Table of Contents

Introduction 2 Scope of the report: 2 Limitation: 3 Organizational overview: 3 Mission 4 Vision 4 Hypothesis: 4 Literature Review 5 Mythology 6 The primary research: 6 The secondary data: 6 Data Analysis 6 Findings 12 Recommendation 13 Conclusion 13 Appendix 15 Reference 15 Survey Questionnaire 15

Introduction

For construction sector bricks are considered the main raw material. . In a developing country like Bangladesh, brick fields are playing the most important role for construction business. By determining the importance of construction and the future growth, Saver auto brick started its journey in 1989. It is located in Joina Bari, Savar, Dhaka. Since Saver Auto Brick is operating business for a long period of time, SAVER AUTO BRICK have a very good reputation in the sector of manufacturing bricks. SAVER AUTO BRICK is the second company using automatic brick manufacturing technology to produce high quality bricks. It is more eco friendly. Using both the manual and automatic process, they have the capacity of producing around 40 million bricks in a year. The company produces two different types of bricks with two different types of machines. As the brick fields are not that much good for environment, SAVER AUTO BRICK is very much concerned about the wastage of soil and the safety of its labor.

Communication problem is very common in this type of production factory. After we did our research, we came across a lot of communication problem in this company. They also mentioned that not only Savar Auto Bricks faces this sort of problem but also all the brick manufacturing companies come across the same type of communication problem.
Scope of the report: This paper adopts both the descriptive and explanatory survey design. As a result, while the paper seeks the answer for communication problems of saver brick field; it does not ignore the explanation of the importance of proper communication and their effects on saver brick field performance. The respondents of the survey of this research paper comprise maximum number of worker from saver brick field. But, only the opinion of fifteen labor of saver brick field might not reflect the whole perception of others. So, the accuracy of conclusion might not be 100 % correct. If the data of more participants could be collected, the accuracy would be more significant. Given that, most of the items in the questionnaire were targeted to measure the major problem, perceptions and effects. Hence, liker-type scale is considered more appropriate and reliable. The combination of both descriptive and inferential statistics were used as methods of data analysis. Descriptive statistics provides a method of reducing large data into manageable summaries to permit easy understanding and interpretation.
Limitation:
This research paper was completed with the best help of the employees of SAVER AUTO BRICK, Saver. However, its formation encountered several difficulties mentioned below- * Taking interview so small number of employee: SAVER AUTO BRICK is operated by hundred employees and labors. So it was too difficult for us to take interview of all of them. As a result, we focused on 20 labor for our survey. * Primary research was conducted in a very short time: As it is already mentioned that the Saver Auto Brick is situated in Saver, therefore it was hard to manage time to go there and sit for a formal conversation with the manager, make him understand our purpose of the survey. * Negligence of the employees: Most of the employees were busy and uncomfortable. For that they could not help us properly. Even, sometimes they answered without listening the questions properly. * Does not cover other areas of Communication: The research featured only the thoughts of the employees. But it is also important to know customer’s view-point to measure the efficiency of the firm. * Not generic picture: Based upon the above limitations, it has to be noted that the research featured only a specific brick field and does not give an overall picture of all the brick fields in the country.

Organizational overview:
“Saver Auto Brick” is one of the established companies in the brick field industries in Savar. It was established in 1989. It is located in Joina Bari, Savar, Dhaka. The owner of the company, Mr. Baidhya Nath Saha, started this business with a small traditional brick manufacturing company. It is producing high quality bricks of multi quality sizes and several categories. They have 100 labors working in their brick field in different sectors. They manufacture two different types of bricks.
Types of Bricks: 1. Auto Bricks from Full Auto machine which cost 8 taka per piece. 2. Semi Auto machine which cost 7 taka per piece.
Mission
Savar bricks mission is to install auto burning process for burning bricks so that they can save time as well as the expense. The traditional process of burning bricks needs a lot of time and a lot of labor so they are installing this new machine in the next month so that they can have more production and have less expense. And they have also appointed a chines employee to operate the old as well as new machine so that there is no problem operating the machine which they use to face previously. They are also constructing a new brick field in Manigonj as the resources out there is very cheap. And recent time customers prefer to have brick from Manigonj as they have a bigger size brick then the bricks ordinary one. So the brick factory already started working but the semi auto machine is not been installed till now.
Vision
Savar bricks have a plan to extend their business in different location so that they have less transport cost and more customers. They are planning to start a real estate business so that they can use there bricks and reduce cost for making the buildings etc. They are also planning to install a cement factory as this all related products can help them to achieve their goal of opening Real Estate Company.
Hypothesis:
Despite the growth in construction industry it is facing numerous new challenges due to external an internal factors in its business environment which affect its organizational performance. The external factors include stiff competition from peers & uncertainties. Besides the external factors, brick field organizations have to deal with internal challenges which are related to field labor management. This internal factor may contribute to their poor performance in terms of low level of product quality.
Brick field organization performance is affected by many factors such as from competition, communication, customer, transportation, environment or social factors .Among them communication problem can be a great challenge for a brick field organization.
Literature Review
Zalabak in 1999, mentioned that the study of organizational communication focuses on processes of interaction means by which people obtain information, form opinions, make decisions, merge into the organization, leave the organization and create rapport with one another. Through communication, people coordinate their actions to achieve individual and organizational goals. (Shockley-Zalabak, 1999).
In layman’s terms, communication is the interchange of information between two or more persons. However, Farace, Monge and Russell (1977) said that communication is the exchange of symbols that are commonly shared by the individuals involved. Organizational communication grows better by that process.
Communication acts as the basis for control and coordination in organizations; it provides information which is important to achieve the organizational goals, by (Poole, 1978)

(Shockley Zalabak, 1999) said that Organizational communication is “both similar to and distinct from other types of communication”. It is a process by which organization itself is created and shape its events. It is more than the daily interactions of individuals within organizations.

An article from chron by Leigh Richards, Demand Media mentioned that Business communications are critical and there are various ways it can get blocked. They said that the larger the organization the more complex they are but basic principal of communication applies to all business. Some common business communication barriers include not fully understanding the needs of the target audience, using the wrong communication channel, and not checking to ensure that messages have been received and clearly understood.
A report By Sultana, N., Abdullah, A. M., & Tabassum, A. which got accepted by “The Authors” published that, In Bangladesh many banks and companies faces three types of communication barriers; personal barriers, job barriers, and organizational barriers. Among these barriers, personal barriers are the most significant barriers according to the respondents of the study. Personal barriers include lack of English knowledge, local tone, opposite sex and hot temper. The second most important barriers are job barriers that include technical words, personal life and job monotony. The third most important barriers are organizational barriers which includedefective technology and internal politics.
Mythology
The primary research:
We went to SAVER AUTO BRICK office and collected information by taking interview of twenty (20) of their employees. Due to some personal contact, we managed to set up a meeting with the managing director. However he had an urgent meeting to attend therefore he sent his manager Shuvod Das and Prodip Kumar Shaha to give us the interview. We took their interview and collected the primary information that we needed. Our interview consisted some of the questions below (See appendix for full questionnaire)

We noted the answers that we got from him and asked the same questions to other workers. It helped us a lot to understand the idea about the whole organizational communication process in Saver Auto Brick. We also did a survey questionnaire regarding our topic.
The secondary data:
As for secondary data, we took information from articles about communication barrier from different websites, and followed the text book ‘Lesikar’s Business Communication’, thirteenth edition We made charts and bar graphs of the survey questions to do our analysis. The primary and secondary data were backed based on those data analysis.
Data Analysis
We have taken survey of 18 people in total. Out of that 12 were men and the rest 6 were women. Out of them, 8 people are aged between 20-30 years, 7 are aged between 31-40 years and 3 people are aged over 40 years. They all think that the way they communicate is effective. They often have a monthly meeting with the managers and directors. But if any problem arises, special meetings are arranged to eradicate the problem.

1) What do you prefer as your communication approach from your workers?
☐ Formal
☐ Semi-formal
☐ Informal
From the above figures, out of 18 respondents, 2 people likes formal communication approach (11.11%), 7 of the respondents likes semi-formal communication approach (38.89%) and 9 employees prefer informal communication approach(50%).

2) What is the most common communication methods used in the company?
(E.g., Email, memo, etc.)
7 out of 18 respondents (38.89%) said that common way to communicate with other employees is through Memo while the rest replied that they prefer Face to Face communication (11 people, 61.11%).

3) Are you satisfied with the communication method used by your company?
☐Very satisfied
☐ Satisfied
☐ Neutral
☐ Dissatisfied

When they were asked about their satisfaction about the communication method used by the company, 1 (5.56%) of them said he was satisfied with that. 6 (33.33%) of the 18 people had a neutral feeling about their satisfaction level. They were neither dissatisfied, nor satisfied with the communication methods used by the company. The rest of the 11 (61.11%) people said that they were dissatisfied with the communication method. Neither of them were very much satisfied with the communication method used by Saver Auto Brick.
4) How good is your managers’ communication skills?
☐Excellent ☐Very good ☐Good ☐Neutral ☐Poor

They were asked about the communication skills of the managers. In reply, none of the 18 respondents said the managers had an excellent or very good communication skills. 2 (11.11%) of them replied that the managers’ communication skills were good. 5 (27.78%) people had a neutral view regarding this opinion as they were not sure what to answer. A higher percentage of people, 11 (61.11%) of the total 18 had an opinion that the managers’ communication skills were poor. This reflects the dissatisfaction of the employees upon the managers. This also shows that there remains a communication gap between the managers’ and the employees.
5) Due to the presence of inactive partners, do you think the company is facing problems operating?
☐ Yes ☐ No

Due to the presence of inactive partners, 5 (27.78%) persons think that the company is facing problems operating. The other 13 (72.22%) people thinks that this is not a valid reason for the problems faced while operating in Saver Auto brick.
6) Do you think gender is an issue of communication barrier?
☐ Yes ☐ No
We know sometimes gender becomes a huge barrier for communication within a company. There are people who neglects while communicating with the opposite gender because of shyness, discrimination, etc. When the survey respondents were asked if they think that gender is an issue of communication barrier, all of them responded negatively. None of them thinks that it is a problem. In that case, the managers and employees of Saver Auto Brick might not have a discrimination factor towards the opposite gender. This is really good because it is a big problem in a developing country like Bangladesh where women are discriminated everywhere.
7) Do you think seniority is a factor of communication barrier?
☐ Yes ☐ No

More than half of the people who were surveyed agreed with this statement. This suggests an existence of power distance in the organization. 11 (61.11%) people agreed to this ensuring that seniority is an important issue in creating a communication barrier. Other 7 respondent (38.89%) disagreed to this statement. Out of the 18 person, 2 were managers and both of them disagreed with the statement which shows that there is a difference in the thinking between the managers and the labors.
8) On a scale of 1-10, how clear and understandable are the information/commands you receive from your higher officials? (10 being the highest)
The last question to them was on a scale of 1-10, how clear and understandable the information/commands were that were received from your higher officials (10 being the highest). 3 (16.67%) people graded 2, 2 (11.11%) of them scaled 4, 7 (38.89%) persons gave 5, 3 (16.67%) of the surveyors ticked 6, 1 (5.56%) of them gave an 8 and the remaining 2 (11.11%) respondents scaled 9.
Findings
Based on our analysis, we got to find out over 70% of the employees prefer informal communication approach whereas the formal communication approach is prefered by only few employees. This shows that the organizational culture is not very strong. Because informal communication creates a grapevine communication, therefore the communication chain is disrupted. The most common method/tool of communication used in the company is verbal face to face communication (70%). Although more than 50% of the employees are satisfied with this method, 18% of the employees also feel neutral towards their level of satisfaction. As we spoke with some of them and asked them about it, they answered that they prefer face to face communication. The reason behind their answer was, they find it easier and understandable while exchanging messages. This however, is problematic as there is no written record and information might get hindered. Although Formal Communication practice is good but to deal with the labor from different location of this country where the labors are not educated, it is not possible to practice the formal way of communication, the low preference for formal communication also proved that employees are not comfortable with each other. Alongside, manager’s communication skills are also above average (75%) which falls under ‘Very Good’ category. However, some also shared neutral opinion towards it and when they were asked about the clarity of their commands, most of them shared positive opinion. This might also prove that face to face communication might be a good idea after all considering some employees might find their employer’s words easy to understand.

We asked them about the effect of inactive partner’s in the organization and 80% of them replied that the effect exist and they are facing problems operating while the rest replied with a ‘Yes’. They think the partners should be more active and their presence are important for the company’s success. Gender is also not an issue for them in creating communication barrier (90%) although some are hesitant (10%). As their environment is very much formal, 85% of the employees answered that seniority is not a problem amongst them while communicating.
Therefore according to the information above, we can assume that SAVER AUTO BRICK has an informal organizational culture and this informal culture might be a reason for employee turnovers.
However, if the employees at least have the same goal (example - help the company to grow and progress) like their Directors and Managers, this will create a dynamic and forward thinking workforce which will assist the management in forming plans for the future. And if the employees are self-centered and individual, this might lead to conflicts amongst themselves and the management. For a company to progress it is important that the culture is built strong and building it stronger will always lead to a positive outcome.
Recommendation
1. Developing a chain of command is very necessary * This will ease the gap where some employees do feel intimidated to communicate. 2. Having regular meeting may decrease the communication gap * This will not only help the employees to get to know each other better, but also help them understand the information more. 3. Using on different communication methods * The main method of communication system is through face to face.
Conclusion
Saver Auto bricks is one of the successful brick manufacturer. Though it has a lot of communication difficulties but then again to operate is suck kind of firm, it is more important to deal with the labor because the labors are not fixed employees. The workers are haired in yearly basis and they paid around 90% of their payment before they join. So if the workers are not satisfied with the agreement or the working conditions, then there is a possibility that they will not join where they already get paid. So it is very much difficult to make them understand what kind of output the firm expecting from them. Also because they belong from different location of the country, the hiring people should make them understand in their way. As it is a result of a small survey, we cannot guaranty that there is no other problems in this industry. A long research may come up with different factors.

Appendix
Reference
Lesikar’s Busines Communication, Kathroin Rente, 13ed.
Interview from Prodip Kumar Saha, Manager, Savar Auto Brick.

Survey Questionnaire
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This is a study of the business communication barrier of Saver auto brick. The participation of people is voluntary and letting them know that their data are anonymous and confidential.

1. Gender
☐Male ☐female

2. Age:
☐ 20-30 years
☐ 31-40 years
☐ 41 years and above

3. What do you prefer as your communication approach from your workers?
☐ Formal
☐ Semi-formal
☐ Informal

| 4. What is the most common communication methods used in the company?
(E.g., Email, memo, etc.)

5. Do you think they are effective?
☐ yes |
☐ no if not, what are the problems you are facing?

6. Are you satisfied with the communication method used by your company?
☐ Very satisfied
☐ Satisfied
☐ Neutral
☐ Dissatisfied

7. How often do you have meeting with your managers and directors?
☐ daily
☐ weekly
☐ monthly
☐ yearly

8. How good is your managers’ communication skills?
☐excellent ☐very good ☐good ☐neutral ☐poor

9. Due to the presence of inactive partners, do you think the company is facing problems operating?
☐ Yes ☐ No

10. Do you think gender is an issue of communication barrier?
☐ Yes ☐ No

11. Do you think seniority is a factor of communication barrier?
☐ Yes ☐ No

12. On a scale of 1-10, how clear and understandable are the information/commands you receive from your higher officials? (10 being the highest) 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | | | | | | | | | | |

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Thank you