Who Done It?Business Communications Assignments For this writing task, you’ll need to respond to the following scenario: Who are you?

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Who Done It?Business Communications Assignments For this writing task, you’ll need to respond to the following scenario: Who are you? You work as department head in the information technology (IT) department at First Federal Bank. Part of your job is to conduct an ongoing assessment of risk for the institution and to recommend proper controls. Banking systems should be able to quickly collect and edit information, summarize results, and promptly correct any errors. You have identified a possible threat to “timeliness” of information. You have received reports from tellers that customers have been complaining more often lately of bounced checks. They have been bringing in their checkbook ledgers and bank statements, and there have been a consistent and steady stream of complaints about deposits made between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. that do not seem to post to accounts by the end of the business day. You have conducted an examination and feel befuddled since you just installed a new system that advertised itself as quick, accurate, and reliable. This is terrible! The system cost a lot of money and you fought hard for it. You researched and recommended this system and pushed for it because it had so many internal controls and neat features for the bank and its tellers. It has decreased time by five minutes to complete closing procedures and it runs an auto-save every hour, which saves an additional step for the tellers. You have spent a lot of time training the staff and have put up with a lot of teasing about the aches and pains of new technology. You feel badly for the new tellers, many of whom are older, because the bank has hired more part-timers with experience; but you feel confident that once the tellers get used to this system they will really like it. “Don’t sweat it,” says Whitney, your co-worker. “It’s not the bank’s fault about the bounced checks. You know people–they complain all the time. You see our new ad campaign, ‘Play Nice?’ Well, where do you think that came from? People just like to blame their mistakes on the bank and get ugly with us.” You passed it off as that until yesterday when your own check bounced. You take advantage of the bank policy of no fees for bounced checks for employees, and then you get into gear! What’s happening today? You conduct an “information flow audit” and then a “technology audit.” You discover that many of the tellers have been running the 2 p.m. reconciliation procedures in the incorrect order. Instead of running close, register, consolidate/merge, and then post, many tellers have been running close, register, post, ending with consolidate/merge. The problem is, once the teller hits the post button, there is nothing to consolidate and merge! You also discover that the prompt screen for consolidate/merge has not been consistently appearing and that the tellers assumed that, because the system did not ask them to deal with it, the system was doing it automatically–especially since it does so many other things automatically! Some of the more experienced tellers have said that on the rare occasion when the screen did appear, they couldn’t see the icon very well and admitted that it’s possible they didn’t place the cursor squarely on the icon when they clicked the mouse. You take this issue to your boss, Terry Woodall, who is horrified and instructs you to “get on it right away.” You get your IT team on the problem and fix the system by (1) insuring the correct prompt screen appears and by (2) enlarging the consolidate/merge icon and placing it in a more prominent area of the screen. What do you need to do? You tell your boss you have fixed the technical problem. She asks that you, as department head of IT, communicate to the tellers how IT has fixed the problem and what the tellers need to do. This information will be posted in the break room and also be circulated immediately to the tellers. Craft the body of that document. Develop a response that includes examples and evidence to support your ideas, and which clearly communicates the required message to your audience. Organize your response in a clear and logical manner as appropriate for the genre of writing. Use well-structured sentences, audience-appropriate language, and correct conventions of standard American English.

examine the “Missed Pickup Means a Missed Opportunity for 30 Seeking a Fellowship,” provided in this week’s resources

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Assignment: Development Plan

The best-laid plans are always subject to disruption, especially when outside parties, tight deadlines, and too many people are involved. When employees do not understand their jobs’ connections to the organization’s outcomes, sometimes managers have to redirect and refocus the employees. This week’s project will help us clean up a mess caused when an outside vendor and two internal employees dropped the ball on mailing an important package by a critical deadline.

To prepare for this Assignment, you will examine the “Missed Pickup Means a Missed Opportunity for 30 Seeking a Fellowship,” provided in this week’s resources. Then, you will prepare needs assessments to analyze two employees’ current skill levels, and a gap analyses on what should have happened, and what did happen in the scenario. Based on the needs assessment, you will address how to improve the performance of the mailroom specialist and the administrative assistant in their current jobs. Finally, you will create two performance improvement plans that outline for both employees their expected behaviors, metrics for improvement, steps they will take, consequences for not meeting the plan’s expectations, and their managers’ role, according to an established form.

Note that PIPs are a bit different from individual development plans (IDP), which are career management documents. Using an IDP, an employee creates a plan to develop skills over time, to prepare for new job opportunities, or promotions. Rarely are IDPs properly used to correct a missed step in work processes. PIPs are used when mistakes happen that are so egregious that the manager needs to put the worker on notice that the behavior must stop; they give the employee a plan of action.

As HR manager, draft the PIPs, along with instructions to the manager on how he or she should conduct a meeting with the employees about improvements and consequences. Your paper should include the following:

1.    Introduction, briefly summarizing what happened.

2.    Needs assessment with gap analysis (for both employees).

3.    PIPs for both employees (create two Appendices for these – Appendix A and B).

4.    A set of instructions for the manager on what s/he should do to implement the PIPs.

5.    No conclusion is required – this is a work-based document, parts of which will go into the employees’ files.

Use the course resources to assist you with this paper. Include a reference and title page. Use APA.

Describe a scene that you remember where you expressed yourself emotionally through physical actions. Comment on whether these actions enhanced the communication or got in the way.

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Discussen 1

Employee empowerment is a philosophy that enables employees to make decisions about their jobs. It helps employees own their work and take responsibility for their results. If you are the leader of your organization, how would you empower your employees? Provide some specific examples of possible ways to empower your employees. Do you think employee empowerment is important? Why or why not?

Discussen 2

What kind of bodily reactions do you experience when you are expressing high emotion? How can people tell you are angry, nervous, and so on? Watch these two clips from the Discovery/TLC program American Chopper. Notice how the father and son react to high emotion.

  • American Chopper FightSearch American Chopper Fight, Discovery Channel
  • American Chopper: I Robot Bike Argument 2Search AmericanCh0PPer:I Robot Bike Argument 2

Describe a scene that you remember where you expressed yourself emotionally through physical actions. Comment on whether these actions enhanced the communication or got in the way.

Realizing how high emotion affects all of us on a daily basis, how would you react if you were working in the same environment as the people in the clips? Create a Mind Map or info graphic that defines at least 7 to 10 characteristics and responsibilities of at least four potential roles of human resources representatives within an organization.

In no less than 150 words, create an initial post that describes your Johari Window, how you operate within your self-perceived dominant quadrant, and the effects that this has on your communication.

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The importance of learning more about ourselves is critical to our success in the communication. It is also critical to reaching our goals, becoming independent, and building a bridge for the future. We need to become more open, confident, and comfortable with who we are. We need to build our self-esteem because we have a lot to give to the world and our families. Everyone is not out to get us, and in fact they may have good feedback for us if we are open to it.

Using a blank piece of printer paper, draw the Johari Window large enough that you can write in each quadrant (use the entire paper). Now spend a few moments considering each quadrant and determine the quadrant that you believe you operate from most often, why you do so, and how it effects your communication, and life in general.

Without disclosing too much personal information, share your thoughts on the matter in the discussion board as follows:

  1. In no less than 150 words, create an initial post that describes your Johari Window, how you operate within your self-perceived dominant quadrant, and the effects that this has on your communication.
  2. After your initial post, respond to at least three of your classmates in a meaningful way (see rubric).

Before you post, be sure you read the rubric so you know how your instructor will evaluate your work.

This is an sample.

The five traits that best describe me are: creative, leader, kind, family-oriented, religious.

My Johari Window would topple over on the left side if it was an actual cube weighted with each attribute. Both boxes for my open self and hidden self contain long lists of traits about me. My dominant quadrant twenty years ago would have been the open self but today it is the hidden self. I mainly operate from the hidden self quadrant of my Johari’s Window because I have learned over the years not to trust people with my entire self. I dole out small portions intentionally to keep people at a distance. I think of it as a coping mechanism because I have experienced too much hurt from letting people into my world. By operating from my hidden window, my communication has become more calculated with friends, family and colleagues because people will take information that you share with them and use it against you. I know that I have become cynical in my 40s but I am fine with who I am. Instead of crying when I am hurt or shouting when I am angry, I try not to have any public reaction and instead wait to share my true emotions with my husband. This is always done behind closed doors in my home, where I feel safe. The person that I show to others as my open self is the real me but in a diluted form. In that window I listed that others see me as funny, smart, a great mom, kind, a leader and a great cook. These are the attributes that I feel comfortable showing. Some of the attributes in my hidden self box are depressed, afraid of being alone, anxiety about my son’s health, and other facts that I won’t share in this forum. I believe that the way that I approach communication still allows people to get to know me, on the surface that is…