By Dana P Skopal, PhD

The terms soft skills and communication can mean different things to different people, particularly in the workplace. The two concepts are set as abstract nouns, which means a reader/ listener creates their individual understanding of the term.

A colleague recently said, ‘communicate or disintegrate’. If workers, especially managers, do not communicate clearly, then it is questionable how well staff can complete their tasks.

Good communication is considered essential for any business to operate effectively. So how can we define or measure the key soft skills relating to communication in the workplace?

An employee with good communication skills would relate better to clients and co-workers, and these inter-relational skills can drive business outcomes. Further, research showed that ‘increasing the quality of communication’ between team members led to greater efficiency (Lam, 2015). Business outcomes can be measured by income generated, while good team work is evident through project completions.

Good communication skills would mean clear effective speaking and writing, and also listening (in addition to all the reading one has to do for work). The other side of the speaking and writing process would be to measure the comprehension of the message by the final user. Clear writing and usability of the message has been our focus area of research. Organisations can run writing training workshops and initiate usability testing of key documents, which then become measures of good communication.

Focusing on writing in the workplace, any writing training  needs to cover organisation of ideas as well as sentence structure. Our research (Skopal & Herke, 2017) showed that readers responded positively when the written text comprised of:

• clearer Themes and Rhemes (relating to coherence)
• macro-structural signposting (a document’s global information organisation)
• multi-modal design features, such as use of bold text.

The lexico-grammatical features favoured by the readers were:

• an average sentence length of 20 words or less
• shorter nominal groups (describing the what, who, where)
• a low ratio of embedded clauses/phrases per sentence
• the use of personal pronouns to refer to the organisation.

All these elements can be taught at university and through workplace training, as writers are more motivated to re-write/ edit their texts when writing in their discipline (area of expertise) and understanding the purpose of their document.

Lam, C. (2015). The role of Communication and Cohesion in Reducing Social Loafing in Group Projects. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 78 (4), 454-475.

Skopal, D. P. & Herke, M. (2017). Public discourse syndrome: reformulating for clarity. Text & Talk, 37 (1), 141–164,  doi: 10.1515/text-2016-0041.

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