Assignment Task:
For this paper, imagine you are a corporate communication manager in a large technology company that is implementing a new, ongoing training requirement for your technical support employees. This training is intended to keep them current with a frequently updated AI product similar to ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing, or Google Bard (it is not one of these however). Rather than draft a memo to inform employees about this new program, you will come up with a way to deliver this information that is more personal, positive, and supportive. Here are the details that you need to communicate:
1. There is a required quarterly full-day training that all technical support employees will participate in every February, May, August, and November.
2. In the other eight months of the year, all employees must complete one training credit per month from a selection of full- and half-credit training options. Full-credit trainings should take about four hours to complete, and half-credit trainings should take about 2 hours.
3. This new policy takes effect in the next quarter, and the first training covers the training program itself.
4. A website listing available trainings will be available at the beginning of the upcoming quarter. (You can use the URL techcorp.com/trainings in your paper if you like, but this is not a working link.)
5. Interested employees can propose trainings that they will design and present, for which they can also receive training credit. A full credit is given for the initial design and presentation, and a half-credit will be given each additional time they present the training. Employee-designed trainings may not be offered more than once per quarter. The link to propose a training is at the bottom of the training catalog website.
Your options for the message elements used to deliver this information include, but are not limited to
- Videos
- Infographics
- Interactives
- Web pages
- Live presentation with slide deck
You can use a combination of the elements above, as well as other ideas you come up with. The delivery plan you come up with should also include a way for employees to ask questions and share feedback that you should identify and explain in your paper.
Remember that the training program is already completely planned and designed, and your task is to plan a way to inform employees about it. Do not plan a training program in the paper. This paper is also not intended to be the actual communication to employees. You are supposed to tap into what you are learning in class to plan messages to explain the new training program in ways that seem more personal (or maybe INTERpersonal) than a memo.
What should be submitted for the Week 3 paper is first an overview that explains in general terms your two or three message elements. Next, you should explain these message elements in some detail, especially in terms of what they would look like and how they will be distributed. You should probably also identify the tools you will use to create these messages, for example, PowerPoint or a video editor. Next, you need to justify why you chose these two or three message elements using evidence from the course text or other resources that you find. Somewhere in your paper, you should explain a way that employees will be able to send feedback and ask questions about the training program once the messages have been disseminated.
In your paper,
1. Explain two or three elements in a "campaign" to communicate this information.
2. Describe your concepts as thoroughly as possible. Use a heading for each element and describe each separately.
3. Justify the elements in your plan in terms of why you chose them and why they will yield better outcomes than a memo would.
4. Support your justifications with at least 1 credible source for each element proposed in addition to the course text. Remember that your general goal here is to consider communication that uses technology to share information in ways that feel more personal than a text-based memo. You may include illustrations as well if this will help explain your plan or its elements more fully.
5. Describe how employees will be able to ask questions and share feedback about the training.