From the foregoing it will be apparent that the communicating manager cannot rely

From the foregoing it will be apparent that the communicating manager cannot rely upop

the simple belief that factual communication will be instantly accepted by the receiver.

The concept of matching the communication with the intended audience has had

considerable ‘lip service’ paid to it in industry, but many company magazine failures

have been credited to such mismatches. Colby and Tiffin describe one in which they

measured the reading ability of iridustrial supervisors and related this to their age and

educational level, while others have

delineated the interests of vaIious target audiences. This type of research is providing a

base from which communicators, obtaining average details on age, education, interests,

etc., from personnel records, can make more scientific attempts to structure their

communication acts especially when communicating to large groups of employees. In

general, however, company magazines and bulletins leave much to be desired. In an

analysis of 69 articles selected at random from 13 representative employee papers,

over half (37) were on a readability level of difficult to ‘very difficult’-levels which are

above the capacity of 67-95 per cent of the adult population. In a similar study a survey

of 25 management and 25 union publications for employees showed that, on average,

they were pitched at a level of understanding for employees with high school or college

education. In terms of human interest, the majority of both company magazines and

union newspapers were only ‘mildly interesting’ or even ‘dull’. The authors conclude that

both management and union editors alike need to work strenuously towards language

simplification. Recent studies indicate that this advice has yet to be taken in Britain.