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Institutions Of Higher Education Are Facing Unprecedented

Decent Essays

Institutions of higher education are facing unprecedented times of financial uncertainty, political upheaval, public scrutiny, and in some cases, racial unrest. Such drastic times calls for university leaders to use all available communication tools to deliver bad news in the most positive way. The most common, but not most effective, method to deliver such news is the bad news sandwich approach. This process involves the use of a prefatory buffer, the bad news, an explanation, and a closing buffer. People now demand more information and take into the account the legitimacy of the person delivering the message. The message of bad news must have a sense of hope and optimism, or the human factor, to be received in a positive light. For …show more content…

The other 480 or so employees of DoIT are divided into teams reporting to managers and team leads. Decisions and communications start at the most appropriate level and are passed through reporting channels to ‘those who need to know.’
Part II: Synopsis of organizational challenges Such a large organization leads to many organizational cultural challenges. One example is onboarding of new employees. It is vital to integrate someone on his first day to the culture, values, polices, and politics of the organization (Kinicki & Fugate, 2016, p. 65). This integration into the culture helps build trust and partnership with the organization. Without this, the new hire is unware of the cultural norms and is unable to decipher the true meaning of communications such as email and even the policy manual. The larger issue facing DoIT is effective communication, especially with bad news. As we are faced with unprecedented budget cuts, record low student enrollment, and uncertain local and national political landscapes, employees are constantly being bombarded with bad news. DoIT leadership attempts to spin, or create a positive image, when presenting bad news, but this is frequently met with skepticism as DoIT leadership has lost credibility in light of past decisions. As an example, unlike private institutions, public university salaries are public information and annually published. While many employees have not had raises

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