In the workplace, you will often make decisions about communication as well as develop and deliver different types of professional communications. You will need to be able to assess the effect of social media and other digital technologies on business communication. In addition, you will need to be able to incorporate technology into your professional communication, using best practices, to create different communication artifacts. For this assessment, you will develop responses to professional business scenarios, which will demonstrate your ability to apply best practices for composing, revising, and delivering professional communication artifacts.

Preparation

Select 3 of the following scenarios, which were provided in Week 4:

• Solicitation for a Charity: You are writing a solicitation for a donation to a charity for animal rescue in your local area. Donations have been down in recent times due to issues such as COVID and inflation. The rescue organization is overflowing with surrendered animals and needs money to feed and house them while trying to find them new homes. Your goal is to engage your reader enough to read through your solicitation and to respond with some money to help the animal rescue.

• Employee Improvement Request: You are the manager of an employee at a delivery service who is not meeting job requirement expectations. Employee J has been showing up late for work, missing deliveries, and recently received a traffic citation. Your goal is to motivate the employee to make a positive change in their work behavior. You and your employee do not work at the same location.

• Complaint: You are writing to a company to complain about a shirt you ordered online that does not meet your needs. The design has started to peel off the shirt after one washing. You did not wear the item until after the return date had passed, so you didn’t notice the issue until recently. Your goal is to motivate the company to satisfy your request for a replacement or get your money back despite being against their normal policy.

• Advertise Your Brand: You have just received your Personal Training and Zumba certifications and have been hired by a local gym that is part of a national corporation. You need to encourage gym members to attend your Zumba classes and hire you to do personal training. You think that providing information on the benefits of weight training and cardio exercise is a great way to build your following.

• Circulate a Business Report: You have just completed a report about sales forecasts for your company’s products that you believe would be of great interest to not only your Sales Department manager, but also to other department leaders such as Manufacturing, Procurement, and Marketing, and even those in charge at the international corporate headquarters. You would like their buy-in to make some changes in corporate structure to meet the challenges that this increase in sales will present to the company.

• Update Your Clients and Share Changes in Health Benefits Coverage: It’s time for the annual health coverage enrollment, and you manage a number of companies that purchase their health insurance through your insurance agency. You need to inform Human Resources at these companies that some coverages are no longer available, and there has been a price increase across the board. You believe that your insurance agency still offers a competitive package, and your goal is to retain as many of these companies as customers as you can.

• Reply to a Job Ad: You have located an ad for a job that you want to apply for. You believe that your qualifications match those listed in the job ad. You need to show the employer that you are an excellent candidate for the job they are advertising.

Consider the following questions for each scenario you selected:

• Who is the audience for the business communication?
• What is the context for the business communication?
• What type of formatting is used for this communication channel?
• What types of resources will you use to review your business communication to ensure it is grammatically correct before finalizing it for delivery to the intended audience?