Miscommunication at the Workplace: Causes and Ways to Improve Internal Communication

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to survey the significant causes and reasons that lead to miscommunication at the workplace and to suggest the key solutions for the organizational management to improve internal communication, based on BERLO’S SMCR Model; Sender, Message, Channel and Receiver. The sampling group included 128 respondents whose level of education ranging from bachelor’s to doctorate’s degree, currently working in various organizations, covering government agencies, state enterprises, private and business sectors. The online questionnaire was used as the data collection tool and statistics used for data analysis was the Frequency and Percentage. The survey results showed that the causes of miscommunication at the workplace responded by 128 respondents ranging from agree to highly agree indicated that Sender was 68.75% (88) the highest cause, Channel 61.54% (79) as the second while Receiver 51.57% (66) and Message 49.22% (63) ranked the third and fourth consecutively. Regarding to other factors that may influence the causes of miscommunication at the workplace, the results ranging from the highest to lowest percentage and frequency as follows: 1) 25.26% (98) the attitude of either sender or receiver may cause miscommunication, 2) 21.13% (82) the readiness of both sender and receiver, 3) 18.56% (72) relationship between sender and receiver, 4) 18.04% (70) organizational context and culture, and 5) 17.01% (66) communication context consecutively. The last part of this study focused on the ways to improve internal communication at the workplace, the findings indicated that the top three key solutions with the highest percentage and frequency consecutively included: 1) 15.34% (81) sender must prepare your message before communicating with receivers 2) 14.94% (79) message must be clear and easy for receivers to understand, and 3) 13.26% (70) respect others’ opinions is a must among members in the workplace. It is fully expected that the findings of this research may inspire organizational leaders to aware of, to have an insight look into the power of communication and acknowledge how to manage communication problems before the situation worsen and may lead the organization to fail office.