Communication - its importance in personal and official matters

There is no news paper delivery today as it was a declared holiday yesterday on the occasion of Sankranthi festival. I was going through yesterday's Times of India news paper and read about the advice of a famous couple of Hindi cinema (bollywood) to be successful in life. They mentioned about the need for PROPER communication between the persons and not to take for granted just because they are known to you. It is true in every sense.

Let it be at residence, or office or on the roads, when we watch the way we talk with strangers/seniors, we find that we talk with respect, use good language, take efforts to explain and make them understand. And when it comes to our family members, all this will be missing and will be trying to show (may be unconsciously) who is the boss at home. Most of the time our talk will be in harsh language and will be shouting without reason. If sense prevails, atleast after sometime, we will apologize for the way we talked.

This is true at office also. When we talk with subordinates, we talk differently and while talking with boss, we are subdued. This leads to lot of communication gap and failure to achieve what we want. Before saying, for a moment, let us enter into other's shoe and visualise how our directions will be received/understood. If we are clear, then we can say what we want. If not, then we have to do communication the way it gets the result what we want.

In safety issues also, communication plays a great role. If there is no proper communication, then operators assume something and things may go wrong. Blaming the operator after an incident will not serve any purpose. Operators also should be bold to ask when they do not know what to do or how to do. Similarly, when we, the safety professionals do not communicate, or fail to communicate in simple language, then we can't expect safety at the shopfloor. We have to explain to the plant managers, contractors, occupier about their responsibilities w.r.t safety and advise them how to do in safe manner. Training, news letters, etc are aids in communication. Safety work permits, clearances are also form communication, but for the particular job/modification/new work. Many accident investigations stress about lack of communication/coordination.

Collective wisdom is available in the form of legislations. We have to communicate these to shopfloor people so that they can understand and implement. Of course, there will be few rebels who do not want to follow the rules and regulations and for them, we have to take into confidence of the management and punish them by caution, warnings, penalties and termination in that order.