Global Communications Benchmarking

Global Communications Benchmarking Research

For this benchmarking study, Learning Team A examined ten organizations on how they applied their best practices in the areas of organizational communication, emotional intelligence, and organizational commitment. The companies used in this study are AT&T, Comverse, DELL, Delta Airlines, IBM, Nortel, QWEST, Sprint Nextel, United States Postal Service and Verizon. The ten companies’ best practices were compared and contrasted to the Global Communications scenario.

Competitive Benchmarking Research

Organizational Communication

AT&T has a long history of working with their union employees when determining how to downsize the company. When the layoffs occurred in 1990, the company worked with the union representatives to create early retirement packages. Other companies, like Nortel demonstrate several ways to promote messages of business changes like the joint venture with Microsoft. For instance, to get the organization behind the partnership, marketing, and advertising ramped up. Specifically, tools that were used included: t-shirts, emails, training, home page advertising, and information sessions where employees could ask questions and learn more. This new program was launched with force and vigor so all employees could focus on the new opportunities to grow the business versus reducing costs. These practices outline an application that can be used to motivate the employee base to support the changing business direction. Unfortunately for Global Communications they failed to communicate their ideas throughout their organization effectively.

Another example of organization communications was demonstrated by Delta and Northwest by inviting both pilot unions when discussing merger talks. Although Global Communication was only focusing on the needs one union and its members, the particular business strategy that Delta was proposing had to meet the approval of both unions. In this particular instance, all three unions had the same common goal of trying to provide its members with the maximum benefits without the loss of any current benefits. The Delta-Northwest pilot union negotiations are a critical part of the business strategy. Without successful negotiations, the strategy could possibly fail.

Emotional Intelligence

Several of the benchmarking companies’ leadership used emotional intelligence (EI) in an attempt to gain the cooperation of their employees during challenging business times. For example in a show empathy towards those that were looking to retire, AT&T enhanced the deal by adding an appropriate bonus based on the “employee’s age and years of service in calculating both pension eligibility and retirement benefits” which made the early retirement more palatable to the departing employees (Cimini, 1990, p.1). This illustrates AT&T’s commitment to both present and past employees by recognizing their strengths.

An example of poor emotional intelligence is demonstrated by Comverse. Even though Comverse’s fundamentals remain strong, with a growing backlog of orders, and no disturbing inventory buildup, the main issues for the company are the low employee morale and a bad business practices (Lewis, 2001). The executive team decided to re-price their worthless options and then re-grant the shares to the executives and new employees. They distorted information, lied to the employees, stock holders, and broke the law. Comverse “Perpetrated a fraudulent and deceptive scheme from 1997 to 2005 to award themselves and other employees’ undisclosed, secret compensation by backdating stock-option grants, failing to record hundreds of millions of dollars of compensation expense, and falsifying documents” (Taub, 2007, p.1). While Global Communications were not perpetrating this degree of unethical behavior and EI, it should be noted this example is an illustration of what not to do as leaders.

According to McShane, & Von Glinow, “Job satisfaction is the key driver to corporate success. With an unhappy workforce you have nothing and you will never be great” (2005, p.123). As a result of poor emotional intelligence, many talented employees were leaving the company. Hiring and retaining important talent become a common problem for Comverse (Creswell, 2006). Global Communications can not afford to use Comverse as a benchmark company in regard to EI.

Another example of positive emotional intelligence is demonstrated in Nortel with its joint venture with Microsoft. In order to pull together a joint venture of this size, the leaders of both industries had to display a large degree of emotional intelligence. Both company’s leaders were aware of their expertise in regard to one another and each leader knew that past business operations had been better than they are now. As a result both companies could enter into a relationship where both could manage the expectations of the staff. Joint ventures can bring two distinct companies together where both sets of expertise can be shared with the other in a cooperative environment.

When looking into the Global Communications employee union treatment, it is clear that if they chose Qwest’s handling as a comparison, then the outcome would have been more encouraging. In 2005, Qwest and Communications Workers of America union (CWA) came to the bargaining table to discuss salary increases and employee work schedules. Unlike Global Communications, Qwest had successfully negotiated its contract with the CWA. The company had displayed its appreciation for the workers by increasing salaries for the next three years, even though it impacted their net income (Doyle, 2005). The leadership at Qwest knew a strike would have crippled the already wounded company and as a result they were willing to keep the workforce happy by finding other areas to generate revenue or reduce costs.

Furthermore, the Qwest leaders exhibited several factors of emotional intelligence when working with the union employees. The first factor was in regard to social awareness, more specifically empathy for the workers plight (McShane & Von Glinow, 2004). The second emotional intelligence factor that was shown was in regard to the regulations of emotions, like adaptability and optimism (2004). When the emotional intelligence was applied by the leadership of Qwest correctly, the workers were willing to concede some positions on their side including increased healthcare deductibles, and overtime guidelines (Doyle, 2005).

The final example of emotional intelligence benchmarking can be found with the Sprint Nextel merger.