Perceived Effectiveness and Uses of Memorandum as an Internal Communication Tool on Employees of City Council of Makati, Makati City

Abstract

All business organizations use a variety of methods to communicate. With the advent of technology, there is a wide range of communication methods and tools available for a company to use. The list includes fixed telephones, cellular phones, faxes, the internet, a company intranet, emails, regular meetings and the traditional printed pieces such as memorandums and newsletters. Memorandum, traditional as it may seem, is still proven to be an essential tool of cascading information internally. It is the chief means of written communication within an organization. This is a study on the perceived effectiveness and uses of memorandum as an internal communication tool on employees of City Council of Makati, Makati City Hall. The general objective of the study is to find out the perceived effects of employees on receiving memoranda and to identify its different uses as an internal communication tool. The specific objectives of the study are: (1) To determine the level of frequency, purpose and content of memoranda received by employees of City Council of Makati at Makati City Hall (2) To identify the types and uses of memoranda commonly received by employees of City Council of Makati and (3) To measure how effective memoranda is in delivering the different types of information as perceived by employees of City Council of Makati. The theoretical framework of the study is the Lasswell Model of Communication. This model can be summed up in the phrase "Who says what in which channel to whom with what effect." The point in Lasswell's comment is that there must be an "effect" if communication takes place. If we have communicated, we have "motivated" or produced an effect. The distribution of memorandums in City Council of Makati has the same concept. The independent variable in this study is the channel of the message which is the memorandum and the dependent variable is the effect that the channel has produced as illustrated by the Lasswell's Model of Communication. This emphasizes on the important role played by memoranda in facilitating organizational operations. This will also help the City Council of Makati of Makati City Hall in assessing the effects of memoranda as a communication channel to its employees. When correctly analyzed, they can assist the City Council of Makati in becoming more efficient in its operations. This is a descriptive study as it measures and describes the perceptions of City Council of Makati rank-and-file employees on the effects of receiving memorandum as an internal communication tool. The researcher made use of the survey research method to obtain information through a self-administered questionnaire distributed to 110 respondents. Simple random sampling method was used to select the participating respondents. Data obtained from the survey questionnaire was computed by utilizing the formula for weighted mean as the statistical treatment of the results. In summary, about 55% of the employees (n = 60) agreed that memorandum is an effective communication tool while 18% of the employees (n = 20) strongly agrees to its purpose. On the other hand 27% of the employees (n - 30) disagrees about the effectiveness of memorandum. This information was derived from the mean item score of each employee and categorized according to Strongly Disagree (<=1.75), Disagree (> 1.75; <= 2.5), Agree (> 2.5; <= 3.25), and Strongly Agree (> 3.25). The memoranda received by rank-and-file employees of City Council of Makati, Makati City Hall basically have the same content namely job instruction, job rationale, policy and procedure, feedback and indoctrination. The frequency differs though as follows: job instruction, indoctrination and policy and procedure are distributed very often while feedback and job rationale is distributed often. There is high level of frequency as reflected in the percentage falling to category of very often in the five-point Likert Scale Interpretation. The memoranda distributed within the department basically have the same content. However, memorandum on policy and procedure is the thrust of memoranda received by employees of City Council of Makati, Makati City Hall. Results have shown that memorandum on policy and procedure is usually the content of the majority of memorandum they receive within the department. Based on the results of percentage of responses, it can be concluded that memorandum is perceived to be effective in delivering the different types of information except for job instruction and policy and procedure. Only a small percentage strongly agrees to its purpose and quite a number disagreed. For an internal communication tool, this must be taken note by the City Council of Makati for job instruction and policy and procedure is reportedly the most common form of memoranda distributed and circulated within the department. After analyzing the results of the study, the following recommendations are given: (a) To the City Council of Makati, it must be taken note that the most frequent type of information they circulate through memorandum is perceived not to be effective by majority of the respondents. Therefore, a careful and thorough evaluation is suggested, (b) To future researchers, the study can also be applied to other forms of internal communication tools like newsletter and such. This can also be applied using different samples. This can help organizations to evaluate and assess their current internal communication tool. It is only through feedback that internal communication tool’s effectiveness can be measured, (c) To future researchers interested in this topic, they could go on as far as measuring the true effect of “channel” to “effect” through experimental research design.