Question

A Pew Internet & American Life study found that teens and young adults consider their frequent e-communication as very different from the traditional writing they learn in school and generally don’t consider it “real writing.” Although they are tech-smart, students don’t always understand the boundaries of acceptable media use and need to learn that employers expect more formal, thoughtful, informative, and error-free messages on the job. How would you deal with this in the workplace?

Answer 1

1. Training: The young joiners or interns must be trained as soon as they join the organization. This training should comprise of modules on communication via email, writing like memo, letter, formal notes etc. It will help the interns to learn the formal and industry acceptable way of communication. This will help them learning and using it throughout their career.

2. Imposing mild penalties on using non formal e-communication: There must be a system in place to penalise the wrong way of writing communication once the employee is given proper training for the same. The company can form a small team to monitor this activity and implement the process.

3. Communication contest among young joiners: The company should conduct monthly contests based on communication practice and should reward the best performers. This way the interns will be motivated to use the right way of writing.

4. Continuous Review process: The communication used by every employee should be monitored through a separate channel (their line managers). While this is a difficult task to do, but the line managers can really help in improving their team's formal communication quality and align it with organization's goals.