Project 2: Business Correspondence Read these instructions carefully. There is no peer review for this project. Your final Project 2 is due at the end of this unit. Overview In working with clients or colleagues, it’s imperative to strike the right balance in tone, arrangement and content. In some ways, short correspondence and communication (letters and emails) is the most important on-the-job writing you will do. The correspondence portfolio is your opportunity to demonstrate effective business writing through examples of everyday business communication. For this project you will demonstrate your ability to apply a variety of writing strategies to specific situations by writing three messages (two internal messages and one e-mail to an external contact) in response to the situations provided below. You will also include a cover memo written to your instructor that outlines the challenges you faced and strategies you used in completing the messages. Because these documents address such specific situations, student examples are not provided. However, BCE Chapters 7, 8 and 9 will provide useful models for format and tone. Specific Scenarios for Your Correspondence Scenario 1: Vacation Day Policy You are the President of Newpex Consulting Firm, and you are concerned about the high level of turnover in company employees. After reviewing data from employee exit interviews and HR, you have determined that employees who leave the firm after only a few years often report high levels of stress, burnout, or “needing an extended break” as a reason for leaving. As one part of an effort to address the problem of employees overworking, you’ve decided to revise the company’s current vacation policy. (Your decision is partly based on a 2013 study jointly conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and the U.S. Travel Association which showed that a strong majority of human resource professionals thought vacation time impacted creativity (70%), employee engagement (68%), staying with the organization longer (60%), and taking fewer sick days (58%).) Currently Newpex’s policy allows employees to take paid time off (PTO) based on number of years of employment: 5 vacation days for employees with fewer than 3 years of employment; 10 vacation days for employees with between 3 and 5 years of employment; 15 days for employees with between 5 and 10 years of employment, and 20 days for employees with more than 10 years of employment. The current policy also allows employees to rollover vacation days at the end of the year. Data from HR indicated that the average employee had 23 days of accumulated (unused) PTO. Further, when employees left the firm, they received a payout for unused vacation days, at a rate of $350/day. You’ve concluded that the current policy doesn’t incentivize employees to use their vacation time. You’ve thus decided to announce a new vacation policy. Going into effect immediately, employees with fewer than 10 years of employment will receive 15 days of vacation per year, and employees with more than 10 years will receive 20 days per year. The amount of rollover and payout will also change: employees can rollover a maximum of 5 days per year, and cannot accumulate more than 25 vacation days total. Employees will no longer earn cash payouts from unused PTO after January 1, 2022. Employees who have currently accumulated vacation days in excess of the allowed 25 will receive a cash payout for those days; to receive the payout, employees must submit a request form to the HR office no later than December 15, 2021. Write an email to the company that informs them of the new policy and that helps bolster a positive attitude toward this change. Scenario 2: Tuition Reimbursement Policy You are the president of Surego Chemicals and Hardware company, and your business has been declining in the last few years due to competition from larger regional companies. As one measure to help offset this decline in profits, you (in consultation with HR) have decided that the company can no longer afford to continue its current tuition reimbursement program, and it will be discontinued immediately. The tuition reimbursement policy had been instituted over a decade ago. It allowed employees taking classes relevant to their career development to be reimbursed for up to two classes per semester if they received grades of B or higher. Currently, 20 employees are taking advantage of the program. You need to inform all company employees that this program will be discontinued immediately. Employees who are *currently* enrolled and taking courses will be reimbursed for the present semester. Write an email informing employees of this change. Scenario 3: Communicating with an External Vendor You are the owner of the Park City Brewhouse, a local restaurant that has recently started using mobile point-of-sale systems; these systems allow customers to pay their check directly to a server on a tablet, rather than having to walk to the register (or wait for the server to process their check and receipt). You integrated the system to speed up customer turnover, and also reduce the need for lines at a register. You purchased the app and hardware for this system from the vendor SaleSpeed, who supplied tablets, electronic card readers, and use of their app for a monthly payment. Recently Ella Ginsberg, a representative of SaleSpeed, reached out to you to encourage you to upgrade to a newer version of the app that includes improved functionality for tracking sales; this upgrade is optional, and would require you to increase your monthly payments for the app by 10%. You are interested in this upgraded plan; however, you’ve been dissatisfied with how SaleSpeed’s electronic card readers function. Servers complain that they’re unreliable and sometimes don’t work. You’ve previously reached out to SaleSpeed’s technical support and customer service about this and been told “they are working on the issue” and that they hoped to have newer models of the readers available as upgrades within the next two months, and that you’d be notified when these were available for purchase. In your email response to Ms. Ginsburg, your challenge is to restate your complaint about the card readers and request either a refund on the card readers or a discount on your monthly payment. A Note on These Scenarios: The specific details (background context, reasons, specific policy language, etc.) given for each of these scenarios is obviously somewhat minimal. In developing your response to these scenarios, you are welcome to imagine/"make up"/fill in whatever details you deem necessary to make your responses seem effective and realistic. However, your responses shouldn't change the basic "facts" given in these scenarios. Cover Memo Guidelines In addition to writing three pieces of correspondence that respond to each of the three scenarios, your final draft should include a cover memo (addressed to your instructor). In your memo, please: Include three distinct sections that describe your choices for each of the above scenarios. For each scenario, briefly describe the writing strategies and rhetorical reasoning behind your writing. Specifically, please address the following questions: What were your goals for your audience for this message? (What did you want to accomplish as a result of this message? What did you want your audience to believe, feel, and/or do?) Remember, you may have multiple goals, such as taking a specific action, feeling positively about you/the company, understanding the requirements of a policy, reducing the need for further communication, etc. What strategies did you use to accomplish this goal? Draw the strategies and frameworks covered in BCE and that we discussed in class to describe your choices. For example, was your approach direct or indirect? How did you organize your message? Did you use AIDA? How did you use logic or emotion to appeal to the audience? What kind of tone were you aiming for? How did you focus on the positive? How did you work to build or maintain relationships? Explain why you saw these as appropriate and effective strategies to use to achieve your goals for the audience. Evaluation Criteria Adaptation and Organization. The responses demonstrate an understanding and effective application of genre conventions for everyday business communication. Organizational strategies are clear, effective and appropriate. The writer understands organizational strategies and is able to adapt them to specific rhetorical situations. Content. The writer includes specific, focused requests, explanations, goodwill, and/or instructions with appropriate use of buffer or context, when needed. Evidence to support requests or claims is clear, accessible and written from the reader’s perspective. Style, Tone and Design. The messages are correct and concise. Tone is appropriate to the rhetorical situation but is in all ways professional, approachable, conversational and tailored to the specific audience. Design conventions are followed accurately.