Chapter 6: Workplace Communication
Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT)
Successful business communication is often associated with writing and speaking well, being articulate or proficient with words. Business communication in written form requires skill and expertise. How you represent yourself with the written word counts. Writing in an online environment requires tact and skill, and an awareness that what you write may be there forever. From memos to letters to telephone conversations, your business communication represents you and your company. This chapter discusses workplace communication and the importance of delivering your message.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
- Understand the expanding role of AI in business communication.
- Develop AI literacy skills for business communication.
- Explore best practices for collaborating with AI to improve business communication.
- Develop ethical standards for AI-assisted writing.
- Discuss the role of text messaging, memos, and letters in business communication.
- Demonstrate the appropriate use of netiquette.
- Demonstrate the five stages in a telephone conversation.
- Discuss meetings and their role in business communication.
- Describe the main parts of an agenda.
In addition to originally authored content, this chapter was adapted from the following Open Education Resources:
Business Communication for Success by Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Adaptations included editing tone, images, removing content to align the chapter with BCOM210 course learning objectives, revising examples for an FHSU student population, and adding some original exercises to align with course objectives.
Chapter 6.1 AI Workplace Communication and AI Insights were written through a collaborative process between Dr. Rose Helens-Hart, a professor of business communication, and AI writing applications, specifically Gemini and ChatGPT. Her approach involved extensive, iterative prompt-based conversations with these AI applications, during which she explored and refined various topics related to AI’s use in business communication. While the AI tools offered valuable suggestions and generated initial content, the final versions of this chapter part and AI Insights reflect a significant amount of human research, drafting, editing, and revision on her part to ensure accuracy, clarity, and relevance to the field.
In preparing this chapter part and AI Insights, she followed the frameworks for ethical authorship (Lentz, 2024) and AI literacy outlined in the chapter part (Cardon et al., 2023a). She applied the principles of AI literacy, focusing on application, authenticity, accountability, and agency to guide her use of AI throughout the writing process. This framework, which promotes ethical, transparent, and receiver-centered communication, provided the structure for her decisions about how to engage with AI and ensure her work aligned with the best practices for responsible AI use in writing and ethical authorship (Lentz, 2024).
Additionally, before beginning writing, she conducted a review of current research on AI in business communication, including studies on AI writing applications, ethical issues, and the broader impact of AI on professional communication practices, which are cited throughout the chapter part and in a reference list at the end of the chapter.
