Delta Dental: Largest US Provider of Oral Health Care since 1954 - Essay Sample

Introduction

Delta Dental Company is the largest organization located in the United States, which is composed of other thirty-nine independent delta companies working in fifty nations. The member companies serve about sixty-eight million people enrolled in more than one hundred and twenty groups. This company is a profit non-making entity. This company was established back in 1954, after the need to access oral health care increased. The company's primary purpose is to provide advancement in health care via programs of dental benefits as well as philanthropic efforts. The company's core values include diversity, community commitment, innovation, collaboration, and integrity (Bedingham, 2004). The company's mission is to listen to the needs of the customers, including their feedback creation of innovative commodities, and make sure that the products meet the required quality standard to improve the consumer's daily life.

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Since Delta Dental Company is enormous and operates in many countries, it has been affected by many organizational issues that have adversely affected its productivity recently. Communication issue is among these challenges which have negatively affected it. Poor communication from top management to subordinate staff has been a great challenge, which has led to a decrease in productivity. In this review, I will analyze the areas of weakness, leading to poor communication and formulate effective solutions for this challenge. Organizational corporate culture refers to behaviors and beliefs that define how management and employees interact with a company and conduct business (Bedingham, 2004). Negative organizational corporate culture has resulted in poor communication in the delta dental company. A lot of miscommunication from top management to junior staff has led to a decrease in productivity. The administration has adopted an authoritative management style where they do not accept ideas from subordinate staff. This dictatorship type of management, which only takes down communication, has led to poor communication in the company.

Areas of Weakness of Poor Communication

Poor communication in Delta Dental organizations can result in inadequate quality production, leading to customer dissatisfaction and damaging its reputation (Hunt et al., 2000). If the organization does not make more effort to overcome poor communication, areas such as leadership, culture, productivity, and weak interaction of customers will be affected.

In the area of leadership, there will be difficulty in leading as the managers will not be in a position to communicate effectively to the employees. In this organization, the employees rely mostly on the managers in the offering of directions, positive reinforcement, and feedback. Therefore, as a result, there will be a lack of clear job responsibilities. Also, there will be no close working of the employees, thus diminishing teamwork among them.

Poor communication can also result in distrust in culture hence frustrating the employees (Hunt et al., 2000). The workers will have no good lines to communicate with each other as well as the management and will feel that they are neglected in the organization; thus, their commitment and loyalty towards the organization will suffer. As a result, this will lead to the turnover rate and the existence of open culture among the management and the employees.

Employees in any organization desire to have an environment in which they are free to build relationships and share ideas. If the organization has poor communication will result in a lack of access to resources and employees to perform their duties effectively (Hunt et al., 2000). If this is experienced in Delta Dental organization, the employees' motivation and morale will be lowered, resulting in lower productivity.

Besides, poor communication can affect customer interactions with its employees and management. As an organization experiences poor internal communication and training, it can incur challenges in communicating and interacting with its employees (Hunt et al., 2000). Therefore, the organization will have difficulties in building loyal customers. Such a problem is much magnified if Delta Dental will not solicit the feedback of its customers.

Solutions of the Weakness

For Delta Dental organization to overcome the above weakness due to poor communication, it has to practice different ways. To solve leadership difficulty, it has to ensure that a leader makes smart decisions. Such decisions will help in giving clear feedback, directions, and positive reinforcement to the employees. As a result, the organization will be in a position to achieve its communication and business hence having clear job responsibilities among the employees.

The Delta Dental organization will have to establish a stable baseline for it to overcome distrust in culture. To ensure effective communication with its employees, it has to set good lines on communicating with the workers and the management. This will make them feel much involved in the organization hence boosting their loyalty and commitment, resulting in teamwork and unity among the two bodies.

For the organization to improve its productivity, it has to ensure that it produces a conducive environment for the employees to be free to build relations with each other and share their ideas. That is, it has to exercise effective communication from the top management to the bottom communication and in between the employees. Thus, it will boost the workers' morale and motivation hence improving their productivity as the employees will work towards the organization's set goals.

Also poor communication can result in weak interactions between the customers and the employees; Delta Dental has to ensure effective communication from the top to bottom communication. Clear directions from the leaders should be well provided to the employees. The management should take the customers to feedback more effectively and adhere to the customers' will.

References

Bedingham, K. (2004). Corporate culture change in the engineering environment. Engineering Management, 14(5), 24-27. https://digital-library.theiet.org/content/journals/10.1049/em_20040505

Hunt, O., Tourish, D., & Hargie, O. D. (2000). The communication experiences of education managers: identifying strengths, weaknesses and critical incidents. International Journal of Educational Management. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09513540010322393/full/html