Developing supervisors as skilled communicators : the role of HR

Effective communication is a major factor enabling managers to act as a conduit in promoting HR policies to their subordinates. In particular, given managers are now expected to take a major role in developing subordinate commitment, communication skills have become an important part of commitment development. This paper reports data from a small sample of HR managers to find out whether HR staff consider communication skills in the selection of their new managers and what actions are taken to develop their communication skills in the hope of improving their staff commitment. Findings suggest that HR practitioners regard communication skills as subsumed under a generic idea of leadership. There were no specific programs reported that explicitly targeted communication skills. Yet HR managers conceded that commitment was largely due to good two way communication with managers playing a key role in the process. The measuring of individual verbal abilities and examining their impact on commitment remains largely undervalued.