Imparting Information and Influencing Behaviour: An Examination of Staff Briefing Sessions

Abstract

I might as well be talking to myself," managers might say if they felt no one was listening. Based on our research in nine stores of a major United Kingdom electronics retail chain, no one is listening to staff briefings.These managers recognised the powerful motivational and communication potential of face-to-face oral briefings. But our research showed that the potential impact was dissipated Managers were not trained to give briefings or appraised on their briefings skills. Perhaps in consequence, they prepared themselves indifferently for daily sessions and made little use of techniques known to affect attentiveness and recall.In consequence, the daily communication session appeared to have little impact on motivation or behavior. This lack would indicate a major opportunity for communication professionals to help managers communicate more effectively.Face to-face communication between managers and staff has been widely commended as beneficial in organisations. Indeed, the evidence shows that managers spend a good deal of their time in face-to-face exchange as part of their role and that the proportion of time spent in this way increases with seniority (Adler & Rodman, 1991;Mintzberg, 1973). The role of the daily staff briefing session has been much celebrated in the literature which focuses on Japanese-style management. The team briefing is seen as an important vehicle for imbuing the philosophy of quality, central to organisational strategy. In a commentary on the Japanese approach, Wickens observed, &dquo;If there is one aspect to be singled out as important in team building and commitment it is the five minute meeting at the start of the day&dquo; (1987, p. 85).Whilst organisational communication generally and superior-subordinate communication specifically has received considerable attention, few studies exist of staff briefing sessions or similar types of meetings. We know relatively little about how staff briefings are used in organisations and the extent to which they can influence employee behaviour. This paper attempts to bridge part of that gap by reporting a case study of briefing sessions. Data were collected in nine stores owned by a large, retail chain based in the United Kingdom, where company policy required managers to start the day's business by conducting a staff briefing session. This paper will show how the briefings were used and the effect they had on employee behaviour. By the term &dquo;staff briefing session&dquo; we are referring to short, regular meetings which take place between managers and groups of staff in the at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on August 10, 2015 job.sagepub.com Downloaded from 262 workplace. These meetings usually take place at the start of each working day. They can be used to achieve two main purposes. First, they impart information on practices, procedures, targets, expected behaviours, and organisational rules (Daft, 1995). Second, they evoke behavioural responses from employees, for example, increasing motivation and commitment, or reinforcing a team spirit. Bri...

Team briefing and workers commitment in Nigerian banking industry

“…This finding from our study clearly shows that team briefing is an important form of employee voice and it helps to increase workers' affective, continuance and normative commitment in the organization. This finding supports other research works (Rogers et al, 1998;Gamble and Kelliher, 1999).…”

“…Therefore workers exhibit emotional attachment and identification with the organization. This may be as a result of team briefing allowing employees and managers to have a face to face discussion, which encourages employees to feel like part of a team, thereby improving employee's performance, teambuilding, commitment and employee relations (Oliver and Tonks, 1998;Gamble and Kelliher, 1999). As information is passed regularly to all employees through interlinked team meetings, workers are able to pass on their suggestions to top management and made to feel that they are important in the organization and they contribute to the decision making mechanism in their firms.…”

“…The importance of team briefing has been highlighted in several studies: Jo and Shim (2005) (Oliver and Tonks, 1998;Gamble and Kelliher, 1999). Augustine (2011) posits that at times of major changes or crisis in an organisation team briefing is a useful channel for passing urgent messages throughout the organisation at short notice.…”

“…In their research of an electronic retail chain in the United Kingdom, Gamble and Kelliher (1999) reported that managers were not trained, appraised or given feedback on the way to conducting team briefings. The organisation did not create a formal mechanism to monitor team briefings nor to make them successful.…”

The role of affective expectations in memory for a service encounter

“…However, if a service worker has positive AEs of the service experience, expectation assimilation may moderate any emotional dissonance. Staff briefing sessions (Gamble and Kelliher, 1999) could therefore be used to reinforce the positive emotions that the service staff will feel as a result of their service provision.…”