Expertise in The 21st Century Modern Workplace

               

             As Paul J. Meyer mentioned, “Communication - the human connection - is the key to personal and career success”. It is surprised that with the presence and assistance of abundant science and technology means, multiple unexpected problems, errors in operations or even accidents appear to take place in the 21^st century modern workplace, which seem to not promoting, but deceasing the productivity and efficiency of the workers or employees. In view of this paradoxical situation in contemporary workplace, one of the major contributing factors may lie on the ineffective or lack of communication skills possessed by the employees. Undeniably, communication skills are an essential component of a productive workplace, allowing employees to work together cohesively and professionally. Yet, such soft skills are most likely to be ignored or neglected both during the time as a student as well as in the real working environment. Without effective communication routes, there is a high possibility for all kinds of errors to arise, regardless of the level of advanced infrastructures available. In solving this particular issue, improving the employee communication skills through series of trainings and behavior crediting or modeling might give a company a competitive edge. Introducing the fundamentals of good communication, including listening skills, the concept of encoding and sending information interpersonally or impersonally, to any new employees during the initial training program and frequent team-building programs seem to be the most basic mode of action to be enforced. To motivate the employees in long term, communication skills can be further included as a major aspect in performance appraisals in the company, in which incentive awards are encouraged to be associated to enhance the attention focused by them on the often neglected communication aspects. Despite incentive, a better form of award might be promoting those effective communicators into supervisory positions, which seems to also, set the tone in a company by motivating the employees to model the effective communication skills.