekly to students
Cormier Honors College Monday Memo
Glance in Organizations
Communication Networks: Strength of Ties
“Fulk and Boyd (1991) found that the more cohesive (stronger) ties positively affects employee attitudes and use of systems. Fulk (1993) explained the importance of cohesive ties by arguing that when strong ties are present employees give greater support and assistance using technology” (Downs p. 190).
Abby: our one main recommendation that we have for the Admissions office is to possibly do a weekly newsletter. This newsletter would look similar to Elsie Angus’s weekly to students, the Cormier Honors College Monday memo that is sent out by Dr.Fink, and the week at a glance s that campus organizations send out their members. This newsletter would require that all employees send in a few sentences about what they are doing in the upcoming week. Everyone employee would send in their part by 6pm Sunday evening, then on Monday morning at 8am Rhonda Golden would compile everyone’s sentences and send them out in a weekly electronic newsletter. This would help everyone know what is going on during the travel season especially and help everyone feel connected to one another. We are basing this recommendation on the communication networks theory and this quote by Fulk and Boyd they “ found that the more cohesive ties positively affects emplyee attitudes and use of systems. Fulk explained the importance of cohesive ties by arguing that when strong ties are present employees give greater support and assistance using technology.” This recommendation would also help because the dean could put promotion opportunities in the newsletter when they come up and people would know decisions the organization is making as a whole that might affect their job. There would be no monetary costs to implement this recommendation, there would only be the time costs of sending in the and compiling one which would not take more than 30 minutes.

14. Conclusion Summary Client’s future communication Thank You Admissions
CatherineSo just to recap everything we talked to you about today, we mentioned that you have two communication strengths including communication with the dean and coworkers as well as knowing primary goals and objectives and being pleased with personal productivity. We also mentioned two opportunities for improvement including using more newsletters, meeting minutes, and the telephone to communicate as well as communicating information about promotions and organization decisions. We then told you our one recommendation for your communciation in the office. Thank you again for coming to our presentation and we hope this information was helpful for the future of your organization.

15. Works Cited
Adler, R., & Elmhorst, J. (2010). Communicating at work: principles and practices for business and the professions. (10th ed., pp ).
Downs, C. W. & Adrian, A. D. (2004). Assessing organizational communication. New York: The Gilford Press.
Fulk, J. & Boyd, B. (1991). Emerging theories of communication in organizations. Journal of Management, 17(2),
Pollock, T., Whitbred, R., & Contractor, N. (1996, February). Social information processing, job characteristics and disposition: A test and integration of competing theories of job satisfaction. Paper presented at the Sunbelt XVI International Social Network Conference, Charleston, SC.
CatherineThese are just the sources we used to back up or strengths, opportunities for improvement and our recommendation

16. Questions
Catherine Do you have any questions about our presentation today