Workplace Cultures Project

unit 3: workplace cultures report

A workplace culture report invites you to learn more about your future profession and offers you an opportunity to make an important contact in your field.

In this assignment, you will work with a real professional contact to better understand the communication practices and demands of your selected profession. For this project, you will create an email of intent, a resume, report, and a thank-you email. This project aims to provide you with the opportunity to learn more about your field while making a significant contact.

In this assignment you will learn to

Analyze professional cultures and social contexts to determine the purposes that written documents serve.
Comprehend the construction of professional and/or organizational identities through persuasive and ethical writing practices.
Evaluate and use information resources to develop and produce ethically responsible professional documents.
Use appropriate research methods to meet project goals.
Develop strategies for planning, researching, and developing documents that effectively respond to professional situations.
Develop strategies for written and/or oral communication with peers, instructors, users and/or clients that foster an ethic of mutual respect and responsibility.

What are the components of the workplace cultures project?
To make the workplace cultures project more manageable, you will be creating an email of intent, resume, report, and thank-you email.

email of intent (5% of your unit 3 grade)
resume (20% of your unit 3 grade)
interview questions and transcript (10% of your unit 3 grade)
report (60% of your unit 1 grade)
thank-you email (5% of your unit 3 grade)
project resources

Remember if you have any questions about these or other project guidelines, do not hesitate to contact me.

top | email of intent | resume | interview questions & transcript | report | thank you email | project resources

What is the email of intent?
To facilitate the development of your workplace cultures report, you must research a site and establish a client contact. You will go through this process following the guidelines here, and then you will draft an email of intent to me advocating your site and client choices.

Your contact person is an important first step in creating a successful report. You should begin by brainstorming a list of sites and organizations related to your chosen profession. Those sites need to be local so that you may visit with a local contact for that organization. After you have brainstormed a list of sites and organizations, begin researching them to narrow down your choices. You want to find a client contact at your selected site, and thus, you will need access to contact information. Use these criteria in selecting a site and contact person:

Site must be local and in a geographical location that affords you access.
Site must be related to your chosen profession and field.
Site must provide you with permission to visit.
Contact person must *not* be a relative or close friend.
Contact person must be a member of your chosen profession.
Contact person must be amenable to a 1-hour interview and follow-up email contact from you.
Contact person must be willing to discuss his or her professional life and communication practices.
Contact person must understand that your visit is for a course project and be willing to help you in achieving the project's goals by providing information.

After you have determined a prioritized list of sites and contacts, you should talk to your contact person explaining the scope of this project and asking for a 1-hour interview. You must explain the tight timeline for the course and secure the interview right away. You also may want to have a back-up client just in case.

How do I develop the content of my email of intent?
Your email should explain your field and profession. Give me a sense of your major, year in school, and future professional ambitions. Then, explain your research process, telling me which sites you considered and how you came to select your chosen site. Provide a description of the site, offering me details about the organization. Provide a URL (if possible) for the site. Outline the professional and project benefits of working with your contact and his or her organization. Tell me what you intend to learn from this client and how you may establish rapport with him or her. Finally, give me the time, date, and location of your interview, and tell me why I should approve this participant.

How do I develop the form of my email of intent?
The email should be from you, listing your full name and your full email address in the "From" line of your message (Be certain that the email address, itself, is professional). You should address the email to me using my formal title--again, use my full name and full email address (kimmehea@u.arizona.edu). The subject line, just as in your memos, should be descriptive and useful.

Your email should follow formal guidelines similar to those for a letter. Here are some more guidelines for formatting your email:

Don't use a colorful background or other stylized font choice--use the default formatting for your email. Many email programs cannot read the elaborate or decorative email message formats.
Greet me formally (i.e., Dr. Kimme Hea). Follow this greeting with a colon or comma.
Create clear paragraphs developing the message as instructed above.
Close the message with "Sincerely" or a similarly professional closing. Be certain, then, to provide your full names and contact information (email addresses, phone #s, preferred calling times if you have restrictions).
Use appropriate capitalization and spelling (spell check your email before sending it).
Write your email of intent telling me why your site and participant choice are best for this project.

How should I prepare my print-based résumé?
The development of your print-based résumé should guided by the Asher readings and our class discussion. Do not use a Word template to design your resume! Keep in mind that a traditional print-based résumé follows a relatively conventional set of guidelines, but those guidelines must be adapted to your own unique situation. That is, your résumé must consider your own strengths as a candidate as well as the principles discussed in our readings.

You need to have your resume completed at least 24 hours in advance of your scheduled interview. The day before your interview, you will email your contact and me (kimmehea@u.arizona.edu) to confirm the day, date, time, and location of your interview. You also will attach your resume to that correspondence for your contact's consideration.

required sections of your résumé
Your resume should include the following sections, but not necessarily in the order provided here. The ordering of your accomplishments should be based upon your best analysis of the job context.

Contact information,
Profile section (Review chapter 8 of Asher),
Education,
Professional Experience,
Activities, Honors, and/or Memberships (or other such category).

Remember you must determine how these sections will be developed and positioned on your résumé, and I would be happy to consult with you about those decisions.

formatting your resume
Your résumé should closely follow the guidelines established in the formatting reference sheet in terms of font choices and white space. The formatting, however, must also be adapted to your particular job search. White paper, black laser jet printing, and a reasonable grid set-up of your résumé, however, are required. Font sizes, emphases, and faces should be selected for readablity, tone, and transferablity. Headings must be used to denote subsections of your résumé, and you should be certain to create a consistent design. Once again, do not use Word templates for your resume--develop the design yourself.

How do I prepare for my contact interview?
Prior to developing your workplace cultures report, you should conduct at least one interview with a member of your future profession. You should be prepared to ask the contact about his or her background in the field (education, career trajectory, on-job training, etc.), his or her duties and responsibilities, his or her workplace communication practices, and other issues related to his or her profession.

Depending upon your contact and the site, you also may want to collect internal and external documents related to the contact's role and your site.

Your goals for this interview are threefold:

1. to gain useful and relevant data about your contact and profession.

2. to guide other aspects of your research process.

3. to establish a professional contact.

developing effective interview questions
As you prepare to conduct your interview, you should be certain to email a confirmation of the day, date, time and location of your scheduled interview. You should attach a copy of your resume to that confirmation. If you want to audio record the interview, you must ask your contact's permission. You also should take notes during the interview in case the audio recorder fails.

The following are points to consider as you draft your interview questions:

As you plan your interview, think about not only the individual questions but also the shape of the interview as a whole.
Avoid asking questions for which you already have adequate answers.
Have at least six well-developed questions, but don't let these questions stifle the natural flow of the conversation.
Listen carefully to the responses and ask follow-up questions based upon the interviewee's interests and concerns.
Avoid questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no.
Avoid asking questions that are too broad.
Avoid starting the interview with questions that are too narrow.
Avoid asking leading questions that assume a particular answer and discourage the interviewee from voicing alternative interests/concerns.

reviewing some sample questions
Concerning communication on the job:

What do you consider professional communication in your job/field? Examples?
What portion of your job involves written communication? (What types?) Verbal communication? (Describe in depth.)
What are some of the constraints placed on your writing in this job?
What technologies affect your written and verbal communication?
For whom do you write? How many audiences do you have when you write?
Who edits your work? How often do you revise your written work before it's ready to send out?
Who approves your written work before it leaves your office?
What types of writing do you compose individually? What types are composed collaboratively?
How did your education prepare you for the communication tasks (written and verbal) your job requires?
How has your company prepared you for your current communication tasks?
Were there any surprises in your job requirements/descriptions?
Do you have any advice concerning how to prepare for my first (or next) job after college?

Note: Make sure to add questions that interest you about the person, his or her job, and the field.

creating an interview transcript
You should transcribe your interview notes in a Word file and email it to me as soon as possible (kimmehea@u.arizona.edu). This transcription should capture, as much as possible, the questions, responses, and tone of the interview with your client.

What is the workplace culture report?
Your report should offer insights into your professional culture and the communication practices of one of its representatives. You should write your report offering details about your contact and site, your research process, and most importantly what you learned about your professional culture and communication practices.

How do I develop the content for my report?
You should determine the significant issues you learned through your research with your contact person, his or her documents, and your professional context. After analyzing your own interview transcript, consider what you learned from your contact. Also, seek out documents that represent the type of professional culture you will enter. What issues are most intriguing to you about workplace communication in your selected field? Establish those issues and look for specific examples of those issues. Create an outline for your report based on those issues.

title page: separate title page including the title of your report, your name, submission date, and appropriate graphic.

abstract: create an executive summary for your report. This summary should be the first section of your report, but you should write it after you have developed the rest of your report. (You can't effectively summarize what you haven't written).
observations/issues: what communication and professional issues stand out from your research? What have you learned about authority? power? language? What have you learned about professional preparation? about technologies of writing? about verbal and written communication? What ethical or legal issues came into focus? Be certain to select 2-3 themes and develop them carefully.

recommendations: after conducting your research, what plans do you have to effectively prepare for written and verbal communication in your field? What can you do to enhance your rhetorical skills? Based upon the issues, how will you negotiate the communicative demands of your employer and field?

conclusions: what have you learned about communication practices in your field?

How do I format my report?
Using Microsoft Word, your report should follow these specifications:

as many pages as necessary,
1-inch margins on all sides,
separate title page including the title of your report, your name, submission date, and appropriate graphic,
descriptively titled subheadings,
level-one headings in font of your choice,
level-two headings in font of your choice,
body text in font of your choice,
name, last updated information, and page number in footer, and
appropriate use of graphics and appendices.

How to I draft my thank-you email?
In order to demonstrate your appreciation for your contact's participation in the workplace cultures project, you will create an email of thanks. This email should specifically explain how the contact helped you in this project and what you learned from working with him or her. As your contact-researcher relationship is coming to an end, your message should leave the client feeling reward by your interactions. You will first draft this email in a Word document, and then send the final revision at the end of the semester after you have completed the project. You should follow the same formal email guidelines as provided in the email of intent section of this project.

How can I learn more about different unit 3 project components?
Aspects of this project are covered through the following supplemental resources:

emails
email etiquette
http://www.emailreplies.com/

resume workshop
purdue's online writing lab
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResumeW/

reports
writing reports
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/service/ltd/campus/reportwr.pdf

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