8 SCHWERPUNKT_INTERVIEW PERSONALquarterly 03 / 22 cular to listen properly to them and learn about their ideas and their concerns. A second challenge lies in lack of trust. This includes trust in the sender, trust in the message and trust in the receiver. Low trust is generally associated with a reduction in communication which in turn can exacerbate the lack of trust. It is also associated with a reluctance to provide information if there is no feedback or a risk of negative feedback. An example is the negative response sometimes received by employees who bravely act as whistleblowers. Paradoxically, a third threat can be too much information and leaving receivers to filter what is important or become overwhelmed. Fourth, there is the question of the media for communication and the challenge of competing sources. Covid has taught us to communicate at a distance through media such as Zoom. This creates potential problems of attention and quality of listening. For example, training and teaching via Zoom has become more challenging when you cannot gauge reactions so easily as when interacting face-to-face. Similarly, something is lost in interviews when the non-verbal behaviour is invisible. PERSONALquarterly: Considering trends like employee experience and new work, how do you expect the employee-employer communication to change in the future? David Guest: The advent of Industrie 4 with the growth of Artificial Intelligence and use of robotics presents new challenges for effective communication. The threat is a new era of technological determinism where communication is increasingly machine-mediated reducing the quality of two-way communication as well as the employees’ experience of work. The experience of working from home and communication via Zoom or Teams during the coronavirus pandemic has introduced us to one form of this. It is encouraging that there is now discussion of Industrie 5 where the emphasis is placed on socio-technical design to improve the quality of work and of two-way communication. The trends are towards more choice of media, more flexibility of work arrangements and greater variety of forms of communication. In the emerging newwork, employer-employee communication is likely to become more challenging and managers will have to give greater priority to ensuring that they communicate effectively. „It is essential that the HR practices are clearly communicated in a way that can be understood by all managers and employees providing consistent signals that help to create an HR climate that fits with and supports the organizational goals.“ Professor David Guest
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjc4MQ==