To: MinZhang Si, UBC Student
From: Kenny Colosie, Fellow Student, UBC.
Date: February 11th, 2022
Subject: Review of Your Formal Report Proposal: Determining the Feasibility of Employment Engagement Programs
Hello MinZhang, I have reviewed the first draft of your formal report proposal and you have done a great job following the template for the proposal and providing a compelling proposal for your manager to review. Below, I have made a few comments and suggestions for your review that you may want to include in your final version.
Background
Within the last three years, I served as the head of the social committee for Associa B.C., one of the largest property management firms in B.C. which also has offices around the world such as Dubai, Mexico, Hawaii and all over the United States. Further to this, I am actively consulted in the day to day employee engagement activities of my current company, West Coast Property Management, although this is on a much smaller scale as we are a small firm. I hope that my experience in this realm and professional writing background from being a Strata Manager for five years can provide you with a positive insight into your proposal.
Initial Impressions
I personally am a huge proponent of employee engagement in companies so I can understand the emotions you describe such as not feeling motivated to work or talk to their colleagues. Employees are disengaged and feeling lost, like they are just going through the motions every day. This is a great issue to bring forward to your manager and I hope that you can find some positive insights through your survey research that you can share with your manager and find a solution to the lack of employee engagement being suffered in your company.
Upon my initial read through the report proposal, I was left wondering about a particularly important topic, budget. In most companies, the reason that there is no social activities is due to a lack of budget. You may want to expand your research to include some research on free vs. company sponsored events. Find out if the company has a budget in mind for this or not, if they do not, that will entirely shift your research to free events. You may also be able to pursued them through research to include a budget in their next fiscal year if the evidence can support a claim that company financial participation in this events boosts overall employee engagement.
Purpose
The purpose of the message seems clear and is well described. As noted above, I am quite familiar with social committees and employee engagement practices. You have clearly identified the problem and a potential solution along with the metrics that you will use for the date you provide back to your manager.
Overall Structure
The layout of the proposal is overall well done.
Other Thoughts About the Topic
Two other thoughts that come to mind regarding this topic are organization and time. Firstly, organization, who is going to organize these events? How are they going to plan them, advertise them? How do we get employees engaged? All things to think about… Secondly, will these events be during work hours or after work hours? If they are during work hours, the company will certainly need to make a commitment to allow workers the time off to participate. If they are after work hours, you may find employees would rather go home and spend time with their families than spend more time with their co-workers that they already feel disconnected with. Once again, how are we going to get employees to participate?
Specific Comments
Your introduction could be stronger: I have re-written it as follows and include some comments in brackets:
Overall job satisfaction of Employees is important to an organizations daily operation and long term development. (make a statement here that sticks). Employees who have higher job satisfaction are likely to produce higher productivity. (brevity). Salary and benefits are prime drivers of job satisfaction, however, relationships between employees are also a key ingredient.
Employee engagement programs (eliminate the word can, once again, make a strong statement here, we need to hook your manager to read the rest of the proposal) promote strong social ties which increase productivity and communication amongst the workforce. (brevity). Organizations that invest in employee engagement strategies such as meditation sessions or sport clubs will see higher productivity. (less wordy and still got the point across).
Final Notes
Overall this is a great start to your report, I am excited to read the final report when it is completed. Feel free to reach out to me if you would like to discuss this further when you reach the research stage. I may be able to provide some further feedback due to my related experience in this area.
Link to Definition
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