Summary:
Bad News Memo – The Problem and Your Solution
This assignment is intended to give you some insight into how you would begin to solve a particular issue in your professional field. This knowledge will be useful to you in job interviews, in considering career options, and in other professional applications. The work you do on this memo will continue to prepare you for choosing a topic for your final problem/solution proposal, and you’ll be able to start considering the larger picture of your intended profession.
From your Issues Memo, you have researched different problems that currently plague your intended profession. I want you to narrow down your focus for this next assignment and think about how you would handle a specific problem within the workplace.
Task
- Identify the problem (please make it something manageable – do not choose a problem that has absolutely no solution or would take the power of Congress to help solve) and consider how you would deliver the message to employees and volunteers of your workplace.
- For example, if you are looking into the problem of patient complaints and law suits, due primarily to impersonal nursing staff, in a private hospital, you may want to implement a new policy that bans cell phones and requires a workshop for all nurses and hospital staff during working hours (this scenario is an example and you are not required to adopt it!).
- How would you deliver the information via memo about these new policies?
- How would you convince the employees and staff and these new policies are important to the success of the workplace?
Audience and Purpose
While the memo will deliver what will probably be regarded as bad news (few people like change, especially if it calls into question the efficiency of employees), it must still be persuasive— part of your audience has the added level of complication that they are volunteers—make them mad, and they may go away. So the task ask at hand is to announce the policy, yes—but more importantly, persuade the readers to agree and go along with it.
The tone and style of the memo should befit the director of an organization, and reflect his/her persona—many directors or people in charge exude a direct and firm demeanor, not a warm and fuzzy, hand-holding sensitivity. Think about your tone, style, word-choice, vocabulary, and audience as you write and as you revise. The memo should also follow the guidelines outlined in your text, be single-spaced, error-free, and carefully proofed before submission.
