Refusal letter and direct mail campaign writing strategies
I would like to take some time to express my heartfelt good wishes as you are going to start your new band. It is really good news as everyone in this locality regards you guys as potential musicians. I received your letter yesterday and I am very glad that you are thinking to expand your musical venture. You want that we donate some money for your Orchestra that you can buy some instruments. We had already a few applications from local NGO and they asked for a donation to develop their NGO activities. Moreover, each year, we donate some money to the governmental social ventures as our CSR activities. We gave your application of donation careful consideration. However, as you are aware there is only a limited scope to our organisation to donate money, therefore, a money-donating decision was that much more difficult.
Although, we are impressed by your recent musical venture, however, we are not capable to donate money at this point in time. Our organisation has just employed two new staffs and we have bought new equipment in order to expand our business. Our management body has just decided to spend more money on marketing. Moreover, we expect our costs can be higher than the returns for next two months. Therefore, We are extremely sorry to let you know that we cannot help you to buy musical instrument until this time next year.
You could ask for our help in next year in this time, we would welcome the opportunity to review your financial aid. Until then, good wishes. We wish you best in your endeavour.
Victoria Ski is among the most respected ski alpine resort in Australia, mostly in Victoria region. We believe ourselves to the best in snowboarding and skiing destination in Victoria. Our organisation starts skiing after the second week of June and it still continues until August. During this time, Victoria Ski has plenty of tourists who like to enjoy the season with skiing and snowboarding. In Victoria, there are extensive skiable terrains in winter. In the year 2015, there were 900 skier days in Victoria. Victoria Ski provides the highest lifted point at 1800 m and lowest lifted point 1300 m. we have the skiable area with 300 ha and snowmaking area is 70 ha. Victoria Ski has 22 lifts. Our organisation provides the best ski experiences in beginner, intermediate and advanced runs as all types of experts are available in our organisation. Overnight visitors of Victoria region in last year was 439000 for snow tourism activities from domestic areas and in the international sector, this figure crossed 26000.
However, we request you to visit our resort not just only during the season (June-September), but also, you can visit our resort at other times of the year also. Mostly, in Feb and March, you can enjoy the beautiful season in our hill station and it looks awesome when wild colourful flowers bloom amidst the hills. Our resort is located in beautiful hills and residents in our village are helpful and they make handicrafts products. Most importantly, within a few kilometres, cultural events are organized by local people. In recent time, the number of visiting in cultural events has increased in the last few years. Victoria area is famous for art and culture. In October, Vietnamese and Asian people near Victoria organize Sunshine Lantern Festival with the culturally diverse community. Visitors can also enjoy the organic products that are made near the Victoria villages. We offer online booking and you can pay through net banking and pay-at-resort facility is also available. We have experienced guide who will help you to explore the places.
Case study: analysing the current communication issues in a well-known accounting firm
Therefore, it is our request on behalf of Victoria Ski to visit our ski resort in all around the year as we have a lot of surprises to entertain you and nature are waiting with its potential. You contact to our toll-free number: 033-34-1800.
More than 5000 employees work in several managerial levels in this accounting firm and the organisational structure is hierarchical. The communication flow of the organisation goes top-to-bottom approach. Therefore, decisions are made by mainly top management and communication flows to the lower levels employees and to the other stakeholders. Top management keeps the lower ranking staffs in dark about new objectives and goals of the organisation. Moreover, management does not communicate with all levels of staffs. As stated by Modaff et al. (2016), the disparity in communication flow in hierarchical organisation creates issues in department loyalty of the employees and works within department get in conflict. In this regard, staffs members provide conflicting answers to the clients about organisational objectives. Lower ranking staffs face maximum pressure and if they sometimes inform the situations to middle managers, no improvement occurs and sometimes they get penalised. Top managers take a decision and these decisions do not even reach to the middle managers. As opined by Eisenberg et al. (2013), effective communication is needed to keep the organisational structure goes smoothly, without this, communication can get confused. Employees would not have any idea about their responsibilities and critical success of the organisation will be lower. Slow communication can result the delays in work and sheer of potential time is lost that can be utilised in employee motivation, customer satisfaction and production of the organisation. According to Holmes and Stubbe (2015), in rigid hierarchy, the interdepartmental rivalry is seen as departments can compete for each other. In this organisation, memos also get changed by the time it reaches to the managers and it results to demoralise the staffs of the organisation. Challenges come in forming unilateral decisions as some of the senior executives who are autocrat personality create the decisions for the overall organisations and the decisions lack the creativity. These issues within the organisation have been creating unrest and it has been creating an unproductive work atmosphere.
As a communication manager of the accounting firm, my role is to create a communication strategy for both internal and external communication.
The first thing that the organisation needs to do is to enable the company-wide conversations before making any decision. This conversation can be made through asking personally by the team leaders or group chats option can be helpful to make the conversation archived. The conversation will be perfect, in seamless collaboration between team leaders and team members. Before taking any organisational-change decision, top management must talk to the staffs in understanding their perspectives. In this case, staffs would feel valued and communication flow will be smooth. Moreover, management can publish a weekly notice or bi-monthly newsletter after company meeting; these would communicate properly the information to the staffs in all levels.
Case study: developing a communication plan for the accounting firm
As the organisation follows the hierarchical structure, it is needed to make an internal social network, like Zoho or Bitrix24. These types of portal or software help the firm to make contact with the employees even after the office hours and each of the activities will be recorded there. In this social networking platform, the firm can post any office related news, any plan in objectives of the organisation, any change in shifting time and birthday wishes for employees. Moreover, it provides an opportunity to tag the persons, it is intended to make. As stated by Men (2014), the internal social network provides benefit the company in sourcing, searching and consolidating employees skills.
According to Karanges et al. (2015), management needs to take some time to explain the lower staffs about the organisational objectives, mission and vision as these can make clear the responsibility of the staffs. Understanding company’s objectives can help in communication between top management and lower staffs. In addition, management needs to encourage information sharing among the staffs. Employees must communicate with each other and communication should flow in both top-down and bottom-to-top approaches. Sharing the information to all will make the employees eager to be involved in this endeavour.
External communication of the organisation maintains the communication to the persons who are outside of the organisational structure. The external stakeholders of the organisations can be clients or customers, business partners and fundraising entities. In order to improve the external communication, the accounting firm can gather feedback from the external stakeholder through a report. Then, the firm can analyse the strengths and weaknesses of them from the perspectives of external stakeholders. In delivering the services, the firm should overcome those weaknesses by inputting strategies. External feedbacks mainly fill the gap of communication between management and external stakeholders (Rauwers et al. 2016). In addition, the management needs to address the external communication issues and find out the solutions. In this regard, management at first should find out the potential issues that can impact on communication. Management should not use too much technical jargon and they need to put the things simply. Moreover, the team leaders and senior executives must be updated and they need to offer track records to solve the issues.
Management should communicate regularly in order to understand the needs of the external stakeholders and maintaining regular update of the external stakeholders can help to improve the business communication. If the employees of the organisation are not motivated and lack the update from the senior managers, they will not be successful to deliver the correct information to the external clients or customers. Therefore, right information flow is needed from all levels. Moreover, in sending any information about the organisation, it is needed to put info-graphic information more and fewer texts. These engaging contents would be helpful for an organisation to ask for a quick response from external stakeholders’ sight. Accounting firms can regularly communicate with external stakeholders with newsletters, blogs or business letters. Before sending any contents to the external stakeholders, it is needed to proofread these.
Reference List
Eisenberg, E.M., Goodall Jr, H.L. and Trethewey, A., 2013. Organizational communication: Balancing creativity and constraint. London: Macmillan Higher Education.
Holmes, J. and Stubbe, M., 2015. Power and politeness in the workplace: A sociolinguistic analysis of talk at work. Abingdon: Routledge.
Karanges, E., Johnston, K., Beatson, A. and Lings, I., 2015. The influence of internal communication on employee engagement: A pilot study. Public Relations Review, 41(1), pp.129-131.
Men, L.R., 2014. Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership, communication channels, and employee satisfaction. Management Communication Quarterly, 28(2), pp.264-284.
Modaff, D.P., Butler, J.A. and DeWine, S.A., 2016. Organizational communication: Foundations, challenges, and misunderstandings. Sydney: Pearson.
Rauwers, F., Voorveld, H.A. and Neijens, P.C., 2016. The effects of the integration of external and internal communication features in digital magazines on consumers’ magazine attitude. Computers in Human Behavior, 61, pp.454-462.