Business Communication Practices From Employers’ Perspectives

Abstract

This study investigates the meaning ofcommunication skillsfrom employers’ perspectives. Students enrolled in a business communication course were asked to contact potential employers in their fields of interest, requesting information about important communication skills in those fields. Using content analysis, two coders familiar with business communication analyzed 52 of the resulting open-ended responses. The analysis of 165 skills suggests employers recall oral communication more frequently than written, visual, or electronic communication skills. Of oral communication subskills, interpersonal communication was mentioned more than other workplace communication skills.

Keywords

written oral visual or electronic communication

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) invites employers to rank skills they value in recent college graduates via the Job Outlook survey. This annual survey is widely mentioned to support several initiatives in higher education, including programmatic and curricular decisions. For disciplines such as English, speech, and communication, the communication items hold particular importance. The survey items most directly related to communication read, “Ability to verbally communicate with persons inside and outside the organization” and “Ability to create and/or edit written reports” (NACE, 2014, p. 34). These phrases collapse many facets of oral and written communication skills that minimize the breadth and depth of communication practices needed in contemporary organizations. As such, instructors of business and professional communication courses are left with little guidance about the valence of course topics and how to best allocate time to written, oral, visual, and electronic modes.

Scholars have responded by designing focused studies querying employers or recent graduates about communication skills needed within specific careers or via an appointed mode (i.e., written or oral). Subsequently, the results from these studies feature either written or oral communication skills. Examining one mode contributes to intricate awareness within a particular mode; however, a study that simultaneously evaluates the utilization of multiple modes would help instructors of business and professional communication courses design curricula reflective of those modes. Methodologically, these previous studies furnish a priori topics to employers or students and rarely allow employers to spontaneously recall needed communication skills or articulate whatcommunicationmeans to them. The contemporary business environment may call on greater use of visual or electronic communication modes, which are often overlooked in academic studies. This study investigates the prevalence of multiple modes of business communication that employers seek from college graduates. Additionally, the study design solicits open-ended responses without cuing predetermined skills. Thus, this analysis answers the following research question: What communication skills do employers identify as important for college graduates when not prompted by prearranged answers?

Literature Review

This study embeds its argument in prior studies on employment-related communication skills from the perspectives of employers or recent graduates. This literature review spotlights key studies that have amplified the NACE survey conceptualization of communication skills, which curtails communication skills toverbal communicationandwritten reports. NACE has an established reputation among career services professionals at institutions of higher education. Its approach offers a sweeping perspective on skills and attributes employers rank in order of importance. As such, communication skills are evaluated alongside other important competencies such as decision making and problem solving, analyzing quantitative data, possessing technical knowledge related to the job, or demonstrating proficiency with computer software programs, among others (NACE, 2014). While many business communication instructors embed a medley of written, oral, visual, and electronic communication skills into business communication courses, both the NACE survey and theAssociation to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (2015)standards emphasize verbal and written communication. Not surprisingly, scholars have investigated written and oral communication skills more than visual and electronic skills.

Verbal and written communication skills typically rank very high on NACE’s a priori list of 10 qualities. However, in the Job Outlook 2015, “create and/or edit written reports” fell to ninth place, while “verbally communicate with persons inside and outside the organization” held the first position (NACE, 2014). The ranking approach assists university instructors by justifying particular assignments for inclusion in the coursework. Furthermore, disciplines with direct ties to any of the 10 qualities can maneuver the information to recruit and retain students. However, these data are limited by a small response rate (25.2%) and sample size (n= 244). This sample could be biased in myriad ways, particularly when considering the tremendous variety of organizations in the United States. Additionally, the range between the highest and lowest average score is a slim 1.05, and there are no indicators of whether the differences among skills are significantly different from each other. So while verbal communication skills are highly ranked on the NACE list, they may not be significantly more or less important than other skills on the list. Furthermore, while written and verbal communication skills are presented for ranking by employers in the NACE survey methodology, other modes of communication are not available for employers to rank (NACE, 2014). As a result, instructors of business and professional communication courses are less aware of how employers demand or value visual and electronic communication skills. The next sections highlight the ways scholars have examined written, oral, visual, and electronic communication skills.

Written Communication Skills

Written communication skills, similar to oral communication, envelop a plethora of qualities and attributes.Beason (2001)delved deeply into specific writing skills by asking 14 business professionals to report how much they are bothered by five common grammar errors. On average, the business professionals ranked the five errors (from most to least bothersome) as fragments, misspellings, word-ending errors, fused sentences, and quotation mark errors. With such a fine-grain analysis, however, variation occurred based on not only the participants’ perceptions but also the individual contexts of the errors (e.g., participants perceived some misspelled words as more bothersome than others).Jones (2011)incorporated emerging technologies in one study on writing skills for accountants, presenting employers with 26 writing and technology-mediated written skills. The accountants ranked the importance of and satisfaction with these writing skills. The most important skill was organizing information into effective sentences and paragraphs, although it ranked 24th in satisfaction (Jones, 2011). In yet another approach, the quality of writing was self-evaluated, rather than the importance of a particular skill (Lentz, 2013). In this study, part-time and full-time employees enrolled in an online MBA program were asked to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as writers. The MBA students recognized strengths of being direct, logical, organized, clear, and audience-oriented, while acknowledging improvement could be achieved through grammar, spelling, and visual appeal of their documents, particularly those presented to the public. These examples attest to the various types of written communication skills, their value within particular industries, and the variety of ways these skills are measured.

With technology seeming to place electronic communication at the forefront of many individuals’ minds, traditional writing skills could be viewed as outdated or less important. However, department chairs across six business disciplines ranked writing-related skills in the top four most important skills out of the 34 presented to them in a questionnaire (Wardrope, 2002); the other skills, listed in order of ranking, related to cultural literacy, technology-mediated communication, interpersonal communication, listening skills, and group/team skills. Furthermore, after compiling a list of 24 frequently cited communication skills,Conrad and Newberry (2011)found that business leaders placed significantly more importance on the skill of writing business correspondence than business teachers did. Similarly, employers inJones’s (2011)study ranked the importance of traditional writing skills in the top seven spots, with the technology-mediated skill of effective email writing being ranked in the eighth position. Clearly, traditional writing skills are still valued by employers, even in a technology-focused business environment.

Oral Communication Skills

Scholars have undertaken the task of understanding oral communication skills necessary for business and professional communication. Oral communication skills comprise innumerable traits, qualities, and attributes, such as public speaking, leading meetings, and negotiating a contract, to name a few. For example, in a study focusing on verbal communication skills,Keyton et al. (2013)extracted over 300 verbal communication behaviors from organizational communication textbooks and publications; after refining the list to 163, the researchers surveyed 126 employees to determine whether they had heard or observed these 163 at work the previous day. At least half of the employees observed or heard 43 of the 163 behaviors. The top 10 behaviors included listening, asking questions, discussing, sharing information, agreeing, suggesting, getting feedback, seeking feedback, answering questions, and explaining. The 43 communication behaviors were analyzed into four categories: information sharing, relational maintenance, expressing negative emotion, and organizing.

Similarly,Gray (2010)administered a questionnaire by listing 27 oral communication skills perceived to be important in new accounting graduates. Participating accountants identified listening attentiveness, listening responsiveness, conveying a professional attitude of respect and interest in clients, asking for clarification or feedback from management, and speaking on the telephone/making conference calls with clients as the five most important skills. In a study comparing the perceived importance of communication skills between business faculty and employers,Conrad and Newberry (2011)distilled a list of seven interpersonal skills from 217 publications that were cited by a majority of the publications’ authors. These seven skills included listening actively, building rapport, exhibiting emotional self-control, building trust, relating to those with different backgrounds, showing respect, and trust building—all skills that incorporate some degree of oral communication. Notably, no statistically significant difference was found between the perceptions of faculty and employers with one exception: Employers perceived showing respect as significantly more important than faculty members did.

DeKay (2012)also noticed employers’ interest in interpersonal communication through a qualitative analysis of emails from providers of business communication training, which showed that holding difficult conversations was the most frequently marketed training program. Promotions through an organization also rely heavily on interpersonal communication skills, more than presentation or writing skills (Reinsch & Gardner, 2014). In brief, these studies value interpersonal communication skills more than public speaking and feature the multifaceted nature of oral communication skills, which contrasts considerably from the one item on the NACE survey.

Visual and Electronic Communication Skills

Although calls for business communication scholars and instructors to place more attention on visual and electronic communication have been made (e.g.,Brumberger, 2005;Jackson, 2007;Reinsch & Turner, 2006;Wardrope & Bayless, 1999), studies focusing specifically on these communication skills appear less often than those focusing on written and oral communication skills. The value that instructors and practitioners place on these skills could explain this discrepancy. For example, in their study of 24 business communication skills,Conrad and Newberry (2011)found that business leaders perceived the ability to use information technology as significantly more important to business than business instructors did. That said, while written and oral communication received the most coverage by instructors of business and professional communication courses, the electronically mediated skill of email communication still received fair attention by many instructors (Russ, 2009). Alternatively, this discrepancy could be explained by the difficulty of classifying certain skills as written, oral, visual, or electronic. For example,Wardrope and Bayless (1999)grouped the visual communication skill of “prepare graphics for presentations” into a “technology” category (p. 39). Furthermore, in his review of business communication course curriculum,Russ (2009)placed “design and use visual aids” into a “public speaking” category (p. 400). These instances recognize visual communication within business and professional communication and demonstrate the difficulty of situating visual communication within a multimodal, business communication analysis.

However, visual communication skills may hold increasing importance among instructors of business and professional communication courses (Sharp & Brumberger, 2013), and scholarship in this area seems to be expanding (Rosenquist, 2012). For example,Toth (2013)argued for the need to cover infographics in business communication classes, and students who use graphical aids were found to use tables frequently in oral presentations (Grant, 2004). Furthermore,Lehtonen (2011)argued that visual communication can facilitate better communication of competence in multicultural communication settings.

Business communication researchers are indeed interested in technology and its implications for business communication. Some researchers have considered the implications of teaching with technology in the business communication classroom (DuFrene, Lehman, Kellermanns, & Pearson, 2009;Eckhouse & Carroll, 2013), while others have examined its implications on control (Vielhaber & Waltman, 2008) or public versus private and professional versus personal communication (Jameson, 2014). That said, little research has been completed that assesses employers’ demand for electronic communication skills. In brief, current empirical evidence is needed to position visual and electronic communication skills within the larger communication skill set employers value among college graduates.

Additional Perspectives

In addition to examining written, oral, visual, and electronic communication skills, a few studies concentrated on recognizing communication skills by specific occupations. For example, accountants need to be able to write clearly and precisely (Jones, 2011), listen, and convey respect for clients (Gray, 2010). However, instructors of business and professional communication courses often teach students from multiple majors, and findings for one occupation may be troublesome if generalized to other occupations. Relying on data from specific disciplines misrepresents the various communication needs of students and employers. Employers likely expect a robust set of communication competencies that cannot be fulfilled when students are limited to one discipline’s preferences for communication skills. Conducting research on a given occupation provides insight for students in a given major, but faculty members who teach business and professional communication courses open to many majors cannot assume that the skills found to be salient in one occupation are applicable to all.

In addition to recognizing skills within distinct occupations, some studies have examined important business communication skills using samples of specific users or audiences, such as employees (Lentz, 2013;Reinsch & Shelby, 1996), business faculty (Waner, 1995), business department chairs (Wardrope, 2002), or students (Alshare, Lane, & Miller, 2011). For example, one study asked MBA students to describe difficult oral communication challenges from their work experience, which at that time mostly referenced face-to-face or telephone communication (Reinsch & Shelby, 1996). Notably, oral communication still seems to be in high demand by employers of MBA students. The Graduate Management Admission Council’s (Worthington, 2014) annual survey showed that oral communication ranked highest out of 25 skills in which graduates are expected to demonstrate proficiency. Employers of MBA students would likely still agree that “management communication classes should not overlook oral communication” (Reinsch & Shelby, 1996, p. 48).

Yet higher education institutions cannot carry the entire burden for communication competence. Consequently, for-profit companies offer communication skills training in several areas. The demand for skills training sessions from these companies contributes to understanding pervasive, rather than discipline-specific, needs because they serve clients in many industries. Business communication training companies were found to market interpersonal communication training on the skills of (in descending order of frequency) having difficult conversations, speaking as a leader, giving presentations, coaching/motivational speaking, communicating with customers, and facilitating meetings (DeKay, 2012). These rankings can be beneficial if an assumption is made that supply meets demand. If that assumption is followed, the finding from training companies demonstrates high demand for training in oral communication skills, such as interpersonal skills and public speaking.

In sum, several studies have provided instructors of business and professional communication courses insight about written, oral, visual, and electronic communication skills. However, these studies have their limitations. First, the NACE survey does not expound on the multiple dimensions of communication because its emphasis is on a vast skill set. Second, the academic research privileges oral and written communication, with less attention devoted to other modes of communication. Third, the termcommunication skillsblankets multiple modes, yet studies tend to emphasize one at a time. This isolation allows for refined understandings of a given mode, yet limits the gestalt of communication needs from employers. Fourth, employers are expected to use a priori lists of communication skills to rank order preferences or measure importance on Likert-type scales. Consequently, employers are rarely given the freedom to spontaneously identify necessary business and professional communication skills. These limitations could be overcome by inductively soliciting information from employers.

Method

We employed content analysis to uncover the communication skills employers identify as important for new college graduates, similar to other studies that have examined communication skills (Lentz, 2013;Reinsch & Shelby, 1996;Stevens, 2005). Content analysis offers several approaches to analyze the frequency of an occurrence in a given medium. While the methods of analysis vary, their approaches are unified by objectivity, systematization, and quantification (Kassarjian, 1977). Analysis of content (Berelson, 1952)—specific words or phrases—is of greatest import in the current study.

Sample

Students in two business communication courses completed an assignment, which generated email responses from potential employers in the students’ intended career fields. Some of these fields included engineering, business, health sciences, and social work. The students were evaluated on their email message, which asked about the types of communication skills needed for an internship or entry-level position. Specifically, the assignment sheet directed:

Your task is to compose a professionally written email to the contact person requesting information about the type, frequency, and manner of communication an intern or new hire (entry-level) would use during the course of a normal business day.

Students who received a response were instructed to share the information with the course instructor. To that end, 52 employers responded to the students’ inquiries.

Unit of Analysis

Each email message from an employer was printed, and personally identifying information (names, email addresses) was removed by one of the authors. In this way, no message content was connected to an identifiable student or professional. These messages were content analyzed followingKrippendorf’s (1980)approach by identifying communication skills and counting the frequency of instances these skills were referenced. The unit of measure was one email message. The unit of observation, or recording unit (Krippendorf, 1980), included single words or brief phrases that state or describe a specific communication skill, attribute, or quality. One author selected these words or phrases and asked another author to critique the selections. After discussion, 165 agreed-on words or phrases were highlighted so coders could clearly identify the recording unit.

The genesis for a codebook was the curriculum model at Iowa State University, which employs a WOVE acronym to indicate coverage of written, oral, visual, and electronic communication in foundation and advanced communication courses offered through the English department. Earlier studies (DeKay, 2012;Jones, 2011;Robles, 2012) included skills in the written, oral, and electronic categories, but the visual communication category introduces an emerging perspective on communication. These earlier studies also included skills of listening, nonverbal, and small group/team communication skills, which do not intuitively align with written, oral, electronic, or visual communication, although they are commonly taught through communication departments. Therefore, these communication skills were added as subcategories of oral communication. One category calledmultimodalprovided an option to record terms or phrases applicable to all modes of delivery, such asprecision, accuracy, andcorrect grammar. Thecorrect grammaritem, in particular, was identified as a multimodal option because instructors and employers expect language mastery when speaking or writing. In sum, categories were labeledmultimodal, written, oral, visual, electronic, andnonverbal. The oral grouping had subcategories ofgeneral, presenting, interpersonal, listening, andteam/group(seeTable 1). Examples of words or phrases from the messages were included with the category labels to facilitate coding.

Table 1.

Communication Skills Groupings.

Grouping	Description
Multimodal	Any reference made that is broad, general, and/or applicable to any mode of communication or is undifferentiated by mode: good communication; effective communication
Written	Any reference made to written documents; words or phrases that indicate how writing should be (usually adverbs or adjectives): use correct grammar, write clearly and concisely, write effective reports, write effective memos, write effective letters, write effective proposals
Visual	Any reference to a document or aid that conveys its message through images or graphics (primarily), photos, display boards
Electronic	Any reference to a specific mediated format such as a blog, social media, email; references to the ways in which these formats are to be used: leave clear voicemail, use good telephone skills, write effective email
Oral: General	Any reference to an aspect of oral communication, regardless of the specific situation; includes presenting, interpersonal, listening, team/group
Oral: Presenting	Make oral presentations, leading/coaching/motivating a group of others at one time, use good pronunciation, use appropriate vocabulary, answer audience questions, control speaking anxiety, use equipment for presentational aids, prepare presentation handouts
Oral: Interpersonal	Show professional courtesy, give good instructions, use good conversational skills, motivate/persuade others, show interest in feelings/ideas, conduct interviews, have difficult conversations, ask questions
Oral: Listening	Follow directions, listen for main idea, focus attention on speaker, take good notes during meetings, determine emotional meaning
Oral: Team/group	Contribute to meetings/teams, lead meetings/teams
Nonverbal	Any reference to use or interpretation of nonverbal codes: oculesics, vocalics, proxemics, kinesics

Coder Training

Two undergraduate student coders who were completing an independent study course in communication research were trained to code the data. They attended four training and coding sessions where the categories were defined and refined. At each session, coders calibrated their coding of five messages in the presence of two of the authors. The coders worked through two additional messages and calibrated again. After consultation, the coders were released with a code sheet and given 1 week to code the messages. This same procedure was repeated until intercoder reliability reached an acceptable level.

Results

The research question asked what communication skills employers identify as important for new college graduates. Of the 165 communication skills identified, coders achieved strong intercoder reliability as indicated by Cohen’s kappa (κ = .816). The 139 skills agreed on were organized into their categories (Table 2), and then these categories were ranked from greatest to least (Table 3).

Table 2.

Prevalence of Communication Skills.

Grouping	n
Multimodal	25
Written	25
Visual	3
Electronic	29
Oral: Total	53
Oral: General	11
Oral: Presenting	7
Oral: Interpersonal	24
Oral: Listening	8
Oral: Team/group	3
Nonverbal	4

Table 3.

Rank Order of Communication Skills.

Ranking	Grouping	n
1	Oral: Total	53
2	Electronic	29
3	Multimodal	25
3	Written	25
4	Oral: Interpersonal	24
5	Oral: General	11
6	Oral: Listening	8
7	Oral: Presenting	7
8	Nonverbal	4
9	Visual	3
9	Oral: Team/group	3

Descriptions of the skills in each category further highlight the specific aspects of communication employers identified. The multimodal words or phrases employers used—such asgood communication, professional, orcommunicates effectively—were broad. The aspects of writing employers deemed noteworthy includedspelling, grammar, being concise, or a genericstrongoreffective writing skills. Visual elements includeddisplay boards, photos, andcommunicating graphically. Electronic skills were overwhelmingly listed asemailorphone; some employers commented on etiquette and others on the composition of written or oral messages. The oral skills were collapsed into one category, then subdivided for further clarification. The communication skill employers most recognized wasoral messages. Nearly one third (n= 54) of the skills identified by these employers incorporated oral communication skills as those that are relevant for new college graduates. There is considerable breadth to the termoral communication, and these employers provided specific examples to differentiate their oral communication preferences. General oral communication included words or phrases such aseffectively communicate orally, correct grammar, orstrong verbal skills. Interpersonal skills connect with employers’ use of the termsface-to-face communication, greeting, orasking questions, among others.Listening, presenting, andteam/groupwere explicit words employers used that confirmed the addition of these categories. Nonverbal communication often allies with interpersonal communication, while relying on a symbol system different from spoken language. This category was therefore left by itself, and few employers mentioned nonverbal aspects of communication.

Discussion

Colleges and universities rely on information from NACE, among other sources, to justify the inclusion of communication in the curriculum. For instructors of business and professional communication courses, it may be difficult to ascertain the specific communication competencies that will most benefit students if consulting NACE’s simplified operationalizations of written and oral communication. Of course, including communication competencies and courses can be justified without reliance on these sources, but the information they yield holds merit. Furthermore, employers’ interpretations of communication skills could be different from instructors of business and professional communication courses. To that end, the purpose of this project was to burrow into the meaning of communication skills from the perspective of employers without a preference for mode of communication or a priori prompts. This inductive approach uniquely contributes to the communication skills literature, as nearly all extant research utilizes deductive reasoning. Additionally, shared meaning of communication skills between instructors and employers benefits students during their collegiate development.

Overall, the results of this study show that employers perceive oral communication skills to be the predominant mode of communication needed for job performance. These oral communication skills include interpersonal, presenting, listening, and team/group. However, when oral communication skills are dissected into subskills, then employers recall electronic skills, multimodal communication acts, written communication, and interpersonal communication skills with near equal frequency. Other communication skills, such as group work and nonverbal communication, were not as prevalent as the other skills among these employers. The discussion of these findings centers on the role of written, oral, visual, and electronic communication in workplace communication.

Instructors of written communication courses may be somewhat disheartened by the ranking in this analysis. To be clear, this assertion does not say that writing modes of communication are not important. Indeed, professionals historically estimate they spend 25% of their time, on average, engaged in writing endeavors (Faigley & Miller, 1982) or, more currently, 28% of their time reading, writing, or responding to email (Chui et al., 2012). Rather, the data in this study highlight the foremost skills this sample of employers recollected. Writing skills may be recalled less frequently than interpersonal communication, not because they are less important, but because they are less pervasive in specific organizational settings. Perhaps oral skills are highly valued in all industries and occupations, and writing skills are necessary within certain industries, occupations, or organizational levels. Employers may also interpret written communication and email as synonymous, whereas the current study separated writing from electronic modes of communicating. This explanation supports the need for multimodal education, illustrates the intricacies of communication, and challenges the practice of delineating communication modes.

Those who teach writing may be further disenfranchised by the interpretation of writing that these employers offer. Many employers wrotegoodoreffectivewriting, which are nebulous descriptors. The detailed contributions referencedgood grammarorspelling, which may challenge English educators at a time when pedagogical shifts to analysis and critical thinking skills trump fundamental skill development or reinforcement. Possessing good grammar and writing skills may be a taken-for-granted assumption by instructors and employers of anyone with a high school or college degree. Yet organized, logical, and clear writing remain essential needs of employers (Jones, 2011;Lentz, 2013). As such, when students are hired and these skills are lacking, employers become frustrated and note this deficiency, which aligns withBeason’s (2001)findings that grammar errors bother them. However, if correct grammar and spelling remain expectations of college graduates, college instructors may need to revisit their stance on teaching and evaluating these fundamental skills.

The results indicate a strong need for oral communication skills, such as interpersonal, listening, and presenting. In fact, interpersonal and oral communication skills were identified with greater frequency than written skills from this nonprobability sample. The oral skill with the most frequent mention was interpersonal communication, which has been identified as an area lacking in business communication preparation (DeKay, 2012;Reinsch & Shelby, 1996) yet acclaimed as a needed component in management communication classes (Reinsch & Shelby, 1996). More specifically, one sample of employers identified telephone, team discussion, and face-to-face communication as the most common channels for oral communication (Grant, 2004). This finding aligns with previous research of CEOs who did not consider writing skills to be a top concern for promoting employees to the executive level, but rather valued interpersonal communication skills (Reinsch & Gardner, 2014). Similarly, this finding aligns with responses of managers who ranked oral communication competency as most important for new college graduates (Maes, Weldy, & Icenogle, 1997).

Perhaps university requirements should include interpersonal communication as a required course. Many universities adopt a hybrid oral communication course, which includes public speaking and interpersonal communication topics, while some universities rely on 6 hours of English composition to provide sufficient communication education for students. Even if these composition courses teach a well-developed multimodal model, they still may not provide sufficient public-speaking or interpersonal communication preparation for the college graduate, which seems to be salient to this sample of employers. Oral communication skills are multitudinous, as shown byKeyton et al.’s (2013)identification of 163 verbal communication skills, which underscores a potential need for more time dedicated to them in the classroom. In sum, this finding substantiates the need for instrumental support of oral communication courses from university administrators.

Communication skills deemed visual were mentioned with little frequency from this sample of employers, which is surprising given business communication researchers’ (e.g.,Brumberger, 2005;Jackson, 2007;Reinsch & Turner, 2006) call for more attention to visual communication. The critical questions for instructors of business and professional communication courses rest on four possible approaches. First, visual communication may be viewed as a support to other communication skills, such as incorporating graphics into a written report or designing slides to accompany an oral presentation. In such a supporting role, visual communication may have been overlooked by employers in this study. Second, perhaps visual communication is an emerging trend and higher education is on the cutting edge of including this aspect as a communication competency. In this vein, instructors who are trained in oral and written communication may need professional development to teach visual communication. However, incorporating visual communication into existing classes may derogate the more salient oral or written communication learning objectives. Third, employers may not perceive visual communication as being a communication skill, but rather, as an aspect of marketing or graphic design. Even among business communication scholars, visual communication has been blanketed by technology (Wardrope & Bayless, 1999) or public speaking (Russ, 2009). If this possibility were tested and supported, then instructors of business and professional communication courses could argue for some relief from teaching visual communication and defer this competency to specialized disciplines. Fourth, visual communication may be a priority in particular occupations, such as professional writing (Brumberger, 2007), but hold less prominence among a swath of employers in other disciplines. These discussion points should be carefully considered as faculty evaluate their resources and curriculum for business and professional communication courses within individual multimodal communication programs.

The high ranking of electronic skills is not surprising given the current pervasive technological environment. A recent study shows that electronic skills are indeed receiving attention in business communication courses (Sharp & Brumberger, 2013). However, there are two noteworthy discussion points regarding the placement of electronic communication skills among the others in this study. First, electronic skills were ranked second after the total oral communication category. At the present time, then, electronic skills may not be needed to the extent that human interaction skills are needed. A longitudinal analysis would show how needs for modes of communication shift over time. Thus, the current analysis is limited by a cross-sectional snapshot of employers’ current perspectives. Second, the two striking electronic skills noted by these employers were email and use of the phone. A few honorable mentions went to social media platforms, but by and large, electronic communication skills mentioned were the use of email or phone. Email, while often deemed an electronic mode of communication, relies on written text, which at times is written with an interpersonal tone and at others with a formal tone. Thus, classifying email as an electronic communication skill may be problematic. Regardless, instructors of oral and written communication skills find backing in this finding to devote classroom instruction to email and its intricacies, a finding similarly supported byJones (2011). Furthermore, the phone may not be perceived as an electronic communication skill. However, many references were made tophone skillsas a distinct communication attribute. The truncated use of phone instead of telephone warrants further investigation to understand employers’ meaning. For example, they could be referring to telephone etiquette skills such as courteously answering the phone or being polite during a call. Or, employers could seek etiquette competence about gauging appropriate times to use cell phones during meetings or presentations.

It seems clear that instructors of business and professional communication courses may need to devote some attention to phone skills in myriad ways, if they do not already include it. Albeit, something seems sophomoric about teaching “telephone skills” in a college course; however, telephone etiquette, which may have been a basic skill at one point in time, may have lost its status with the advent of email and text messaging. This “lost art” seems to hold value among some employers, as it has historically (Waner, 1995). Instructors who do not include telephone skills may want to consider their implementation or reintroduction.

Limitations

This study is not without its limitations. First, considerable variability existed in the ways the students crafted their messages when completing the assignment. Some students contacted a member of the human resources department of a company, while other students reached out to a personal contact. As a result, the responses were highly varied from formal job descriptions to informal conversations about communication. Future research can overcome this limitation by accessing databases of employers across industries and applying probability sampling methods. Sending a uniform message to a designated employee would reduce variability as well. Qualitative interviews would enrich this conversation to probe deeply into the skills and expectations employers hold and how these skills and expectations vary among job categories.

Second, there were challenges of looking at emergent data. Some responses included how to communicate, some identified the key audience employees interact with, some discussed quality of communication, and some intermingled these qualities in myriad configurations. Future studies would benefit from open-ended questions that include audiences, styles, communication behaviors, channel of communication, and quality of interaction.

Communicationis a broad and complex term, encompassing many facets of interaction. Industry standards are so unique and distinct that it may be impossible for one or two service courses coupled with an advanced communication course to prepare students for the breadth and depth of communication skills expected in the workplace. The findings from this study suggest that oral communication skills, in their myriad forms, are in high demand from employers. Written and electronic skills are highly valued by employers, but in different ways from what instructors in higher education institutions may perceive. Visual communication skills seem to have little value as communication skills from this set of employers. These findings can support instructors of business and professional communication courses when making curricular decisions. Of course, employers’ preferences are not the only driver of curriculum decisions. Indeed,Wardrope (2002)adheres to multiple stakeholders having input into business and professional communication course design. If an instructor relies on data from organizations such as NACE to validate the importance of communication skills, then the employer-based audience of NACE deserves to be listened to when they offer their understanding of communication skills. Indeed, many factors play into curricular decisions.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Charlie Kostelnick for providing comments on this article and the editor and reviewers for their time and suggestions. Alexandra Lemke and Kelly Erbes served as undergraduate research assistants and helped with the data analysis.

Authors’ Note

A previous version of this article was presented to the Association of Business Communication, October 2014, Philadelphia, PA. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Iowa State University.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Tina A. Coffeltis an assistant professor in the Communication Studies Program and Department of English at Iowa State University. She teaches interpersonal communication and research methods. Her research includes understanding the meaning of communication skills to employers.

Matthew J. Bakeris a PhD student in the Department of English at Iowa State University. He earned his MBA from Brigham Young University after working as a manager in the financial software industry. He studies rhetoric and professional communication with a specific interest in business communication.

Robert C. Coreyis a lecturer in the Department of English at Iowa State University. He teaches multiple sections of business communication.

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