Barriers to Effective Interpersonal Communication in Retail

Abstract

Communication is an inseparable part of our daily lives. Interper­sonal communication appears between two and more people and consists not only of verbal communication by using words and consciously talking to others but also consciously or unconsciously by using non-verbal commu­nication such as gestures, body movement and posture, facial expressions, haptics (touch), eye contact, proxemics (physical distance), paralanguage, etc. In verbal and non-verbal communication enter some issues that can cause misunderstandings in the communication process. People communi­cate everywhere and anytime, therefore it is natural that some difficulties and problems occur in interpersonal communication and are encountered in the workplace. There are different types of communication in the work­place, but this paper focuses mainly on interpersonal communication be­tween managers and their team members. The way how they communicate influences the output of the entire communication process and has direct or side effects on performance, work environment, company goals and simi­lar. The main goal of this paper is the identification of barriers to effective interpersonal communication in a selected branch of an international re­tail organization in Germany. Based on the research, it is possible to identify the barriers to the effective communication process between managers and their team members. Of a total of 187 employees working at this branch, 48 employees participated in this survey. This paper provides results from con­ducted research where some positive aspects and barriers were explored as well. Among positive results are that the employees do not afraid to address the company’s management directly, employees are not interrupted while speaking, do not get the information they do not understand, the manag­ers do not use the terms their employees do not understand, employees are not often overwhelmed with the information, not facing a misunderstand­ing from manager’s side. On the other hand, the organization may support more communication between departments and provide more informa­tion to employees to feel well informed. This paper correlates with other re­search conducted in this field by different researchers in different countries and adds the missing barriers or confirmed already often occurring barriers to effective interpersonal communication.