Week Five, Response Three: "Bad Writing is Destroying Your Company's Productivity"
INSTRUCTIONS: Before you begin, please read the following article: "Bad Writing is Destroying Your Company's Productivity" by Josh Bernoff. Once you've finished, read the following commentary and follow the Blogger instructions found on Cobra to post a comment answering the questions in the final paragraph. Please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or difficulties posting.
We've all witnessed it: a moment of confusion, misunderstanding, or frustration at school or in the workplace caused by poor communication, or just plain 'ole bad business writing. This week, we're moving on from memos and discussing business letters, including the delivery of bad news.
In the article posted above, Josh Bernoff discusses how bad writing, especially in a business or professional setting, can not only annoy employees, but actually harm the productivity of the company. He provides a variety of reasons—everything from leadership to trust—encouraging employers and employees alike to consider how they communicate in the workplace.
For this week's response, I want you to share a moment in which bad writing or communication created some type of strife in your school or workplace. Once you've described the moment, take it a step further: why did it cause confusion, frustration, a loss of leadership, mistrust, etc.? How could the moment have been changed to foster a strong, healthy, communicative environment? Be specific, and remember that the point of this exercise is to pinpoint how bad writing and communication can be turned around to create a more positive school or workplace environment.
Once, a general manager posted a very long letter in the employee break room, and it upset and/or frustrated a lot of workers. It basically explained we were not allowed to eat the free breakfast provided by the hotel while we are on the clock, only before work and if we are on a break. I believe that rule is totally acceptable, however he went on and on about how free breakfast would be taken away if we could not follow the rules. The way he worded his letter was as if he was talking to a bunch of toddlers, and you could sense some attitude from him. I believe the manager should have been more specific, and more polite. As a manager, you influence your employees. His bad attitude caused some employees to have attitudes as well, which may not have made our customers feel so welcome. This was a lack of leadership on the manager's part.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your assessment on how a general manager should treat their staff. There are some businesses that you can walk in and know right away if the employees are happy and pleased with their jobs. It can be difficult when there is a free meal or other type of service being offered to employees. In my experience things like this are often held over employees heads. It is shown as a priveledge and is used as leverage or possible punishment, which I don't think is fair. In a past job, my coworkers and I were allowed to eat leftovers from the cafeteria for free. Often we did not eat there and brought our own lunches. When we did decide to take part in the meal, the cooks and dietary staff would get angry and eventually asked the managers to change the policy. Even though we were only eating what was leftover from the cafeteria and not creating any extra work for the cooks, it still created a problem. The staff understood the problem, but I felt that the managers could have done a better job at resolving the conflict.
DeleteOne of my previous supervisors was a very passive aggressive writer. I am a CNA and I was working in a nursing home at the time. The Director of Nursing would leave notes in our workstation that we would be asked to initial after we read them. They would often detail a complaint made by a resident or resident's family member about someone on the staff. For example, if one employee was seen taking a break when they weren't supposed to. Instead of pulling that one employee aside to address their behavior, the Director would write a note to the entire staff and post it up where everyone could see it. It would detail what we did wrong first and then end with what would happen if someone was caught doing this. This bred animousity among the staff. It was a simple thing, yet we all felt we were constantly being dogged and harrassed because of the actions of someone else. Because of this we did not grow as coworkers, but instead looked at eachother as possible sources of guilt by association. No one wanted to be friends.
ReplyDeleteThis was a hostile workplace in a place where we should have solid communication. People's lives depended on us, literally, but we were unable to work together.
I think that the Director of Nursing should have built on our strengths and emphasized a more compassionate and friendly environment. I have worked in places where the CNA's were like sisters and helped eachother care for the residents. We had daily meetings and all sat around laughing and chatting about the daily happenings. We did not bash eachother for our mistakes, but rather expected the best and focused on providing proper care to our residents.
I feel like we worked in the same work place just by reading your post. I also have a DON who only focuses on the negatives. We have a no cell phone policy with signs posted everywhere except where there is a "cell phone zone" poster, but as soon as cell phones are taken out and being used everyone gets an email saying that there is a no cell phone policy and anyone caught on their phone will be terminated. Instead of pulling that one person aside, like you said, to speak to them. When one person ruins something for everyone, it definitely doesn't create a happy environment and doesn't exactly make people enjoy their job.
DeleteAt a past waitressing job, we had new a General manager roughly every three months for a year, each one came with his or her own set of rules. However, instead of sending out new copies of their version of the employee handbook each time, they each managed to offer no update of their specific changes to the handbook. All my coworkers and I would continue to do things that were approved in the past handbook but because each manager failed to send out a copy of their own regulations, we were constantly getting in trouble for things that we'd previously known to be allowed. Examples being, wearing our choice of sneakers, or having knee ripped jeans, or carrying your cell phone. Because none of the managers informed any of us of their new changes until they caught someone violating their new rule, people got fed up of getting yelled at for not having any knowledge of a change and left their positions.
ReplyDeleteAbbi,
DeleteI also experienced really bad management at a restaurant I previously worked at. I can see how frustrating it may have been for you and your co-workers to get new manager so often. It can be hard enough to deal and get use to one manager let alone a new one every three months. This just goes to show that communication is key to have a successful workplace and avoid any conflicts with in it. What these managers should have done was sent out a revised version of their new rules and make sure that it was sent out to all workers and addressed on to them as well on that manager's first day of work.
At my former employment, working at an insurance office. My boss, would send out the most negative and hateful messages. Some would almost deem threatening and demeaning. Things from you have to do this by Friday, or I can no longer guarantee you will have a job. Or if an insured person, chose to transfer from our office to another office, it was always our fault, it never had anything to do with her. And she would say things like this in the email "Also, you are responsible for accepting blame and responsibility for "insured's name" transferring out of my office. You need to use the weekend to think thru your approach to him in apologizing and asking him to transfer back to our office." Actually that's an exact wording from an email from her, other then I deleted the name for confidentiality reasons. And then in the next line she would say things like "I care about you and very much like you around". But she always focused on the negatives. She would yell at us. She was just the true meaning of a bad boss. An unprofessional, with lack of communication. And even when we seemed to do things correctly she would still find things wrong. That's why I left finally, I couldn't handle it anymore.
ReplyDeleteA manager sets the tone in the workplace. I know how hard and frustrating it is to work for/with somebody so negative and always pushing the blame on to others. No matter how hard you work, some people are just never satisfied. I used to have a boss and it was like walking on egg shells around her. She was very rude and negative. Luckily, she left before I had to.
DeleteI am a CNA at a nursing home and we communicate mostly by email. You would think is a quick and easy way to communicate. However, when you click on an email to read it, only a small section at the bottom of the screen pops up. You literally have to read the emails 2-3 sentences at a time. Upper management is always sending long emails so the time it takes to read them is ridiculous. We recently got a new director of nursing(DON) at my job and her emails are always so long and negative about things that aren't being done or aren't being done right. We got an email the other day where she told us, "come on, we need to get it together" while talking about the tidiness of residents rooms. Not only does she sound very unprofessional, every other word is misspelled. She also praised a group of people for doing something they did not do which caused a lot of animosity between the 2 different rotations of people we have working. The DON before her would not communicate with us except through emails. She did not like to be the bad guy in certain situations so if she had something she needed to talk to people about, she would send someone else to relay the information. In the end, things always got twisted around and she ended up with more problems out of co-workers.
ReplyDeleteYour DON sounds like a nightmare! I've worked in many nursing homes and the ones that work the best are where the CNA's and nurses have direct communication with the DON. Someone who gives clear, positive guidance and builds the staff up. Email simply does not work, especially if the format is like you described. There is a high turnover rate at nursing homes and assisted living facilities. There are so many safety protocals and legal issues to work out. It takes strong leadership to make it all work.
DeleteAs we speak on this weeks discussion I and we all know that communication is very key. Without communication nothing cannot be done. There's been a time at work where we had a task to do but there wasn't a clear saying of what was need to be done and how to be done. Also, in sports communication is key because you need to communicate to achieve the purpose and goal in the game because team work and leadership plays a huge role in it. In sports the leader of the task must be loud and clear and make sure everyone understands what is trying to be done. So speaking for myself one time I didn't communicate with everybody on the court about a defensive assignment, it created so much frustration after the other team accomplished their goal which was scoring the ball. Communication is very important.
ReplyDeleteDuring my time working as a hostess at a cuban restaurant, we had about three managers and then there was the owner of the restaurant who would stop by at certain hours of the day. Every week the owner of the restaurant would send out a text message to all employees about their days and hours for that week. These days and hours were typically the same every week the only issue was that when someone did not get any hours for that week they would not be sent out a text of the schedule at all. Also when this would happen we would contact the three people that were supposedly our managers. Those managers however, were basically not really managers, they would always just tell us to wait for the owner to come around the restaurant if there was an issue or to contact the owner for any questions about our hours. This was very frustrating at times because the owner was not someone who could be contacted so easily. Getting our paychecks was also an issue because apparently none of the managers were able to hand them out only the owner was. Therefore, I think it was pretty safe to say that this workplace had no management what so ever. Everyone seemed to be pretty lost when it came to our uniforms, restaurant rules, and tip distribution. I had this job for only about two months and then quit along with a few other workers. It got to a point where our wages were a couple dollars lower than minimum wage and there wasn't any tips that I or any of the buss boys knew of.
ReplyDeleteIn high school, I can remember a specific incident where the teacher had assigned a research paper and had handed us a rubric to follow as a guideline. As my classmates and I had been working on this paper for many weeks, our teacher decided to give us a new rubric to follow. This angered many of my classmates, they felt like they had been writing a paper for many weeks for no reason. This caused a lot of distrust between the students and the teacher for the next paper because they were unsure if he was going to switch rubrics last minute on us again. This moment could have been changed by the teacher not sugar coating the fact that we spent the last couple weeks writing for no reason and told us that he was going to switch rubrics. He also could have communicated with us earlier on that he was going to change the rubric. I learned a valuable lesson during this schooling experience. Communication is key.
ReplyDeleteI remember this happening to me as well very unprofessional
DeleteI previously worked for a State Farm call center and the rules were constantly changing. There used to be a lot of people who would call off work and so our policy changed saying that if you call off the day of without a replacement you would get fired. However, this rule changed month by month depending on the attendance. So for example, if we had good attendance as a whole we could call of without fear of getting fired until the manager felt like too many people were calling off. Then we would switch policies again to the "call off, get fired." I wish there was a set policy in place.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like horrible management. I know that companies have to remain flexible in order to get things done, but constantly changing a policy that determines whether or not people get fired is ridiculous. It's bad for morale and it would probably lead to a higher than necessary turn-over rate.
DeleteWhen I was stationed in Germany I sponsored two different soldiers who were moving duty stations from the U.S to Germany. Moving duty stations is complicated and stressful enough as it is, but when the new base is in a foreign country, it adds another degree of difficulty which is why we had a sponsorship program. For each of the soldiers, I sent the standard boilerplate sponsorship e-mail and then I added a few paragraphs of my own that I put a decent amount of time and energy into. I was blown away at how little effort went into, and how poorly written both of their replies were, especially since they both knew that they were speaking to their future boss. Neither of them provided all the information that I had requested in order for me to start getting necessary paperwork started for them, nor gave any explanation as to why they were missing the requested information. One of them treated the interaction like it was a text message from a friend. He didn't even spell out full words (R u goin 2 B picking me up from airport or I hav take taxi). So before I even met these two individuals, I had zero confidence in their ability to conduct themselves professionally, and found myself wanting to scrutinize everything that they did. They both had a pretty rough start in the unit for a lot of different reasons. On a positive note, everyone I worked with got a good laugh out of the emails.
ReplyDeletevery detailed. I know someone at my job that does the exact same
DeleteI recently attended a military high school and the principal was a bit aggressive with the choice of wording in his announcements. He use to send out discipline action letters for uniform infraction and they were basically targeting everyone as a whole instead of having sympathy for those of us who wore our clothes correctly. There were parents and students trying to reach out to him in regard to the letters/announcements and he would then let them know that's not how he intended his message.
ReplyDeleteThis caused chaos because we felt as if the whole battalion was being punished like kids for individual action this could have been changed if he would had been specific and less aggressive in his letter.
I agree with you in regards of him being a bit aggressive. However with attending a military high school I feel that he handled the situation by calling all students out instead of individually because he might feel that when one student fails they all fail.
DeleteI recently called into work using a sick day. While calling in my Major informed me that I would need to get a doctors note. After seeing the doctor I informed him that I would need a note for work. After returning to work and giving them the note they proceeded to tell me that the note would not be good enough and that I needed the doctor to write more about why I was unable to work on that day. I felt that it was all around bad communication because my Major didn't state exactly what needed to be on the doctors note. therefore I think that if the Major would have given me the exact details that needed to be on the note then this situation wouldn't have happened. Another solution could be sending out a memo regarding the information that will be needed on a doctors note when calling in sick.
ReplyDelete