Make sure that you take the background, the purpose, and the audience, and the communication strategy into consideration as well as your tone, professionalism, and Formatting.

The background. In any organization there are resources that many employees would like to see distributed more liberally or fairly for example, salaries, health benefits, tech support, or office space. In a future job, you may be involved in the process of deciding how such resources should be allocated, perhaps asking fellow employees about their interests and desires. If you do need to gather such information, you must be careful not to raise employees expectations or to imply any promises about future allocations. Your task instead is to seek colleagues input in order to aid the decision-making process. The final decision might or might not meet employees hopes. In this application, you are the assistant to Voletta Williams, the facilities manager for TrustUs Insurance Company. You have been asked to inquire about current and anticipated office-space needs among a staff of 55 employees, 35 of whom currently work in cubicles and 20 of whom have private, enclosed offices. The company has leased more space in the adjacent building and will be able to expand the square footage in some of the cubicles and provide separate offices to eight to ten of the employees currently in cubicles.

The purpose. Voletta Williams wants you to obtain information directly from the employees regarding their current work spaces so that she can devise a space-allocation plan that makes sense for the daily business activities at TrustUs Insurance Company. She needs practical workload information and evidence from each staff member so that she can present a plan of action to the senior managers. She does not want you to make any implicit promises regarding office facilities; she wants you just to gather information.``

The audience. All employees value their individual office spaces, so you can expect a good deal of excitement and anxiety resulting from this inquiry. Consider how you will write in a friendly and reassuring way to your colleagues and at the same time encourage them to make a fact-based case for their individual needs and desires. You dont want to end up with an inflated, impassioned wish list of little use to your boss. At the same time, you also dont want to unnecessarily incite panic among employees regarding the future of their space.

The communication strategy. You will need to provide employees with the basic facts (background) regarding current space distributions and the possibility of enhancements to some of the cubicles and offices. Also let them know about the evidence they should supply if they are currently in a cubicle and want to be considered for larger or enclosed work spaces (for example, a business-related need for privacy, inadequate document storage, communication patterns with other cubicles or offices, or technology needs that affect work space). Be clear that you are gathering the information for Williams and the senior managers and that you must receive the information by a particular deadline. Throughout your memo, cultivate a reassuring tone and a rhetoric that shows your understanding of the issues importance, but be careful not to make promises or claims that have not yet been confirmed by your superiors.

Write a memo like this, here an example:

DATE: July 25, 2016 [DRAFT B]

TO: All Employees of Media Inc.

FROM: Shelley Seidman, Director of Human Resources Subject: Coordination of Vacation Days Our company-wide discussions on July 8 and 10 regarding the need to coordinate employees selection of vacation periods were very helpful to crafting a revised policy.

Vacation periods are very important to everyone, and all of us have different individual and family needs regarding periods away from work. We hope the revised policy will preserve an element of flexibility while providing much better coordination of staff availability for crucial company operations.

The new policy, in its basic form, is as follows:

All employees of Media Inc. should request vacation periods of three workdays or longer at least three weeks in advance of the requested period. Requests should be made on the form available from HR to the employees area director, who will consider the workloads and responsibilities in his or her area before submitting the request to the director of Human Resources.

The policy also notes, Whenever possible, the flexibility of employee choices will be preserved. The area director and the director of Human Resources will discuss options with the affected employee(s) before any request is denied or modified