Downward communication is when information comes from the top of the hierarchy and is passed along to the bottom of the hierarchy. According to Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn, the types of messages passed through downward communication are job instructions, job rationales, procedures and practices, feedback, and indoctrination. These messages can be passed through staff meetings, internal newsletters, one-on-one meeting, bulletin boards, employee information sheet, e-mail and staff handbook. Each message is unique and should, therefore, be sent via the appropriate channel. For instance, if it is feedback being given to an individual employee, it would be appropriate to give the feedback on a one-on-one meeting or e-mail and not on the bulletin boards (Wrench, 2015). Generally, managers should be professional on how they transmit information downwards to their subordinates.
A real life experience of downward communication is when my supervisor asked me on e-mail to submit a report entailing data about customers who had defaulted on their loan payments, reasons for default and when they were willing to pay. The report was to be presented to the CEO on the next day by the head of the department. When it came to the time of the meeting the report was considered inadequate as the CEO was mostly interested in knowing the total value of the loans that had defaulted as at then. Since this was not part of the instructions given to me by my supervisor I did not include the total summation on the report. The head of the department was embarrassed as he had to cut the meeting short in order to get an accurate report that could answer the CEO’s questions.
As from the above example, it can be seen that communication was passed downwards but not accurately. The issue could have arisen simply because the CEO might have forgotten to mention that he required that information as part of the report and therefore the instructions sent down the hierarchy was inaccurate from the beginning or it could have been as a result of having a number of people in the communication chain causing the message to be distorted with each passing person. Both ways the damage would have already been done and as a result, a manager can expect their subordinates to start questioning their credibility while other employees might also start questioning how connected their supervisors are to the organizational hierarchy.
A second problem that was observed from the above example was information inadequacy. The information that was passed down to the subordinate was not sufficient enough to meet the CEO expectations. This could have been as a result of communication under load which arises when employees are not given sufficient information to finish their tasks successfully or communication overload which occurs when subordinates are given too much information that they cannot excel in their jobs. In an ideal work environment, managers are meant to only pass adequate information to their subordinates but this is not usually the case. In our above example, the supervisor might have received too much information from his boss, which made him overwhelmed thereby ignoring some information instead of sifting through the whole information and as a result giving his subordinate inadequate instruction. It could also have been that the supervisor sifted through the information in a hurry and missed vital instructions thereby giving the subordinate incomplete instructions.
As a result of the inaccuracy and inadequacy of information associated with downward communication, individuals who are passing information to those below them should first and foremost make sure that information passed down is accurate. They should spend more time verifying the information before passing it down.
Secondly, managers should ensure that the quantity of information that is being passed down to subordinates is sufficient. They should avoid communication overload and communication under load by filtering out information that is not necessary before passing it along and also asking subordinates if they are getting enough information.
Thirdly, it is good to consider the source of the information. For instance, information coming from the CEO would be received with more weight than information coming from a middle-level manager. Therefore, information coming from the top of the chain of command should be passed on as directly as possible without having to pass through too many middlemen to avoid serial transmission (Tourish & Hargie, 2010).
Fourth, it is good to consider the most appropriate communication channel that should be used for the downward transmission of information. As previously mentioned, the more the number of people a message is transmitted through, the more the chances of it being distorted.
Fifth, it is good to be mindful when selecting the communication medium to be used for the downward communication. When encoding various messages, managers should recognize that the one communication medium might not be effective for all messages transmitted. If a message is important it would be best to utilize more than one communicative medium to ensure that employees do not miss out on the information. For instance, if there is a change in a policy in the organization it is not sufficient to only announce it in a staff meeting but it would also be advisable to send an e-mail to all the staff so as to ensure that all staff including those who did not attend the meeting have gotten the message.
References
Wrench, J. S., Punyanunt-Carter, N. M., Ward, M., Sr. (2015). Organizational communication: Theory, research, & practice. Washington, DC: Flat World Knowledge.
Tourish, D., & Hargie, O. (2010). Auditing organizational communication: A handbook of research,. New York: Routledge.
