Business Communication Trends Paper Derek Phillips COM/285 27 March 12 Stella Kalfas

“Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.” Jim Rohn
This quote is a great example of how business communication works. Business communication comes in all forms, but it isn’t all about what you know. Some forms of business communication or verbal, and non verbal. Business communication plays a great role in my day to day activities at work. My job as a military liaison is to travel throughout the Midwest and speak to military service members about their educational goals. In addition to that, I call and follow up with all of the service members who request more information about their specific situations. Business communication is the biggest part of my day to day activities at work. Business communication helps me manage my daily work activities because business communication can consist of phone calls, emails, and verbal communication. My professional email account helps me manage verbal conversations that I had with someone. In my position I speak with hundreds of people a week and I ask a lot of them to email me. This allows me to have a record of our conversation and to properly follow up with them if needed. On the other hand, I have a lot of phone conversations with people and this allows me to manage a lot of business contacts on a daily basis. In my current workplace I have seen several trends. Technology is one of the trends that have affected my workplace very much. With the new addition of online learning, working in the educational field has completely changed. New technological advances have allowed students to attend college and take various learning programs from virtually anywhere. Working as a military liaison my company has provided me with a cell phone, a laptop, and an Ipad. This allows me to work remotely from the company headquarters. Data security versus privacy is a very real situation for me in my workplace. Working in the education field I am obligated to follow FERPA laws (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) so all of my technological devices that I used must be protected. All of my equipment is monitored, and I have a great responsibility to the service member’s information that I collect. Focus on Quality and Customers’ Needs; this trend is especially significant to my workplace because poor quality customer service can cause my division to lose its budget. My workplace has put a heavy importance on customer needs, and quality. One of the new practices by my company is to collect ideas from its workers to foster innovation to improve quality. Since technology is one of the trends that has most affected my workplace, the message types that have resulted from this trend are; Social media messages (Facebook, Twitter), Service members can communicate with their classmates from anywhere using the internet using internal message boards (student portals), and technology has allowed me to communicate with my managers through email, and telephone conversations. Data security versus privacy is another business trend that is being followed by my workplace. The messages trends that arise from this practice are all encrypted email messages to protect student information from being leaked to the public. Focus on quality and customers’ needs is the final business trend that my workplace has been following and the message trend that comes from this practice is, recorded telephone conversations, and quality assurance emails that are sent to students. All of these message trends are examples of the different types of messages that a business can produce. The message trends vary depending on the company and what business trends they follow. In conclusion, Business communication plays a great role in my day to day activities at work. It is 80 percent of my job, and is vital to me having a successful business. Business communication helps me manage my daily work activities because business communication can consist of phone calls, emails, and verbal communication. In my current workplace I have seen several business trends technology, data security versus privacy, and a focus on quality and customers’ needs. In addition to the business trends, the messages they have resulted from those trends vary from telephone calls, to encrypted emails.