FNB's branches all over Namibia exist and function for three reasons, there is a high customer demand for financial services, there is access to electrical power and there are reliable high-speed data lines availablethroughout the geographical area. Unfortunately, the uncertainties created by unplanned power outages in recent years as well asissues with data network reliability, have created a requirement for the business to have readily- available firsthand information in order to makecriticaldecisions on whether or not to keep an affected branch open or not at certain points in time. Most employees, administrators and senior management in the bank make use of email as their primary channel of communication throughout the bank. For this reason, one will find a lot of urgent newsflash emails being sent out periodically to the entire network, informing employees of potential business-critical issues revolving around power, data and security problems which may ultimately impact business operations. These critical email messages are often unclear and cluttereddue to the tremendous amount of information they contain. Users have also developed substantial resistance to these messages, which ultimately rendersthem ineffective. The senders of these messagesare oblivious to this issue, since every individual is unique regarding the amount of emails received, how emails are prioritised and which are perceived as important. The concern of the researcher is that the email communication channel is ineffective when used for sending urgent information to the decision makers.This problem is stillpersistent in FNB Namibia today and has motivated the researcher to urgently evaluate the effectiveness of the email communication channel when used for urgent information dissemination and how respondents perceive the information sent to them.

Focus for the study

Purpose of research project

The purpose of this project is to evaluate the email communication channel in FNB Namibia by analysingits effectiveness when used for communicating urgent information to decision makers in the FNB branches.In so doing, the outcome will present direction on possible changes to the FNB Namibia internal communication strategy and policies.

The objective of this research will revolve around the following:

• to determine the effectiveness of email as a communication channel for urgent messages in FNB Namibia
• to assess the strengths and weaknesses of email as a communication channel in FNB Namibia
• to assess the perception of employees when receiving urgent email information.
• to assess internal communication policies in FNB Namibia.

Research questions

The following questions will be addressed to fulfil the research objectives:

• How effective is email as a communication channel for urgent messages?
• How do the strengths and weaknesses of the email channel impact the internal communication of urgent messages?
• How do employees perceive urgent email information?
• What suitableinternal email communication policies could be implemented inFNB Namibia?