Assessment of Strategic Relationship between Organizational Internal Communication 71 and Employees’ Performance: A Case of Commercial Banks in Nakuru County, Kenya

The success of most organizations is pegged on how effective communication is executed internally.However, most organizations including commercial banks fail to consistently prove the relationship between organizational internal communication efforts and employees’ performance. The purpose of the study was to establish the relationship between organizational internal communication and employee performance. The study used a descriptive survey research design. The target population was 592 employees from 28 commercial banks in Nakuru County. A sample size of 150 employees proportionately sampled from all the 28 commercial banks was used. The main data collection instrument was a structured questionnaire with close-ended questions. The collected data was analyzed with the aid of the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences tool. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data and describe the characteristics of the target population and the findings were presented in frequency distributions, percentages, means and standard deviations. The Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient analysis was conducted to determine the relationships between the variables. The study established that horizontal communication strongly influenced employees’performance positively. Upward and diagonal communication flows were found to weakly correlate with employees’ performance, while downward communication flow was negatively correlated with employees’ performance. The study also established that a significant and positive relationship existed between knowledge sharing and employees’ performance. With respect to communication climate, the study established that positive superior communication, open communication and subordinate-superior understanding were positive correlates of employees’ performance. Majority of the employees were satisfied with the use of electronic communication channels