Human resources communication for Janey’s, a high-end retailer of faux-fur handbags
Audience: Human Resources professionals responsible for creating memos handed down to retail employees.
Strategy: Our retail employees are an educated, trained, engaged group of people unlike those hired by most competing sales locations. As such, we strive to treat them with the utmost respect and disclosure. Openness is the first step to creating trust between our company and employees, a motto we serve by following a few easy rules:
● Communications should not take a lecturing or criticising tone when they are mailed to groups. By the same token, they shouldn’t be full of effusive, falsely cheerful language, either. Strive for a natural tone in all mass communications with our retail employees instead.
● In general, we should try to avoid sounding too fake or corporate. The perfect tone is conversational, sly, and a little funny, when appropriate.
● Achievements should be noted with a minimum of dry statistical talk. There’s a flip side with this one, too: Cheesy “X did such a good job with Y’s shopping experience...” feature stories are eye-rollers. Did you hear of a store doing a unique recycling program? Maybe one who has had a waiting list for every rep for the last three months? That’s the kind of stuff we’re looking for.
● Copy for achievements should focus more on the company’s achievements rather than individual achievements. We’re not saying a rep who hasn’t missed work in ten years isn’t worth recognition. We just want to set a high bar for the achievements we acknowledge.
Finding Balance: We are looking for a tone that sounds like a boss you wouldn’t mind hanging out with after work, but not one who closes the bars with you. Our primary goal is to present information, so the presentation must get the info across without being too casual or too corporate.
Projected Effectiveness: High. If you’re reading this, the instructions probably already sound like second nature. Read some old communications, pay attention, and get comfortable. We’re a fun place to work, and we very much think you’ll like it here.