question archive Joanne supervised 36 professionals in 6 city libraries
Joanne supervised 36 professionals in 6 city libraries
Subject:CommunicationsPrice:3.87 Bought8
Joanne supervised 36 professionals in 6 city libraries. To cut the costs of unnecessary overtime, she issued this one-sentence memo to her staff:
When workloads increase to a level requiring hours in excess of an employee's regular duty assignment, and when such work is estimated to require a full shift of eight (8) hours or more on two (2) or more consecutive days, even though unscheduled days intervene, an employee's tour of duty shall be altered so as to include the hours when such work must be done, unless an adverse impact would result from such employee's absence from his previously scheduled assignment.
After the 36 copies were sent out, Joanne's office received 26 phone calls asking what the memo meant. What the 10 people who didn't call about the memo thought is uncertain. It took a week to clarify the new policy.
Questions
1. Define the rhetorical situation. Who is communicating to whom about what, how and why? What was the goal of the communication in each case?
2. Identify the communication error (poor task or audience analysis? Use of inappropriate language or style? Poor organization or formatting if information? Other?
3. Explain what costs/losses were incurred by this problem.
4. Identify possible solutions ot stratifies that would have prevented the problem, and what be benefits would be derived from implementing solutions or preventing the problem
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Answer:
1. Joanne was communicating with a team of professionals working in six city libraries. Her goal was to issue new instruction regarding how the employees would handle overtime work. Her aim was to inform the professionals that they would be required to work for extra full days whenever the estimated amount of extra work requires full shifts to completion.
2. The communication errors identified are inappropriate language and poor formatting. The librarian's message was incoherent, used wrong wording, and had a long sentence structure, which reduced clarity and precision.
3. The costs associated with the communication error include confusion on the side of professionals who received the memo. They could not decode the memo and hence the memo's instructions were not executed. The team of professionals was also uncertain about the newly implemented working policy, which negatively affected their job execution and planning of schedules.
4. Several solutions that would have prevented the problem include the use of proper sentence length. Long sentences such as those used by Joanne reduce clarity and make decoding of the message complex. The use of short sentences improves precision and understandability. Precise wording such as the use of short words instead of long phrases would have prevented the problem, this is by preventing misinterpretation.
