Operations Management Assignment 2 Research Paper

Operations Management Assignment 2 - Research Paper Example The challenges to the operations manger are not isolated to E-commerce only, but cut across all the businesses that require the services of the Operations Manger (Stevenson, 2008). The operations manager has a difficult time in the choice of the practice to adopt in the running of the business. This competition is internal and is brought about by the many interests that are in a business. An example of this competition that emanates from within the business is when a systems manger in the business prefers the use of e-mails in communicating to employees while the finance section prefers memos that are written. These differences in the most appropriate practice to adopt especially on communication can have negative effects on the flow of information within the business. This therefore, calls upon the operations manager to draw standardized operational procedures that everybody within the company should go by (Stevenson, 2008). Jackey Lohery in a research on the difficulties that managers encounter pointed customers as the most grievous in causing problems. This is more serious with e-commerce that reaches customers of all manner and kind. The customers raise issues that are in some instances beyond the ability of employees to answer or respond to (Stevenson, 2008). Delivery of a product that is below the expectations of the customer may make them angry and it will need an operations manager with superb conflict resolution skills to calm such customers down. Customer disappointment is frequent in e-commerce because customers have unrealistic expectations about the goods that should be delivered to them. It therefore frustrates them when they are given a good that does not much these expectations. Operation should therefore provide a forum for customers to lodge there complains and to participate in the development of the business. Customer satisfaction is a big challenge in online businesses that operations managers are under charge to surmount if the business

The Location Of Activities Cultural Studies Essay

The Location Of Activities Cultural Studies Essay The Almighty Vice Lord Nation are based in Chicago, Illinois and began to spread over many neighbourhoods and community areas in the 1960s, for example in Garfield Park, Austin, Fifth City and several housing projects, like Cabrini-Green, Rockwell Gardens and Lawndale Gardens. While usually found on the west side in the 1980s they expanded on the south and north side as well to neighbourhoods such as Englewood, Roseland and East Side as well as to housing projects of Altgeld Gardens and Washington Park Homes. Today they can also be found in Wisconsin, where they are predominantly on the north side of Racine County. In summary it can be stated that the Almighty Vice Lord Nation mostly operates in Chicago suburbs at the moment. Furthermore there are different factions and sub-gangs, which can be found all over the United States.http://www.uic.edu/orgs/kbc/maps/Gangstoday.gif Personal comment When I first started doing some research for my gang I was a bit irritated, because it didnt seem to be a real gang. I didnt have the impression that this association could be taken really seriously, especially due to their symbols (a playboy bunny is in my opinion neither threatening nor serious). But when I learned more and more details about the Almighty Vice Lord Nation I was really shocked about how brutal and violent they operate. What surprised me was Bobby Gores attempt to turn a street gang into an activism community which aimed to help children and I was sort of disappointed that his mission failed. All in all I am definitely against violence and brutality, no matter if it happens in gangs or outside such a community. Furthermore I am worried that if you once become a member of a gang it is nearly impossible to leave it. http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj300/Lordism5/lordred.jpg Reasons for becoming a gang member There are plenty of reasons why people want to join a gang. Especially teenagers often struggle to find their place in the world and to define themselves. Being a gang member creates the feeling of being part of something and enhances their self-esteem by emotional support, attention, affirmation or simply understanding. Often those young people come from a difficult family or are loners and just want to fulfill their basic needs. Another reason to join a gang is peer pressure: if they live for example in a gang-dominated area or go to a school with a strong gang presence they are very likely to join this gang because most of their friends and acquaintances are already members. Furthermore, Chicago for instance can be very dangerous at night and being a member of a gang means to be protected from rival gangs.http://a3.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/profile01/147/5a3d2502b6ab451bbe150fabc5c827cc/p.jpg History The Almighty Vice Lord Nation is one of the oldest and most violent gangs of Chicago. Their history begins in 1958 in the juvenile detention centre St. Charles in a western suburb of Chicago, where seven incarcerated boys, namely Edward Peppilow Perry, who is credited with the actual founding of the gang and would become their official chief, Ralph Bonds, Leonard Cal Calloway, Bobby Gore, Maurice Miller, Toehold, and Wren, had the idea of founding this gang. The name Vice was chosen, when one of the gang founders looked the term up in a dictionary and found the meaning having a tight hold. After being released from incarceration the gang started to recruit lots of new members and engaged in wars against several clubs. At that time their territory was concentrated at about 21st and Lawndale. By the early 1960s the Almighty Vice Lords were involved in every kind of illegal activity such as robberies, assaults and extortion and their number began to grow and they began to expand in dist ricts beyond the west side. To soften their public image, which was known as very brutal and violent, and to create a structure the gang was renamed the Conservative Vice Lord Nation by one of the founders, Bobby Gore. To reflect their new mission, community activism, the gang turned into a legitimate organisation, trying to protect the neighbourhoods and opening a shop. In 1966 they even became part of the Civil Rights Movement and marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Council in a rally in the Marquette neighbourhood. After getting a lot of positive publicity and support of various politicians and community leaders the Conservative Vice Lords were able to open several legitimate businesses and community establishments with a grant of the Rockefeller Foundation. Despite their attempts of leaving their former image of being a violent gang, it was quickly discovered that the CVL were still violent criminals and had no intention to cooperate with the local police. In 1969 Bobby Gore got arrested for the murder of a young police man, though Gore denied to have committed the crime. Without his leadership the CVLs social activities failed, shutting down all of their programs. They began to engage in another lucrative business, the drug market. In the 1980s several leaders of the Almighty Vice Lord Nation were killed or sent to prison. To give the organisation a spiritual meaning the gang adapted a lot of the Islamic principles and even transformed some of their long time gang symbols. In the 1990s some criminal activities of the Almighty Vice Lords became more sophisticated, such as mortgage fraud, credit card fraud, and money laundering. Rituals They do accept everyone to join their gang. Before becoming a member you are required to take an oath and to memorize and obey all gang laws and rules. You are furthermore required to attend weekly meetings that are held by senior leaders. If you break a law or rule or miss a meeting, you get beaten. Allies and Adversaries Allies (People Nation): Blackstone Rangers, Bloods, Latin Kings, Black Peace Stones, Cobra Stones, Insane Popes, Gaylords, Future Stones, Four Corner Hustlershttp://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/gangs/images/c-people_sym.gif http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/gangs/images/c-folk_sym.gif Adversaries (Folk Nation): Gangster Disciples, Black Gangsters, Black Disciples, Crips, Party People, Imperial Gangsters, La Raza, Latin Eagles, Maniac Latin Disciples Clothes, colours, etc Colors: Black (race), Gold (wealth) and Red* Formerly the gang members used to wear trench coats, trousers and a sweater or a white button shirt. Some of them wore black capes with the word vice lords written in gold and an earring. Nowadays their attire is very mixed, Vice Lords wear everything from old jeans and black hooded sweatshirts to expensive suits. Especially most of the younger members try to keep up with the latest fashion; however some members wear cheap clothing. In order to avoid detection from police and rivals they prefer to wear dark after nightfall. In the Winter Vice Lords wear bottom or tug hoods. *The original gang colours are Black and Gold, however, in cities where Bloods have a presence, gang members of the AVLN tend to wear red in order to identify with that gang. Sizehttp://a3.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/123/c34f115c61e74a779c80364fb1b23671/l.jpg There is an estimated number of 30.000 to 35.000 members, while other sources claim them to be about 27.000. Ethnic Origin The members of The Almighty Vice Lord Nation are mostly African American males. Typical Activities The Almighty Vice Lord Nation engages in many criminal activities, namely vandalism, extortion, armed robbery, murder,  assault, battery, dog-fighting, gang-banging, arson, auto-theft, burglary, armed robbery, shootings, fraud, identity theft, money laundering and street-level distribution of cocaine, heroin and marijuana, the latter being their main source of income. Structure In the early years of the Almighty Vice Lord Nation, the three-top leadership positions consisted of a three-tiered structure, the seniors, the juniors and the midgets. Within the seniors there are ranking positions including the president (chief), the vice president, the war counsellor, the enforcers, and regular members. As the gang developed different branches, they incorporated the above-named rankings into each branch and some even created their own unique positions. Later on the gang established the group SCIA, which was founded to spy on the operations of other gangs. Furthermore they operate in factions, which are all considered legitimate. The current structure of the Almighty Vice Lord Nation Supreme Chief-King of Kings Prince of the Nation Minister of Justice Free and Accepted Almighty Minister Kings of the Nation Universal Elites Ambassadors Minister of Command Lieutenants Minister of Literature Symbols http://gangresearch.net/ChicagoGangs/SouthChicago/images/cvlsymb.jpg

Comets :: essays research papers

COMETS   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Comets have been witnessed ever since man has been speculating about objects in the nighttime sky and appear in records from the beginning of recorded civilization (Schweighauser 20).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Comets are made up of four distinct features. The first is the nucleus. The nucleus is made up of frozen gases, mostly water vapor with lesser amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and imbedded in the frozen gases are interplanetary dust and tiny fragments of stony and metallic meteoric material. Some comets, the larger ones, have a nucleus of 10 kilometers (Schweighauser 22). The second feature of comets is the coma. The coma is composed of atoms and molecules of gas that travels with the nucleus. The coma may be up to 100,000 kilometers in diameter. The third feature of a comet is the head. The head is just the name given to the coma and nucleus. The last of the features of the comet are the tails. Most comets have two tails. One tail is made from dust particles and the other, called ion tail, is made gases. As a comet approaches the sun, the frozen gas becomes unfrozen which causes the dust particles to become free. Light pressure from the sun and some other forces cause these materials to move away from the head of the comet and in the opposite direction from the sun. According to Charles A. Schweighauser in his book, entitled Astronomy from A to Z: A Dictionary of Celestial Objects and Ideas, he states that we see comet heads and tails because they not only reflect sunlight, but they also fluoresce—give off their own light—when comets are near the sun. The tails from the comet may be up to 150 million kilometers long each or together. Comets have a predictable orbit. There are one thousand comets that have been charted. Some comets go by the sun once and others, which are called periodic comets, pass the sun repeatedly following a predicable pattern. I have chosen a periodic comet called Tempel-Tuttle. Ernst Wilhelm Liebrecht Tempel and Horace Parnell Tuttle discovered this comet. This comet has been witnessed as early as 1366. The best apparition was that of 1366 when it passed 0.

History of Womens Football in England Essay

I have chosen to do my essay about the history of women’s football in England. I’ve chosen to write about this because it is a topic which I am interested in as I play for a girl’s football team inside school and out. Also I would like to find out more about women’s football and where and when it all started. In this essay you will find out about the basic history of women’s football heading all the way back from 1895 to present day. I will also write a comparison between men’s football and women’s and share my opinion about 1895-1920 On the 6th April 1895 the first ever women’s football game took place at Preston Park, Brighton. The event was organised to raise funds for local medical charities. In the match North beat South 7-1. Up to 1920 no more women’s matches took place until the first women’s international game when Dick Kerr’s English ladies took on the French Ladies. The result was a 2-0 victory to England; this game had a huge audience of 25,000 people. On Boxing Day 1920 a match took place between Preston and St Helens, Preston winning 4-0. It was the biggest crowd to date for a women’s match with 53,000 spectators. 1921 In 1921 another big match was supposed to take place between London and Paris. This match never went ahead due to the FA. The FA issued a ban against womens football. They stated ‘the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged’. This meant any women caught playing football on the grounds of an affiliated club would be punished for breaking the law. Many women were disgusted by the decision and thought it was very unfair to do this. If I was around in this time I would also be very aggravated by the decision and I would be offended that they still allow men to play. 1969-1971 After 48 years of womens football being banned women wanted to change this. They started to become very annoyed a started campaigning. After a few campaigns 44 women got together to form The Womens Football Association (WFA). They were hoping that they would slowly gain back the right to play womens football. Two years later in 1971 the FA council lifted the ban against women which allowed women to play football once again. It had been fifty years since they had been allowed to play so they knew that the game would be no longer as popular as it was and it would take a while to get it back to the way it was. Not long after the ban was lifted women were advertising for football teams all around the country. 1991-1994 Since 1971 womens football slowly grew bigger and bigger with many small local leagues playing all around the country. In 1991 the WFA launched a national league. It started off with 24 clubs from all around the country it was pretty similar to the womens league we have today. Two years later they found that the league had been very successful so the WFA decided to host a cup competition. In 1993 the WFA held a national cup competition with 137 teams entering from across the nation. Womens football was slowly becoming bigger and gaining popularity. In 1994 the FA took on the administration of the Womens Nation League and the League Cup competition. The league then became The FA Womens Premier League (FAWPL). 1997-1998 In 1997 the FA decided that they were going to develop womens football from the grassroots to the elite level. This meant that more young girls could get involved to gain popularity. In 1998 the first 20 Centres of Excellence were established for young girls. Sponsors were gained for the league and the cup competitions; this raised the profile of the women’s game. Also in 1998 Hope Powell was appointed as the first full-time coach for the England’s Women’s international side. This was a very big thing for the nation. I think this helped the game increase its popularity because it got more people involved in the game from an early age which meant in the future decade’s womens football should be a very popular game. 1999-2002 In 1999 England entered their first Fifa World Cup. The competition was held in the USA and which saw tickets sold out for most matches and over 90,000 at the Final. There had been a competition called the Women’s World Championship. This was just like a world cup and it was held in 1991 but England didn’t participate. In 2002 researchers found that football had become the top participated sport for girls and women of England. The FA had not planned for this to happen for another 3 years, so they were well ahead of schedule. 2005-Present In 2005 the UEFA Womens Championship was held in England. The opening matches attracted around 29,000 spectators per game, with around 2.9 million people watching the games live on BBC Two. The tournament was attended by over 115,000 fans within 15 matches. England went out in the group stages, but got a lot of recognition across the nation. Since then womens football has gradually become more popular and has reached the level it is at today. I think it has done well to regain its popularity after the fifty year ban, but I don’t think it will ever get back to the popular state which it was in before the game got banned. FA’s Plan for the Future of Women’s Football The FA has many plans to increase the growth of womens football. They are introducing it to younger people across the country by holding taster days and trials for many football clubs. Also the FA is trying to expand the womens football league into two different leagues just like the men’s. Here is an extract from the article the FA released ‘The Football Association is considering introducing a two-tier Women’s Super League (WSL) in 2014. The eight teams that took part in the inaugural WSL season, which ended in August with Arsenal winning the title, have been offered new licences. Sixteen teams had initially applied for membership in 2010, with Sunderland and Nottingham Forest missing out. An FA statement said: â€Å"Plans being discussed include exploring the introduction of a second tier in 2014.†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ I think this is a good idea because it will make the game become more popular across the co untry. Also with more leagues being introduced this means more spectators which will mean more money is being funded into the association. What I think of the Future of Women’s Football I think womens football has done very well to get back to where it is today due to the ban for fifty years. However, I don’t think that womens football will ever get to the stage like men’s because men’s football has had a lot more time to reach this popularity. Also there is a huge amount of money in the association and it would be practically impossible for women to get to that amount. I do think that womens football will grow bigger and younger girls will start to get involved. The only problem with this is it will take quite some time but they have to make up the time from the ban. Comparison When it comes to football men and women play the exact same game but one seems to be a lot more popular, the men’s. Men’s football was first found in 1314 which is nearly 700 years ago and womens football was first found in 1895 which is not even 120 years ago. Therefore there was 581 years between men and womens football. Somehow this has managed to affect the popularity in the game as it is very rare to find womens football on television when it is averaged that there is one male football match per week shown on television. If you wanted to be a professional footballer whatever sex you are you would get paid, but there is a significant amount of money difference between the genders. The average male Manchester City player would receive around  £86,280 per week plus bonuses and the average female Arsenal player would receive around  £3,000 per week that means that there is  £83280 different in the wages they receive each week. Opinion I think that womens football is different today than men’s because the FA banned it. I think if women were able to play football all the way through the 20th Century I think womens and men’s football would be similar in popularity and the wages. I also think that is very silly that the games are treated differently because they both play the same game, 90 minutes each week and the male are treated much better and receive the better pay when they both do the same job.

Importance of Internal Communications Essay

Importance of Internal Communications for a company and two case studies. Internal communications is considered a vital tool for connecting people within the company. It does not refer only to those few â€Å"official† channels of communication in a company, it is also the strategic management of information flows to ensure the optima level of employee engagement. (Civicus, 2001) This business context of communication is a dual listening process. It is a top-down, bottom-up, side-to-side communication harnessed as a means of delivering messages, listening to concerns and motivating staff. Maintaining a good internal communications within a company could reinforce the vision, values and culture among employees, who can then communicate it to internal and external audiences. Internal communications aims to ensure that employees in the company work together towards the same goal, know what they should be doing and by when. Internal communication has evolved various ways of communicating internally. Traditionally, it started off with informal and formal one-to-one and one-to-many meetings where usually the ‘the boss’ would communicate in a highly one-way fashion with employees. Lee, 2006) In this case the message is mostly communicated in one way, it does not include feedback from the message recipients. When print materials were introduced, it was then involved for formal, top-down transmission, for instance, company annual report. Internal communication then evolved to the digital era where Internet was highly used as a communication tool. When email was in troduced into the business settings and with it the nature of communication has radically changed. Lee, 2006) As the digital technology advances, internal communication has evolved to the point where not only can employees and employers freely email each other, forward messages without any editing (showing the whole conversational trail), and forward those messages outside of the corporate walls, but also employees and employers can use these emails to bring about grievance procedures, litigation and dismissal. (Lee, 2006) It is seen that internal communication has undergone deliberately change and will continue growing. Today’s internal communication practitioner is focused on challenging and stimulating employees, managing change and gaining employee engagement and commitment. (Chalmers, 2008) The aim has moved from controlling and directing people, through providing information, making announcements and supporting industrial relations, to supporting the development of a flexible work environment which adapts to change, seeks improvement, shares knowledge and know-how, generates ideas and involves people in achieving strategic goals. Chalmers, 2008) Most of the people understand the significance of internal communication but very few could manage it efficiently. Many people think that internal communication is one of the functions that they think they can do well. In fact, when it comes to real situation on handling employees, certain strategies and techniques are needed to communicate and tackle. In talking to many individuals at very different levels in very disparate sectors, what has come across as crucial is the need for internal communication to be championed at the very top of the organization and also for senior management and the boardroom to respect the expertise of the specialist tasked to deliver, be they internally or externally placed. Smith, 2008) A large number of studies by both professional management groups and professional communications bodies consistently find that ‘communicating with employees’ is a useful and powerful way of engendering greater ‘engagement’ – the propensity of the employee to want to come to work and want to contribute to the success of the company. (Lee, 2006) Gauri Deshmukh, head of HR at SAS India states that internal communication is important for a company as it provides information and encourages sharing by driving and supporting the organisation’s short-term and long-term goals and objectiv es. In addition, Deshmukh also mentions that with effective internal communications, it ensures that knowledge-sharing and communication processes are part of the daily workflow across all functions of the business. By having good internal communication, a company ensures that in between employers and employees they are constantly updated with information. In fact, a good internal communications not only affects organizational and operational success, but it has a considerable impact on external functions such as marketing, community and government relations, nd investor relations. (Brown, 2002) Internal communication is significant in any company because it is the building block of the organisational culture. (Civicus, 2001) Furthermore, internal communication is important so that employees become advocates for company. It is important to create a ‘common purpose’ across the company – creating the sense of a team where everyone feels ownership in their roles and in a chieving the company’s goals. (WK, 2010) In this way employees feel accepted and being part of the company. Likewise, internal communication is one of the key ‘intangible’ factors leading to high performance. (WK, 2010) For instance, if communication in a company is managed well employees are more confident and clear with the company mission and vision thus makes excellent financial as well as business. Not only that, having good internal communication helps build out company’s brand internally as employees are the best ambassadors, and internal perceptions should mirror what the company is telling the world. Trout, 2012) When the company is communicating effectively with its internal stakeholders, be it employees, management or volunteers, programmes and departments share more resources and information resulting in less duplication of work and stronger impact as a whole company. (Civicus, 2001) Without an effective internal communications, a company allows others to determine what information (or disinformation) is communicated to employees about their company. Brown, 2002) Smart employers realize that in environments where employees are able to move from one employer to another with relative ease, it is in the company’s best interests to retain the smarter and more productive employees; doing all they can to communicate with them, inform them, influence them and enter into some sort of psychological contract with them is a wise move. Lee, 2006) Besides, without effective internal communications, the crisis of confidence in businesses and corporate leadership could hurt sincere efforts to build a positive corporate culture and to enhance employee morale and productivity, and devastate the overall image of an organization. (Brown, 2002) Case Study I: Nokia is one of the top mobile phone manufacturer favoured by many people. In order to compete with other mobile phone manufacturer Nokia is constantly improvising and upgrading their gadgets to serve people needs these days. The reason Nokia has been so successful is no doubt its creation on mobile phones, as well as the strong team in the company that has made where it stands today. In a technologically savvy company like Nokia, it’s no surprise that they’ve been successfully implementing social media into their internal communications. (Kass, 2012) Nokia’s motto is connecting people and exploring ways to enhance communication. (Kass, 2012) In order to realize that vision, Nokia uses a number of different vehicles for two-way and push or pull communications; social media plays a big part with fitting into that strategy. Nokia’s Social Media Communications team was established in early 2008, aimed to improve inter-company communications and engaging employees. The objective of the team is to: encourage the use of social media internally to bring out the company’s unique authentic voice and to engage in social media externally on behalf of Nokia, and contributing to product and service announcements by opening up a dialogue and driving online engagement. (Kass, 2012) Nokia has 125,000 employees around the world. It is the company’s utmost important task to engage all employees in order to achieve company business goal. There are a few platforms in Nokia allowing employees from global to connect as if they work in a small company together. According to Molly Schonthal who worked on the company’s Social Media team in North America, the BlogHub is Nokia’s most powerful and effective social media tool that is used internally. It has been said that BlogHub lowers the barriers for employees to find conversations relevant to them. In terms of interaction, employees are allowed to communicate freely via BlogHub. They could make comment on posts, share ideas and knowledge on issues that have been mentioned. In addition, BlogHub serves as a useful search engine for employees to seek out information relevant to them. From a management point of view, through BlogHub feedback on various issues are gained quickly and track the conversations that are happening inside the company. Voting and ratings on posts are enabled as well for employees to be part of the decision team. Nokia has also introduced Nokia Conversations blog where latest Nokia product news would be posted. Through this blog employees could find a big overview of all the topics going on in Nokia. Similar to any other company that is engaged on social media, Nokia has its very own YouTube and Twitter account. Other than that, VideoHub has grown increasingly popular with employees allowing for postings to be updated on a daily basis. Besides, Nokia’s Infopedia wiki allows employees to share knowledge inside the company. If someone needs to quickly check a piece of information, Nokia’s effective internal communication channel, Instant Messaging (IM) is available for employees. It claims to remove the barrier of more formalized communication in between employees. For global company like Nokia, in order to save cost and time, Nokia has it’s own video conference channel where annual communication meetings and real time conversations could be held. Considering people do not check their mailboxes as much anymore Nokia has slowly cut down prints publications in an effort to become more environmentally aware. In fact Nokia in North America has completely eliminated print publications. Newsletters are now kept to an electronic HTML format, which is e-mail so it is more easily distributed. Similar to every other company Nokia uses intranet communications as well. It is the center of where people go to get information on benefits or organization charts. Furthermore, to reach more employees, Nokia regularly posts relevant company announcements on plasma screens around regional offices, usually in cafeterias and breakout rooms, with its promise on going environmental friendly. At North America, leadership also encourages employees to speak directly with their line managers to better understand organizational strategy and what role they can play in that strategy. For all of Nokia’s Web 2. 0 tools, Schonthal is quick to point out that â€Å"social media is never a replacement for high touch engagement. † (Kass, 2012) Instead, it can contribute to various company events and other in-person initiatives. â€Å"Social media complements these things but doesn’t take away from the ability to internally engage and share ideas,† she further explains. Nokia provides many platforms for employees to stay engaged, all for one clear identified goal – connect all the people in the company. For such global company I believe Nokia in different countries or branches could decide on which channel they prefer but I believe as a whole, all the employees in Nokia stay connected via BlogHub. After reviewing how Nokia strives to engage the employees I could see that the management team work hard on receiving feedback as well. They listen to their employees. They make changes. All these actions give employees feel accepted and belonged to the company. The end result is the employees are clear with the goals, mission and procedures of the company, which can result increase their work effort and efficiency and boost business. Case Study II: â€Å"We were driven to connect the organization with itself, and realized enterprise social networking was the solution. I can truly say after more than two years that we have achieved an official internal communications channel. Socialcast lifted the boundaries and made our organization transparent. We connect daily with people from India, China, the US, and Brazil. Without Socialcast it would not be possible,† says Dennis Agusi, Global Internal Communications Officer, Royal Philips Electronics. Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is a diversified health and well-being company, focused on improving people’s lives through timely innovations. As a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of â€Å"sense and simplicity†. Philips Case Study 2012) In 2010, Philips began to explore how the company should help its employees spread around the globe to feel engaged, work like a small team driven by shared goals. On the way of researching, the Corporate Communications and IT department discovered that approximately 1,600 employees were actively using a free tool they had found on the Internet to communicate and collab orate. Knowing two platforms for collaboration would not be a great idea so the team took initiative to introduce a new platform to these early users. These early users provided positive and valuable feedback and recommendations on how to improve the enterprise social experience the best it could be. Then it led to a successful launch of an enterprise social network. The company adopted â€Å"Connect Us† and the network was launched with wide support. On launch day, Connect Us had 400 members. Within two months, 7,000 employees had joined the community. Through Connect Us they allow employee-to-employee exchanges as well as management-to-employee communications. Employees are allowed to post freely, share knowledge to make work easier. Connect Us helps to remove barriers between departments as well. Through Socialcast Reach, employees are allowed to share information and data in between departments resulting a more seamless flow of work. In addition, a new idea can be communicated more broadly, increasing sense of connectedness and engagement across the company. From management perspective, through Connect Us, the Communications and IT team could monitor what’s happening in the company, check trending topics or people, at real time. According to report, Connect Us has enabled new and sometimes unexpected forms of employee engagement. All Employee Jam† was a crowdsourcing project designed to bring to life the company’s new, refreshed Mission and Vision statement through dialogue, discussion and debate. This exercise has successfully drawn employees who had not yet joined the social community into Connect Us. According to feedback, employees who participated in this exercise were found to be far m ore aware of and aligned with the Philips Mission and Vision than those employees who did not participate. This resulted Philips truly believes that enterprise social networks help companies increase employee engagement and retention. I liked the idea of how Philips tries to maintain the communication channel as one, which is Connect Us. I believe there are other platforms available for instance intranet but Connect Us is actively used by people in the company. From not knowing employees are using free online tool to communicate to introducing socialcast network, Philips has come a long way into realizing the importance of internal communication. The All Employee Jam has definitely demonstrated the power of enterprised social networking. It encouraged the employees to share knowledge, to stay connected which resulted in a greater identity with the company. In this two case studies, both companies Nokia and Philips selected appropriate channels for communication according to its needs. Nokia has different communication platforms serving different purposes. For instance, BlogHub allows employees to find information they need and Instant Messaging is a tool for quick and easy communication. On the other hand, Philips focus mainly on Connect Us, from searching information to accelerating ideas to sharing data it is all done on Connect Us. However, on my opinion, Nokia has too many platforms it might be tough to engage all the employees in one platform, as the users are free to choose which platforms they get information from. Whereas Philips uses Connect Us, most of the employees are part of the community and anything they need require can be found on Connect Us. I think this is one of the advantages of having a focused channel. Likewise, the tools and tactics, both companies chose to be focus more on information technology. In terms of interactivity, both companies engage their employees as well as welcoming their feedbacks. The employees are encouraged to utilise these channels to feel more accepted and being part of the company. For instance, Philips Connect Us not only allows employees-to-employees exchange, as well as management-to-employees communication. In this case it removes barriers between management and employees so work can be done easier. As for Nokia, feedbacks are valued through voting and ratings on posts and comments, allowing management to understand the employees better. Besides, both case studies reviewed the importance of evaluation on internal communication. In order to improve, the management team has to constantly measure the effectiveness of the communication tools and find ways to improve. Nokia and Philips monitor their employees through these platforms to find out what is really happening in the company. This way they could make sure the employees are on par with company’s goals. In conclusion, internal communication has never been so important. Many people know what internal communication is and they think they know how to function this but they might not know the true meaning behind it. Effective internal communication does not mean to have a lot of communication platforms, spending big budget on this function but utilizing the appropriate communication tool for employees get involved. If you want to build brand for your company first you have to build your brand internally. After all employees are the representatives of your company, they are the brand. Internal communication comes a long way to build, it might need more time and effort to achieve the effective result as desired but the end result is always proven satisfaction, that I am sure. A combination of strong communication, teamwork and camaraderie framed within trusting relationships will help achieve remarkable results in times of large-scale change and uncertainty, writes University of Nottingham chief executive Peter Homa. And finally, in my own words, you can’t communicate with your audience until your internal message is crystal clear.