Characteristics of Electronic Communications

Question

What are the Characteristics of Electronic Communications? Explain briefly.

Answer 1

Characteristics of Electronic Communications:

Medium: Usage of the best-suited tool for communicating the message is very essential. E-mail, for instant, is the most commonly used electronic method to convey same information to a large number of people because it’s inexpensive, handy and very convenient. On the other hand, it cannot be considered the most effective electronic mode of communication when issue relating to a specific employee needs to be addressed, for example, if he/she needs to be informed about his/her promotion. Similarly, blogs can be considered a very healthy mode of marketing products or services.

Clarity: For effective electronic communication, the message needs to hold clarity in its meaning and content. For e-mail, clarity in message begins with the subject line of the e-mail. For proper communication, the subject line of the e-mail needs to be unambiguous and define crisply the issue. For example, if the Human resource department needs to inform its employees regarding a celebration or sports activities organized by the company, it can go for subject-line as in “Upcoming Cricket Match at CCFC”. Moreover, breaking the message into small paragraphs helps the message reach its viewers appropriately and also sink in better.

Time: The best feature of electronic communication is its farther reach in a short span of time. In an organizational set-up, if a team leader needs to call an emergency meeting involving the virtual teams, it could be easily done through sending an e-mail or texting his/her team members. Moreover, he/she can again use video conferencing as a en electronic communication tool to carry out the meeting. Similarly, if the human resource manager needs to interview a prospective employee while travelling, he/she could do that through a telephonic conversation or these days more popularly through video-calls.

Storage: With the arrival of electronic communications, the time for which messages exchanged with colleagues of the same department or in different departments could be stored for longer periods of time. For instance, these days the human resource department can email pay slips at the end of each month to its employees rather than handing them hard copies over. These pay-slips can be stored for a longer time in electronic form.