Effective communication in the workplace
Introduction and guidance
Welcome to this free course, Effective communication in the workplace. The course lasts eight weeks, with approximately three hours of study each week. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete another week’s study.
You will be able to test your understanding of the course through the weekly interactive quizzes, of which Weeks 4 and 8 will provide you with an opportunity to earn a badge to demonstrate your new skills. You can read more on how to study the course and about badges in the next sections.
After completing this course, you will be able to:
- describe different types of communication and how they are used in the workplace
- recognise the skills required for effective communication
- understand the impact that communication can have on how people are perceived by others
- identify how effective communication can overcome challenges in the workplace
- reflect on current personal communication skills and how these can be developed and used more successfully.
Moving around the course
In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each week, you can find a link to the next week. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Course content’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course. Alternatively, use the week links at the top of every page of the course.
It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.
The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.