Question

Routine Persuasive Message Guidelines

Summary Because everyone at your company is suddenly working from home due to the pandemic, upper management wants to make it mandatory for all employees to install insecure corporate spyware on any device they use for work. As the lead developer on your team, you must speak up for yourself and your colleagues and persuade your direct manager that this is a bad idea. Using the strategies discussed in your readings and resources, write a well formatted email to your manager, Deion Guillory (he/him). Include a subject line and email signature. Do not copy text or phrases from these guidelines, the readings, templates, or any other source.

Details For this assignment, imagine that you are a senior software developer at the imaginary company, Swift Coding Enterprises. The company has been fortunate during the pandemic: the software you make is still in high demand, and your jobs are such that all employees can do their work from home. Some of you are using company laptops, but most of you have your own desktop computers, laptops, tablets, etc. that you also use for work while you’re at home. However, your upper management (CEO, CFO, etc.) are concerned that employees are “slacking off” because they’re working from home. They want to monitor employees’ work to make sure no one is taking advantage of the situation to be less productive. In order to do this, they’ve instructed all managers to make it mandatory for employees to download and install Beramind corporate monitoring software on any device the employee uses for work. Beramind takes screenshots of the user’s display every 30 seconds and sends it to cloud storage. Anyone who has the company’s admin login can view these screenshots and which employee’s computer they come from. They can also choose, without notifying the user, to mirror a user’s display on their own system and watch what that user is doing in real time. Your manager, Deion Guillory (he/him), has received these instructions from his own manager. He has sent a memo to you and your team telling you to download and install Beramind on your computers. You and your team have discussed the situation privately, and you don’t want to install Beramind for many reasons, such as:

- Your team’s output (e.g. code, documentation) has been the same as when you worked in the office. - Some of you haven’t been able to work as many hours as usual, but it’s not because you’re slacking off—it’s because there’s a pandemic, and you have other emergency responsibilities, such as taking care of children. - You don’t want your bosses to be able to monitor your activity on your personal and/or family computers, even if you do use it for work sometimes. - Beramind uses a lot of bandwidth, system memory, and processor power, which not everyone is able to spare. - According to some articles you read online, Beramind doesn’t use end-to-end encryption when it sends data to its server.

Because you’re the team lead, it’s up to you to email Deion and explain your team’s situation. You want to make it clear that none of you will install this program, and you want to persuade Deion that it’s a bad enough idea that he should push back against it to his own bosses. TIP: You may make up any reasonable information you need (for example, a colleague’s name or exactly how much system memory Beramind needs) as long as it doesn’t contradict the assignment guidelines. By “reasonable,” your instructor means that the information you include might happen in reality and doesn’t substantially change the assignment. For example, it would not be “reasonable” to tell Deion that your team can’t install Beramind because you have all forgotten the passwords to your system admin profiles and can’t install anything.

Your email should follow the best practices for business emails that you’ve learned about in your readings/resources. You must include an email signature block and a subject line. There is no required word count, but you must include enough information to achieve your purpose effectively without overloading a single email with too much content. Most submissions will be between 200 and 500 words, although it is possible to write an excellent but slightly longer or shorter submission.

Answer 1

Here's a sample email that can be presented in the given scenario-

Subject- Issues in installing Beramind Corporate Meeting Software

Hello Deion,

I hope you and your family are in good health during this pandemic time.

It's been quite difficult for everyone across the globe to cope up with the life this pandemic has forced us to live but I am glad that Swift Coding Enterprises has proved to be successful in such difficult times as well. I understand that adapting to the new normal of working entirely from home is a bit difficult, especially for the upper management who has to keep a check on each and every single thing.

I am writing this e-mail to you in regards to the recent information that you provided us about installing the Beramind Corporate Monitoring Software in our systems, so that our activities can be monitored directly. It's a pretty good idea to monitor the employees to ensure quality work but I feel, the solution chosen right now is a bit inappropriate.

The main reason stated for this monitoring system is that the employees are slacking off due to work from home environment; but actually, this scenario has neither changed the output of the employees, nor has it affected the overall outcome of the comapny. Infact, we are all working like we used to do in office, except for the one fact, that now we have to deal with the emergency situations that arise sometimes due to the pandemic(which I guess is being misinterpreted for slacking off).

The software that we are mandated to install would monitor us all the time, which will automatically hinder the privacy as most of the employees are using their personal devices for office work, and monitoring any personal work is unethical. Also, according to my research, the software has certain major problems too; like it doesn't support end-to-end encryption which means the comapny's as well as our personal data could be at risk. It also uses a lot of bandwidth, processing power and system memory which is difficult for many of the employees using home network.

The purpose to install this software might be constructive, but the drawbacks which it comes with are not worth trading off. Not only me, but our entire team feels that this would not only hinder our privacy but also affect the work culture at Swift Coding Enterprises.

I would be grateful if you could convey this message to the upper management too, so that they may look into the concerns and make appropriate changes in the latest guidelines issued.

Regards,

Daniel Hernadez

Software Developer

Swift Coding Enterprises

2100W, 31st St, Chicago (USA)