Mariela Tinajero
MBA 6170
Professor Edwards
Corporate Communication Analysis
In this document I will analyze the company for which I currently work RedGear
Technologies. I will discuss the responses of the individual interviews I conducted. These
interviews include Lynn Tenny, who is the director of marketing and communications, and
Celma Flores, who works closely with corporate communications functions. In effect I will also
analyze the written documentation in the company, which includes brochures, newsletters, and
articles. Other observations I will make will be associated with the company’s website, social
media use, identity marks, and internal communications. An explanation through an
organizational chart will be given to explain corporate communication functions in the
organization. Along with this I will communicate on how corporate duties are carried out and
which functions of corporate communications are outsourced and who does them. Crisis
situations will also be examined in order to access the company’s ability to handle such a
situation. Interaction with media will be examined in depth in order to discover the type of
stories currently exposed to the media. From this complete evaluation of RedGear Technologies I
will explain the company’s strengths and weaknesses. Lastly, I will state some recommendations
I would make to RedGear Technologies in order to improve their corporate communication.
Lynn Tenny is the director of marketing and communications. In my interview with Lynn
Tenny I asked her several questions. My main question dealt with why the company
communicates the way it does. I wanted to know why we were not more involved in social
media. Her response was “manpower.” She stated that we currently do not have enough people
in the company to be active in social media, and therefore we would not be very effective in this
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media. However, she did state they plan on having more employees that will work in social
media. I also asked her about the blog on our site and why the comments were turned off. The
company decided to turn off comments because they were receiving a lot of spam and decided
that forums were more appropriate for posting comments and other types of questions. Another
question I had was what kinds of things has the communication department done for the
company. They send email to customers and employees, write the software manuals, help write
up the website, make training videos, make instructions, make call scripts, and proofread many
documents. In effect they do many things for the company. The last question I asked her dealt
with the way corporate communication fits in the organization. Below is a quick chart of what
she helped me develop. It’s a very simple chart:
President
Department
Heads
Sales
Communications
Technical
Support
Development
Marketing
According to the above chart, the president or the head of the company is whom everyone
reports to. However, not all employees actually report to the head. The department heads are the
people who communicate with the president, and this department head will then communicate
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with the employees in their department. Some of the departments include technical support,
development, communications, marketing, and sales. Therefore, guidance trickles down from the
president, to the department heads, and then to employees with whom the department heads
supervise.
Celma Flores is one of my coworkers and is by no means one of the department heads. I
interviewed Celma Flores because she works closely with communications. We both work for
technical support, but for Celma that's another matter. When we were first hired to work at
RedGear Technologies, our interviewer was pregnant and was having a hard pregnancy. As a
result she was confined to bed rest. It is also important to factor in that the company had been
expanding in the Spanish community and many more Spanish workers were needed for the
growing demand. Given this growing demand for Spanish speaking individuals and that Celma
was a native Spanish speaker, she was asked to do Spanish hiring interviews for the company.
She was also asked to translate information from the website into Spanish since the company that
usually did the translations for RedGear Technologies were no longer available. In effect, Celma
would translate in her own words what the corporate website said. However, with any language,
words are free to interpretation and she was burdened with how things would sound or be
interpreted by other Spanish speakers. This dilemma is very close to communication, since she is
obligated to translate and communicate for the company in a different language. Another
important aspect she dealt with was employee recruitment. Not only does she do technical
support, Spanish hiring interviews, interpret information into Spanish, but more recently she was
also burdened with employee recruitment. For a while RedGear Technologies had her trying to
find newspapers, websites, and other places where she thought people who spoke Spanish would
look. Celma was then told to post brochures containing information about the company, and why
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employees should work for the company in these newspapers, websites, and other media. She
even asked me for advice as to where she should post this information. One of her questions was
if she should even post to local city Spanish newspapers. My response was absolutely not, I had
never heard of those newspapers and that most people don’t read the newspapers anymore. I told
her best bet would be the Utah job site, monster.com, or other web based job sites.
My interview with Celma was a short one, because we’re really good friends and we
always talk to each other. As a result I know a lot of what she has to do because I see her do it
first hand or she always tells me. During the interview she reiterated all the things she had done
for the company since she was hired. We were both hired on the same day in September, so for
the past two months they had her doing many different jobs. She told me she was stressed with
doing all those things and what really bothered her was that she was left to do everything herself.
Most of all she is bothered by the fact that she’s expected to do things she has no experience
with. She has had business administration experience when she worked in another country but
she has no communication experience. She said she didn’t mind doing it but she doesn’t feel like
she is the adequate person for the job. However, she says it has taught her a lot about the
communication needs involved in the company.
My organization has a strong, clear, and precise logo or identity mark (see Appendix). Its
only deficiency lies in the inconsistencies between the logo. Sometimes the logo reads
“RedGear” and other times it reads “RedGear Technologies.” This can be confusing since
RedGear Technologies makes software. “RedGear” by itself does not sound like a software
company, rather a sports company. This small fact weakens the logo because of its inconsistency
within documents. One thing that cannot be said is that the logo is not consistent in its form in
newsletters, brochures, letters, emails, and other documentation. The logo is standard and
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appears on everything RedGear Technologies outputs to the public, noting the only difference in
the logo is “RedGear” and “RedGear Technologies.” Most of the time, you will see the name
“RedGear Technologies” on various documents and only a small percentage will use “Red
Gear.” The company documents overall are very consistent and tend to use the same fonts,
colors, and similar pictures as identity marks. There has only been one instance where I have not
seen a consistency in their documentation. This instance deals with a job description letter. It was
a plain white document with a logo that didn’t seem to conform to any of the other documents
that they had released essentially it needed more coloring. I should note that most job description
letters aren’t very decorative but this letter was mundane. It drew absolutely no attention except
for the logo. Templates would have been a good way to stay consistent. Whenever the company
writes a document they could use a template; therefore they would always be consistent. If they
needed to change the company image they could change the template, which would fix many
inconsistencies.
Another part of communication deals with the RedGear Technologies website, and social
media use (see Appendix). The RedGear Technologies website is very easy to use. The company
has three main products: TaxWorks, 1040Works, and ArkWorks. Upon entering the website you
will be given the option to choose between these three main products and some other options,
which are request for a free demo, TaxWorks Blog, and the company phone number for
questions. It’s a very simple site and all the sites for all three products look almost identical
except for being different products and colors, but none involve social media. The company also
has a TaxWorks Blog, and a forum. The blog contains important product and tax information and
links to other social media sites like Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Sphinn, Mixx, Google
Bookmarks, Furl, StumbleUpon, and TwitThis, to share with those media sites. However, this
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site does not allow commenting, which detracts from what an actual blog is supposed to be. The
blog loses a lot of the social aspect if people cannot comment on posts. Another tool that
RedGear Technologies has is their forum. This forum seems to garner no attention. In fact, I
really don’t think anyone uses this forum. The last time I checked the forum the most recent post
had been posted months ago. The truth is my company doesn’t really use social media. They
have no YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter account. These three social media tools are by far the
most popular and the company makes absolutely no use of them. When I searched for any
videos, news, or pictures, I could only find at most five items. My company is very behind in
social media. Their audience is typically older individuals who do taxes. However, even older
individuals are starting to move to social media. The company must begin to move into these
new tools not only because their audience is, but because it would make them more known and
accessible. According to Lynn, they plan to do so in the future.
Internal communication is important to the RedGear Technologies. Most communications
falls in between four categories: electronic, face-to-face, print, and workplace. The main
channels the company uses are face-to-face and electronic. We typically do not use print to
communicate, which is starting to be more common in many other companies. Communicating
through print seems to be dying art while electronic communication seems to be soaring.
Another form we typically do not use is workspace. We typically do not have workspace objects
that communicate something about RedGear Technologies. Sometimes some of us have papers
pinned to our walls to remind us of employee extensions, or product keys, but most of us do not.
Most communication is done through email and chat. We receive financial notices, product
information, and many other things through email. If more personal communication needs to
take place, but individuals are far from each other and busy, chat is used. Sometimes a person
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will be busy and will not be available to leave their desk at the time, so it is easier to chat with
them. We also do a lot of face to face communication mostly as a form of team meetings or
briefings. These meetings typically take place to discuss new changes coming to the company.
These channels are very effective because most of the time employees are stuck at their desk and
can easily read the new messages they receive or ask questions through chat. The company
always has an open policy to communication. Anyone can communicate with anyone and
everyone is willing to answer questions.
Most corporate communication duties are carried out by Lynn Tenny. She does a great
job and she is usually very busy because she is the only real communications personnel we have
in the company. She carries out any communications that go out to the customers. For example,
she sends customers messages about bank enrollment for taxes, notices on the software,
information on major concerns, and other information. Lynn also sends out messages to
employees, although less often. More often supervisors or managers in a department will know
more about what’s going on internally in their department and will release information to
employees personally. However, sometimes due to the work load supervisors or managers are
not able to release information themselves, so they have other employees release information to
all employees if it pertains to everyone and is of great importance. Sometimes managers will
speak to Lynn and ask her to write up something for all employees. Most of the times they will
not because it takes a lot more time if she has to perform the task, know the background of the
issue, and because the information is needed quickly. Therefore, other chosen employees will
send out information because the information must be known immediately. Also, as, I have
stated before Celma Flores does a lot of the translations or other communications relations that
cannot be done by Lynn Tenny because of the Spanish language barrier. In effect, sometimes
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some of Lynn Tenny’s communications duties are outsourced to other employees in the company
because information needs to be quick, there are language barriers, or she does not know all the
details of a situation and information is needed quickly.
If I were to access my company’s ability to handle a crisis situation, I would say they
would come out fairly safe from the crisis. I say this because although the company is backward
in social media this could be helpful in crisis situations. News runs quickly, even more so when
you are well connected to social media. Given those facts, and the fact that they are not very well
known and are fairly private, I find it hard to believe that they would be hit hard by a crisis
situation. I also know that the company is well guarded against any legal damage. Their software
contains legal notices that declare that they are not at cause for anything that the tax preparer
formulates while using their software. They also don’t guarantee that backups will work, and lay
all responsibility on the end user. However, if in fact they were hit by a crisis situation, I do
believe someone like Lynn Tenny would formulate a statement along with the legal team to clear
up the company image. The good thing about RedGear Technologies is that it is still a fairly new
company and most of the time you don’t end up being hurt too badly by crisis situations because
you aren’t a fairly well known company. News that doesn’t pull audiences isn’t typically
released or released as quickly. It’s also helpful as I stated before that they are not well
connected with social media in crisis situations because it would slow down the message of the
crisis situation. I do think they may have a problem with the media if they were actually
interviewed for the crisis. I have never seen anything on the news or newspaper that has ever
appeared about RedGear Technologies. This could be a bad thing. Not appearing on any media
could signal poor or no experience is such crisis situations. I don’t believe that they would do
well in an interview but they do have the advantage of being small and not well known. I don’t
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think many journalists would be interested in such a story or would spend too much time on it.
However, I do think that media relations are something that the company should get more
involved with so that they can build experience with media relations. Having said this, I do not
believe that they are prepared for crisis situation dealing with a natural disaster or disasters
dealing with violence. I have never seen any employees do any procedures in case of a fire,
earthquake, or anything of that sort. A natural disaster or violence based disaster could make it
harder for the company to recover from because certain things are expected from a company, like
adequate procedures for emergencies.
Based on all the observations I have given, I can more formally state the strengths and
weaknesses that the company has with regards to corporate communication. They have a strong
brand and images mostly made weak by branding themselves a small percentage of the time as
“RedGear” rather than “RedGear Technologies.” However, over all their image and branding
seem strong. I think they are neither strong nor weak in public relations at this time. Yes, I would
say that the company is poor with social media but they communicate well with customers.
Customers don’t seem to mind emails and letters as a form of communication. They don’t seem
to care that the company isn’t well connected with social media. As long as they receive emails,
letters, or can make phone calls, they are happy with the service. I do believe it may be a
problem with future customers or potential customers because social media is a great tool to
garner new customers. Word of mouth on social media sites can make you known and that’s
something the company can benefit from. Their main form of advertising is through seminars or
the other corporation’s word of mouth, and this form of advertising is not very good. Social
media would expand their ability to advertise immensely. The company also isn’t involved with
the media. I think that the media would help them be more noticed. Most of all I think they
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should have experience with the media in such cases where they are found in a poor situation so
that they may know how to handle that situation. At this moment media relations are a definite
weakness because of their lack of relations with the media. The company also provides another
weakness in adequate crisis situation procedures. The company must provide employees with
adequate procedures to follow in crisis situations, which could help them whenever they did
encounter such a situation. On the other hand I think the company has strong internal relations. I
think that we communicate well internally using mostly electronic and face-to-face
communication. We all get along, and have a get together once and awhile from all departments.
However, I believe that we need to be more concerned with corporate social responsibility. I
don’t think it’s a weakness or strength but I think we need to do more as a whole organization. I
know the company follows the laws, and follows certain norms. On the other hand, I don’t think
RedGear Technologies helps the community as much as they could. I haven’t seen the company
do any community projects. I think that’s something that important in an organization that we
don’t do. We need to get involved with people not just live in seclusion.
Overall, there are definite improvements the company could make. A small but effective
improvement would be to get rid of any logos containing “RedGear” instead of “RedGear
Technologies.” They could create templates for many of their corporate documents so that they
are more standard throughout the company. Another important improvement involves getting
involved with social media. They should at least create a YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter
account. This would not only allow greater connectivity with their audience but increase their
noticeability. They should also get more involved with the media as it’s an important part of
being noticed, but an even greater part of how you will be perceived by the public in crisis
situations. Practice is a good part of being prepared for such crisis situations. This practice
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should also pertain to creating procedures for crisis situations or at least making these procedures
known. Lastly, corporate social responsibility needs work. We need to create projects that
involve employees and other community members to help the community that surrounds us.
Overall, the company still needs to do a lot of work but I personally believe that they will
improve in the future.
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