W231/IUPUI/Student Example: Progress Report 2

The purpose of my project is to help (Company Name) improve its communication skills. In the past year (Company name) has been having problems with communication between supervisors and employees. The lack of communication is taking place in the form of written and oral. The employees are considered "field workers," which means they spend most of their time wiring houses rather than answering phones or doing paper work. However, on occasion, they are asked to work in the office to help the president out. Since (Company Name) tailors to its customers needs, it is important that all the information be taken down completely and correctly. The president must approve all actions and future job plans. If the information is not gathered correctly, it creates a problem or misunderstanding, which in turn delays the service to the customer. I plan on addressing the following; how can (Company Name) improve communication between employees and supervisors? I am going to focus on how the employees communicate with the supervisors and I am going to observe their note-taking skills.

The president, (Name), is the decision-maker and owner of (Company name). He is very accessible since I work for him. He would like to know how he could improve the communication between the employees and supervisors; therefore, he is willing to cooperate and provide any information that is necessary.

Mr. (name) first noticed the problem when a (Name of a company) builder called about a panel box that was supposed to be fixed before the house closed. Apparently one of the employees forgot to take the note to (name). This situation occurred a few years ago. Since then, the problem has gotten worse.

In the interview, I found out that (name) has done everything possible to improve communication. He could not name everything that he has done since he has tried so many different things. He believes that written communication is the biggest problem because the employees are not trained to do secretarial work.

The employees' habits are going to be the biggest problem for (name) to change, since they are not trained to do secretarial work. As far as cooperation goes, all the employees and supervisors are willing to work on solving this problem. None of them want to lose their job because they forgot to give (name) a note.

My secondary audience is all of the employees and supervisors at (Company Name). They all agreed to answer any questions I have.

SUMMARY:

The interview with (Name) helped me narrow my topic down to written communication. I realize that oral communication may be part of this problem; however, I am only going to focus on the written aspect. It seems that this is where the main problem lies since the employees do not do secretarial work. I gathered from (name) that the employees do not feel that they should have to know hot to do secretarial work. This is a problem for (Company Name) because they have to fix what the builders and clients need fixed. This is the foundation of their business. If the employees have poor communication skills, it could case (name) to lose money and his business.

(Name) did not mention any restrictions or limits to this project solution. He already has a secretary, but she cannot answer some of the customers' questions. He needs to train his employees on communication. He realizes that each individual employee lacks skills in effective communication.

METHODOLOGY:

So far I have found about 10-11 articles on Employee Communication. I found that using the following key words worked best: communication, employee communication, lack of communication, employee and communication, and communication improvement. I found most of my articles in the Ebsco Host database. The rest I pulled off of various businesses' webpages. The articles from the Ebsco HOst are from academic journals or business journals. The articles from the Internet are newsletter publications. I think there might be one from a journal. I do not plan to visit the University Writing Center. I plan to have a former English instructor proofread my paper and give me some advice on what I need to improve.

RESEARCH PLAN:

2/22: Start Annotated Bibliography and Literature Review

3/1: Begin Progress Report II and turn in Annotated Bibliography and begin writing report with what information I have.

3/8:Begin Primary Research Tabulation of Data and analysis and turn in Progress Report II via email

3/22: Turn in Literature Review and begin work on Visual Aid and polish up report and revise research tool.