Sunday, May 15, 2016

Role of Managerial Communication at Workplace

It is important that communication with staff does not only occur around negative instances and that positive achievements are well communicated as well.  All of this helps to engage staff and reduce turnover - highly engaged staff are more profitable staff.
Communication and feedback is the key to a successful working environment as it helps:
  • people learn
  • create opportunity for professional and personal development
  • boost morale and loyalty
  • provide insight into how your business is running
A great way to set the foundations for successful staff communication is to use our template to clearly outline your businesses policies and procedures.

Skills Required for Effective Managerial Communication

Good communication is one of the most critical aspects of leadership. When staff are able to approach you with queries and problems it creates transparency and open lines of communication.
Learning how to listen also goes a long way towards effective communication. Discussion doesn’t work if you don’t take the time to concentrate on and listen to what’s being said; it has to work both ways. With good communication, managers can develop a great relationship with the people on their team, gain loyalty and commitment from employees and achieve the company’s short and long term goals.
Key ways to improve your managerial communication skills include learning to listen, empathise and practicing what you have to say. We have some great tips on how to improve your skills in this area that will help you understand what, when and how to communicate effectively.

Tips for Effective Managerial Communication

It is essential for employees to communicate effectively with each other for better understanding as well as increased productivity at workplace. Employees doing everything on their own are generally overburdened and eventually fail to deliver their best.

Effective managerial communication enables the flow of information and knowledge among employees in its desired form. Managers need to interact with their team members to extract the best out of them. Problems remain unsolved if employees do not communicate with each other. Discussions go a long way in reducing confusions and also improve the relations among employees.

Barriers to Effective Managerial Communication

Managers need to interact with each other as well as with their team members on a regular basis not only to get things done effectively but also to ensure peace at the workplace.
Effective communication at all levels within an organization helps resolve problems within the desired time frame.
Let us go through various barriers to effective managerial communication at the workplace:
  • Partiality and workplace politics are the major barriers to effective communication at the workplace.
  • Managers must not be partial to any of their team members. It is considered strictly unprofessional. Each employee should be treated as one. Do not ignore any of your team members just because you do not like him. A good manager is one who is impartial to all. Managers have a tendency to communicate with individuals who are their friends or say a yes to whatever they say. This indeed is a wrong practice. You must speak to all your team members and address their queries. Problems and misunderstandings arise when there is lack of communication and employees feel ignored.

Types of Managerial Communication

Managerial communication refers to interaction among managers and their subordinates within an organization.
It is essential for managers to communicate with their team members and vice a versa to ensure maximum productivity and peace at workplace.

Communication generally takes place as:

  • Downward communication - Flow of information from managers to employees
  • Upward Communication - Flow of information from employees to managers

Importance of Managerial Communication

Before understanding the importance of managerial communication at workplace let us first go through a real life situation.
Tim and Jack both worked with an organization of repute. Tim represented the marketing vertical while Jack was heading the advertising department. Tim and Jack preferred doing things on their own. The two managers hardly interacted with each other and never really bothered to discuss things and reach to better conclusions. The organization lost an important deal due to lack of communication between the two teams. Such is the importance of communication within the organization.

Introduction to Managerial Communication

Why do individuals need to communicate with each other ?
Information if not shared is of no use. Communication plays a pivotal role in information sharing. Individuals working together in the same organization need to speak to each other to keep themselves abreast with the latest developments in the organization.
It is practically not possible for an individual to do everything on his own. He needs a medium which helps him discuss various ideas and evaluate pros and cons of proposed strategies with people around. Here comes the role of communication.

What is Managerial Communication ?
Managerial communication is a function which helps managers communicate with each other as well as with employees within the organization.
Communication helps in the transfer of information from one party also called the sender to the other party called the receiver.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Role of the Finance Function

The Finance Function in Corporates
We often read about how corporates are doing financially with reference to their profits, asset values, debt, equity, and other measures. These measures are indicative of how well the corporate is doing financially. The next time you read about these measures, do think about the people who enable these performance indicators and these are the finance and treasury functions of the corporates.
Before we proceed further, we would like to remind you that the Treasury or the Finance function does not actualize the broader financial performance which is determined by the various strategic, operational, and financial management. Rather, the role of the finance function is to record, and keeps track of the various matters related to financial management in corporates.

The finance and the treasury functions are also responsible for tax calculations, social security payments, payroll, managing the receivables and the payable, and in recent years, the emergence of the treasury function has meant that they also deal with foreign exchange management

Financial Intermediaries

Introduction
A financial intermediary is a firm or an institution that acts an intermediary between a provider of service and the consumer. It is the institution or individual that is in between two or more parties in a financial context. In theoretical terms, a financial intermediary channels savings into investments. Financial intermediaries exist for profit in the financial system and sometimes there is a need to regulate the activities of the same. Also, recent trends suggest that financial intermediaries role in savings and investment functions can be used for an efficient market system or like the sub-prime crisis shows, they can be a cause for concern as well.

Financial Intermediation
Financial intermediaries work in the savings/investment cycle of an economy by serving as conduits to finance between the borrowers and the lenders. In the financial system, intermediaries like banks and insurance companies have a huge role to play given that it has been estimated that a major proportion of every dollar financed externally has been done by the banks. Financial intermediaries are an important source of external funding for corporates. Unlike the capital markets where investors contract directly with the corporates creating marketable securities, financial intermediaries borrow from lenders or consumers and lend to the companies that need investment.

Financial Management Techniques

Whether you’re a business or an individual, you have to find a way to manage your finances now and in the future. The cost of everything continues to increase and there’s no sign that this trend of price increases will stop anytime soon. As a result, all entities have to develop a financial management system to ensure their stability for many years to come.

This system has to provide the businesses in question with enough flexibility for them to continue to grow and pay for their necessary expenses. It also has to be stringent enough to allow for money to be put away in the event of future catastrophes.

In the case of a business, all expenses have to be prioritized in the interest of spending money on the right things.

Profit Maximization Criticisms

Many economists have argued that profit maximization has brought about many disparities among consumers and manufacturers. In case of perfect competition it may appear as a legitimate and a reward for efforts but in case of imperfect competition a firm’s prime objective should not be profit maximization. In olden times when there was not too much of competition selling and manufacturing goods were primarily for mutual benefit. Manufacturers didn’t produce to earn profits rather produced for mutual benefit and social welfare. The aim of the single producer was to retain his position in the market and sustain growth, thereby earning some profit which would help him in maintaining his position. On the other hand in today’s time the production system is dominant by two tier system of ownership and management. Ownership aims at maximizing profit and management aims at managing the system of production thereby indirectly increasing the income of the business.
These services are used by customers who in turn are forced to pay a higher price due to formation of cartels and monopoly. Not only have the customers suffered but also the employees. Employees are forced to work more than their capacity. they is made to pay in extra hours so that production can increase.

Financial Goal - Profit vs Wealth

Every firm has a predefined goal or an objective. Therefore the most important goal of a financial manager is to increase the owner’s economic welfare. Here economics welfare may refer to maximization of profit or maximization of shareholders wealth. Therefore Shareholders wealth maximization (SWM) plays a very crucial role as far as financial goals of a firm are concerned.

Profit is the remuneration paid to the entrepreneur after deduction of all expenses. Maximization of profit can be defined as maximizing the income of the firm and minimizing the expenditure. The main responsibility of a firm is to carry out business by manufacturing goods and services and selling them in the open market. The mechanism of demand and supply in an open market determine the price of a commodity or a service. A firm can only make profit if it produces a good or delivers a service at a lower cost than what is prevailing in the market. The margin between these two prices would only increase if the firm strives to produce these goods more efficiently and at a lower price without compromising on the quality.

The demand and supply mechanism plays a very important role in determining the price of a commodity. A commodity which has a greater demand commands a higher price and hence may result in greater profits. Competition among other suppliers also effect profits. Manufacturers tends to move towards production of those goods which guarantee higher profits. Hence there comes a time when equilibrium is reached and profits are saturated.
According to Adam Smith - business man in order to fulfill their profit motive in turn benefits the society as well. It is seen that when a firm tends to increase profit it eventually makes use of its resources in a more effective manner. Profit is regarded as a parameter to measure firm’s productivity and efficiency.

Capitalization in Finance

Capitalization comprises of share capital, debentures, loans, free reserves,etc. Capitalization represents permanent investment in companies excluding long-term loans. Capitalization can be distinguished from capital structure. Capital structure is a broad term and it deals with qualitative aspect of finance. While capitalization is a narrow term and it deals with the quantitative aspect.
Capitalization is generally found to be of following types-
  • Normal
  • Over
  • Under
Overcapitalization
Overcapitalization is a situation in which actual profits of a company are not sufficient enough to pay interest on debentures, on loans and pay dividends on shares over a period of time. This situation arises when the company raises more capital than required. A part of capital always remains idle. With a result, the rate of return shows a declining trend. The causes can be-

Capital Structure

Meaning of Capital Structure
Capital Structure is referred to as the ratio of different kinds of securities raised by a firm as long-term finance. The capital structure involves two decisions-

  • Type of securities to be issued are equity shares, preference shares and long term borrowings (Debentures).
  • Relative ratio of securities can be determined by process of capital gearing. On this basis, the companies are divided into two-
  • Highly geared companies - Those companies whose proportion of equity capitalization is small.
  • Low geared companies - Those companies whose equity capital dominates total capitalization.
For instance - There are two companies A and B. Total capitalization amounts to be USD 200,000 in each case. The ratio of equity capital to total capitalization in company A is USD 50,000, while in company B, ratio of equity capital is USD 150,000 to total capitalization, i.e, in Company A, proportion is 25% and in company B, proportion is 75%. In such cases, company A is considered to be a highly geared company and company B is low geared company.

Role of a Financial Manager

Overview
Financial managers perform data analysis and advise senior managers on profit-maximizing ideas. Financial managers are responsible for the financial health of an organization. They produce financial reports, direct investment activities, and develop strategies and plans for the long-term financial goals of their organization. Financial managers typically:

  • Prepare financial statements, business activity reports, and forecasts,
  • Monitor financial details to ensure that legal requirements are met,
  • Supervise employees who do financial reporting and budgeting,
  • Review company financial reports and seek ways to reduce costs,
  • Analyze market trends to find opportunities for expansion or for acquiring other companies,
  • Help management make financial decisions.
The role of the financial manager, particularly in business, is changing in response to technological advances that have significantly reduced the amount of time it takes to produce financial reports. Financial managers' main responsibility used to be monitoring a company's finances, but they now do more data analysis and advise senior managers on ideas to maximize profits. They often work on teams, acting as business advisors to top executives.