INFLUENCE OF INTERNAL CORPORATE COMMUNICATION ON EMPLOYEE JOB SATISFACTION

ABSTRACT

The focus of internal corporate communication is gaining interest, particularly because it is very essential in all dimensions of the organization’s performance. Hence, effective communication has been linked to a number of positive outcomes like organizational success, financially and socially, higher levels of cooperation and employee job satisfaction while ineffective communication may lead to dissatisfaction, misunderstandings, lack of information, lower performances and more employee rotations. The inability of managers to effectively communicate with their employees leads to employee job dissatisfaction and poor performance. Hence, this study examines how internal corporate communication influences employees job satisfaction in selected organizations under study.

The survey method was adopted to gather data; 296 copies of the questionnaire were administered on junior and senior personnel of the selected organizations under study while in-depth interview was conducted with selected management level personnel. Data were collected and analyzed in simple frequency tables and the responses were represented in frequency tables as percentages of the overall sample. Also the Pearson chi-square was employed to determine the relationship between variables for any significance.

Findings from the study show that the channels of internal corporate communication operational in the selected organizations are: face-to-face discussions, e-mails, intercom units, intranet, reports, messengers, memos, newsletters, official letters, bulletin boards, departmental/management meetings, group/team discussions, in-house training sessions, management/employee briefing sessions, labor union meetings, suggestion boxes, notices, closed unit groups (CUGs), and assemblies.

Further findings reveal that most of the employees perceive internal corporate communication in their organizations as very effective, positive and a necessary organizational tool for employee job satisfaction. Findings reveal a significant relationship between internal corporate communication and employee job satisfaction which further enhances employee job performance. Further findings from the study also reveal that organizations are faced with diverse internal communication challenges such as: distorted feedback, matching message content with appropriate packaging, inadequate information, uneven flow of information, messages with lack of clarity of purpose, inability to arrive at a homogeneous internal communication approach and complete communication breakdown. These challenges, when not properly tackled, can hinder many organizational processes, especially its efforts at achieving employee job satisfaction/performance and, ultimately, organizational success.

Internal corporate communication plays a major role in influencing employee job satisfaction which significantly influences employee job performance hence; organizations that want to successfully retain a satisfied workforce must be willing to employ a communication style that is more participative and employee-supportive.