The Lack Of Communicative Skills As The Ethical Issue Faced By Modern Engineers

One of the ethical issues faced by modern engineers is the lack of communicative skills. Communication failure is involved in every disaster, therefore being an indispensable issue that cannot be swept under the rug but must be taken care of immediately. Communication is the key as engineers often do not work alone but instead with a group of other engineers to complete a certain project or task. Communication also is the key to form good relationships with other people. If the group with a given task fails to communicate with each other, then they would be unable to work together to complete it. Engineers not only have to communicate with their colleagues, but they also have to communicate with their employers, and in the future when they become leaders or managers, they would then have to communicate with their employees. Thus, communication can be concluded as one of the keys to not only engineering, but to also other occupations and also in our daily lives.

Failure to communicate can be backed with many reasons and factors. One of the many factors is that parents pamper their children too much. Life skills such as this should be learnt from home starting at a young age when it is easier for the child to learn. An example would be a simple task such as ordering food when eating out is not given to the child but is done by the parents which makes the child feel entitled and not wanting to speak in public all the while thinking that their parents will help them when it comes to communicating. In the end, the child would then always rely on their parents to communicate with someone else and will not learn to communicate by themselves. The blame for the consequences of these factors cannot be solely put on an individual. This is because the parents or the teachers may give them the opportunities to speak and to learn this communicative skill but the child may still not want to learn it just like how you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. In other words, the issue of communication skills faced by engineers in their respective careers is not only about being bad at or shy when communicating with either their colleagues or employees, but it is also the way they speak, either with or without manners. It can also be how persuasive an individual can be when trying to make demands or when asking for a favour.

This issue is such as interns or a fresh grad not speaking politely to their seniors. This issue does not only apply in the work area, as individuals with such attitude would behave as such outside of their workplace. The lack of this essential communicative skill not only makes you a social outcast, nut employers would rather hire someone else with a better set of communication skill. Therefore, employers would prioritise hiring someone with better communication skills rather than someone without it. A good set of communication skill not only gives you an advantage when looking for jobs, but it also helps when interacting with colleagues or bosses and also people with different ethnicity than your own. This helps as the way you speak won’t easily offend anyone easily. Another way that having a good communication skill is beneficial is that when persuading someone, you are more likely to have a better chance of getting what you want than compared to someone without good communication skills. An example of communication failure is in the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse that took place in the Hyatt Regency Kansas City hotel in Kansas City, Missouri on the 17th of July, 1981. This communication failure lead to the death of 114 people and injured a total of 216 others which is one of the deadliest structural collapse in the US history, second to the collapse of the World Trade Centre. This failure of communicating is severe as it caused the lives of many innocent people. This fatal disaster occurred because the engineers of the project were rushed to complete it so they took shortcuts in the designing and also when it came reviewing the process. This failure should be an example of what engineers should not repeat in the future and to improve their communicating skills. Ethical issues as such should not occur in any workplace especially in engineering.