BUSN20017 | Assignment 1 Effective Business Communications | Effective Business Communications

Task Description

General Information:

• This assessment accounts for 20% of your grade. The assessment is due in Week 5 Monday, April 2nd at 5.00 pm AEST
  ·The essay must be between 700-1000 words in length.
  · Two points will be deducted for those essays that are over or under by 200 words.
  · There is a late deduction of one point per day after the due date.
  · The essay must include a cover page that contains your name, student number, resident campus, assessment title, and lecturer and/or tutor.
  · You will not need to include references for this assignment. This does not mean that you do not need to do research. You will need to do some background reading to enable you to understand the problems to provide logical and effective solutions to these problems.

Task description:

In this task, you will write a memo in response to the case study provided below. The memo must be logically structured, free of grammatical errors, professionally styled; in addition, follow the writing conventions for memos as discussed in the lecture. This assessment is aimed to assess your written communication skills. Students who do not perform well will be highly recommended to consider training with Academic Learning Centre (ALC). The assessment is aimed to ensure that you have an advanced level of writing skills before you proceed into other units in the postgraduate course. The assessment will also assess the integrity of your work. Given all students will do the same assessment, plagiarism will be monitored to ensure that your submitted work is original and not purchased or copied from other students. Where assessments are found to be similar, penalties may apply in accord with University policy.

                                                                                                          

Case study:

Data Solutions is a medium sized company that sells data management software. The company is based in Brisbane and has offices in both Melbourne and Sydney. After conducting an organization-wide communication audit it has become apparent that external communication processes, such as marketing and promotions of the products, are effective and cost-effective. However, the audit has highlighted that there are problems with the internal communication processes. Specifically, the problems are as follows:
1. Employees are not always choosing the appropriate means of communication (traditional or digital) for the context and the audience.
2. The internal organizational communication network is limited and partial, with some groups being left out.
3. Inter-organisational meetings are ineffective.
You are the director of the organisation and you are sending out a memo to your employees.

The memo should reflect the following structure:

1. Opening
   a. To:
   b. From:
   c. Date:
   d. Subject:
   2. Objectives and background
   a. Describe the communication audit process
   b. Specific purpose
   c. General purpose
   3. Problems
   a. Problem one—quantitative and qualitative significance
   b. Problem two—quantitative and qualitative significance
   c. Problem three—quantitative and qualitative significance
   4. Action steps to solve the problems
   a. Problem one
   b. Problem two
   c. Problem three
   5. Closing
   a. Briefly outline a synopsis of the memo
   b. Explain the benefit of compliance to the employee and/or organisation.
   c. Offer assistance and provide contact details