When Singapore achieved independence in , its founding fathers instituted measures that would not leave racial harmony to chance. Singapore aggressively promoted racial and ethnic integration. One important measure was its housing policy, which ensured that every public housing complex followed a national quota of racial percentage.
This forced people of different ethnicities to learn to live with each other, and broke up all the ethnic ghettos that were prevalent at the time of independence. These seemingly autocratic measures have served the small island nation well in producing a well-integrated populace that values meritocracy more than race or religion.
In neighbouring Malaysia, my home country, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity has always been promoted. By the time I was 18, I could speak five languages and had friends from the Chinese, Indian, Malay and Eurasian communities, who between them hailed from several religious backgrounds.
The multilingual workforce has given us Malaysians an edge in the workplace. There is substantial research to show that diversity brings many advantages to an organization: increased profitability and creativity, stronger governance and better problem-solving abilities. Employees with diverse backgrounds bring to bear their own perspectives, ideas and experiences, helping to create organizations that are resilient and effective, and which outperform organisations that do not invest in diversity.
This finding is significant for tech companies, start-ups and industries where innovation is the key to growth. It shows that diversity is not just a metric to be strived for; it is actually an integral part of a successful revenue-generating business.
While most of these studies are conducted in the western world, Asian countries are engaging in the equality debate at their own pace. According to the Hays Asia Diversity and Inclusion report, improved company culture, leadership and greater innovation were the top three benefits of diversity identified by respondents. However, there was a perception among a significant proportion of participants that access to pay, jobs and career opportunities for those of equal ability could be hampered by factors such as age, disability, ethnicity, gender, family commitments, marital status, race, religion and sexuality.
More than ever, flexibility and versatility are becoming the key to success for individuals, companies and countries alike, and a culturally diverse environment is the best way to acquire these qualities. Assumptions need to be challenged, conversations need to be had and corporate culture needs to be updated so that the modern workplace can accurately reflect and support the population of the region. They will be responsible for making important decisions that affect workplace cultures and people's lives.
This group has a unique perspective on diversity. While older generations tend to view diversity through the lenses of race, demographics, equality and representation, millennials see diversity as a melding of varying experiences, different backgrounds and individual perspectives. They view the ideal workplace as a supportive environment that gives space to varying perspectives on a given issue.
If businesses are looking to hire and sustain a millennial workforce, diversity must be a key part of the company culture.
Gender equality remains a major issue in the corporate world. Despite an abundance of research confirming that companies with more women in the C-Suite are more profitable , there is still a gender gap in the vast majority of companies.
Women remain significantly underrepresented in the corporate pipeline, with fewer women than men hired at entry level, and representation declining further at every subsequent step.
Companies need a comprehensive plan for supporting and advancing women. This requires a paradigm shift in the corporate culture which will include investing in employee training and giving employees greater flexibility to fit work into their lives. A survey conducted by Pew Research Centre lists several areas where women are stronger in key areas of both politics and business.
A search of the four major journals in the field shows both early and sustained attention to genre, displayed in the chart below: [2]. In the workplace, knowledge of the most important or frequently used genres enables employees to operate efficiently and reliably.
Knowledge of the formal features of common document types and recognition of the moments when they are called for helps accomplish a great deal of practical work. For this reason, textbooks and handbooks provide models and guidelines for producing many common genres, and software developers have created templates that guide the production of many common technical genres e.
Gurak and Hocks Bibliographic resources are often organized in part around genres adopted largely from the textbook tradition, such as those listed above e. Belanger , Moran and Journet , Sides While recognizing the practical value of this notion of genres as comparatively stable forms, most scholars of technical communication have followed rhetorical theorists, beginning with Miller , who understand genre as a dynamic and socially rooted concept: the appreciation of exploitable regularities in practical communication situations.
Technical communication scholars and rhetorical scholars agree that genre is based in communities or other social groups; has some relationship to activities, or getting work done in the world not just a taxonomic scheme for texts ; and enables innovation and creativity. Because it is a comparatively young field of study, technical communication has drawn opportunistically upon fundamental theoretical perspectives from rhetorical theory in the form of rhetorical genre studies and Bakhtinian genre theory , activity theory, sociology, and discourse analysis and linguistics.
Although its approach to genre shares much with these disciplines, the characteristic challenges of technical communication noted above have led scholars to revise rhetorical and other approaches to genre to address its unique objects and problems.
Since much workplace writing occurs in rapidly changing contexts and often in response to technological change , the field must account for how genres form and change over time. Russell , observes that this type of research arose as technical communication turned its attention toward the social dynamics of workplaces and their productions, including genres and away from formalist perspectives on genre.
Technical documents differ in material, typography, design, information structure, platform, mode, and medium. Many technical communication theorists favor the highly situated view of genre that activity theory offers. Though genres are understood in terms of regularities, these are mutable, situated regularities, and their idiosyncrasies are just as important as their relative stability.
In a similar vein, Kain shows how genre functions in a situation that is nonroutine and nonrecurring through its instrumental, metacommunicative, and sociopolitical functions. Though these problems are not unique to technical communication, they are special problems in this area because technical communicators are expected to take up new roles and genres very quickly and in many cases transition quickly from role to role in the contemporary technical workplace.
See also Russell , Winsor , and Zachry Numerous studies have examined the genres unique to particular work environments, most typically treating them as evolved forms, tools, or mediational resources that both reflect and shape their contexts. In fact, along with studies of how learners take up common technical genres in school or in the workplace , studies of niche genres are probably the most common examples of scholarship on genre and technical communication. The data from the four major journals mentioned above reveal that the most frequently discussed genres have been reports, both technical and scientific, proposals, academic articles, and computer documentation, while there is a plethora of genres discussed only once or twice, including electronic mail Zucchermaglio and Talamo , medical case presentations Spafford et al.
Many studies use a case approach, scrutinizing a small number of examples of a noteworthy genre, although Graham et al. The goals of these studies differ. Many use the insights of genre theory to uncover notable features of the genres e. Converse , Xu et al.
As this list also reveals, technical communication scholars are interested in both high-visibility and formally structured genres reports, resumes and more esoteric or ephemeral genres critiques, emails , as well as objects that in some frameworks might not be considered genres gameplay ; they are interested not only in written but also in oral medical case presentations, call-center communication , visual patent drawings, sewing patterns , and electronic genres web resumes, promotional videos.
In most technical and workplace settings, genres operate not in isolation but in combination with other genres, and in rhetorical situations that are themselves complex and sometimes ill defined. To account for these features, scholars have proposed several generative models: genre system s Bazerman , Yates and Orlikowski , genre set s Devitt , genre repertoire s Orlikowski and Yates , and genre ecologies Spinuzzi , Spinuzzi and Zachry The genre ecologies perspective, an outgrowth of activity theory, has been useful for describing the complex dynamics of networked, globalized workplaces and of digital genres.
Agency and cognition are distributed across the ecology, across workers, genres, and other tools. To create consistency across time and space, genre standardization is achieved with style sheets, templates, and, increasingly, more transformative genre-replicating technologies such as single-sourcing and content management systems. These systems help organizations and their members coordinate their communications, which in turn helps them to make communication decisions repeatable and genres more stable.
Recent scholarship in technical communication has focused on these genre-standardization approaches, which have problematized notions of authorship, rhetoric, form and content, information, and genre itself. Other recent research also reflects the powerful presence of technological networks in technical communication.
See also Carliner and Boswood In either case, the point of teaching students to employ genres in an academic setting is so that they will be better equipped to employ genres in the workplace and other professional contexts. The early technical writing pedagogies described by Connors , Kynell-Hunt , and others treated technical contexts and forms more directly than did most of the coeval composition pedagogies, encouraging reproduction of technical and workplace genres as relatively fixed textual forms.
The textual perspective involves explicit teaching of linguistic features, whereas the social perspective places students within a social context to address a rhetorical situation. Henze notes the particular relevance of the social perspective and the genre approach for teaching technical communication and provides a review of several models for teaching genre, as well as specific classroom activities and assignments Forthcoming.
In technical communication, the problem of transfer, long an issue in Composition Studies , points to the transition from the academy to the workplace, and much pedagogical research focuses here, highlighting the differences between what can be learned in a classroom and what is needed on the job; foundational studies here include Beaufort , Dias et al. Perhaps for this reason, much recent pedagogical work has focused on nontraditional learning environments and contexts such as internships Bourelle , situated learning Artemeva, Logie, and St-Martin , Blakeslee , simulations Freedman, Adam, and Smart , and client-based pedagogy Wojahn et al.
The conclusion could be one paragraph or several paragraphs, or the conclusion could be a simple sentence that asks for the recipient to contact the sender if there are questions.
All organizations have informal and formal communication networks. The unofficial, informal communication network within an organization is often called the grapevine , and it is often characterized by rumor, gossip, and innuendo.
On the grapevine, one person may hear that someone else is going to be laid off and start passing the news around. Rumors change and transform as they are passed from person to person, and before you know it, the word is that they are shutting down your entire department. One effective way to address informal, unofficial speculation is to spell out clearly for all employees what is going on with a particular issue. If budget cuts are a concern, then it may be wise to send a memo explaining the changes that are imminent.
If a company wants employees to take action, they may also issue a memorandum. The company president noted that if everyone supported the company with purchases, it would benefit all Lewis, They may also include statements that align business and employee interest, and underscore common ground and benefit.
A memo has a specific format; this format includes a header that clearly indicates who sent the document and identifies the intended recipients. Pay particular attention to the title of the individual s in this section.
Date and subject lines are also present, followed by a message that contains a declaration, a discussion, and a summary. In a standard writing format, readers might expect to see an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. All these are present in a memo, and each part has a clear purpose.
The declaration in the opening uses a declarative sentence to announce the main topic. The discussion elaborates or lists major points associated with the topic, and the conclusion serves as a summary. Always consider the audience and their needs when preparing a memo. An acronym or abbreviation that is known to management may not be known by all the employees of the organization, and if the memo is to be posted and distributed within the organization, the goal is clear and concise communication at all levels with no ambiguity.
Memos are often announcements, and the person sending the memo speaks for a part or all of the organization. While it may contain a request for feedback, the announcement itself is linear, from the organization to the employees. The memo may have legal standing as it often reflects policies or procedures, and may reference an existing or new policy in the employee manual, for example.
The subject is normally declared in the subject line and should be clear and concise. Some written business communication allows for a choice between direct and indirect formats, but memorandums are always direct. The purpose is clearly announced.
Memos are a place for just the facts, and should have an objective tone without personal bias, preference, or interest on display. Avoid subjectivity. The following scenario provides examples of how different types of memos are utilized in a real world situation: You are a consultant for a construction company.
The project manager of the company has charged you with following the progress of a job that the company has contracted. Electronic mail, usually called email, is quite familiar to most students and workers. It may be used like text, or synchronous chat, and it can be delivered to a cell phone. In business, it has largely replaced print hard copy letters for external outside the company correspondence, as well as taking the place of memos for internal within the company communication. Email can be useful for messages that have slightly more content than a text message, but it is still best used for fairly brief messages.
Many businesses use automated emails to acknowledge communications from the public, or to remind associates that periodic reports or payments are due. Emails may be informal in personal contexts, but business communication requires attention to detail, awareness that your email reflects you and your company, and a professional tone so that it may be forwarded to any third party if needed.
Email often serves to exchange information within organizations. Although email may have an informal feel, remember that when used for business, it needs to convey professionalism and respect. For reference, please review the example of a business email below. Figure 2 is a letter written specifically for the situation and audience. We create personal pages, post messages, and interact via mediated technologies as a normal part of our careers, but how we conduct ourselves can leave a lasting image, literally.
The photograph you posted on your Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat may have been seen by your potential employer, or that nasty remark in a post may come back to haunt you later.
Some fifteen years ago, when the Internet was a new phenomenon, Virginia Shea laid out a series of ground rules for communication online that continue to serve us today. Shea, V. Her rules speak for themselves and remind us that the golden rule treat others as you would like to be treated is relevant wherever there is human interaction.
Although email is a valuable communication tool, its widespread use in academic and business settings has introduced some new challenges for writers. Because it is a relatively new form of communication, basic social conventions for writing and responding to email are still being worked out. Miscommunication can easily occur when people have different expectations about the emails that they send and receive.
In addition, email is used for many different purposes, including contacting friends, communicating with professors and supervisors, requesting information, and applying for jobs, internships, and scholarships.
Depending on your purposes, the messages you send will differ in their formality, intended audience, and desired outcome. Finally, the use of email for advertising purposes has clogged communication channels, preventing some emails from reaching their intended audience. So—how do you know when sending an email is the most effective way of getting your message across? When is a brief message sufficient, and when it is more appropriate to send a longer, more professional email?
How should a writer decide what style of writing is appropriate for each task? How can you prevent your email from ending up in the junk pile? Keep reading for answers to these questions! People have different opinions about the form and content of emails, so it is always helpful to be aware of the expectations of your audiences.
However, others view email as simply a more convenient way to transmit a formal letter. Such people may consider an informal email rude or unprofessional.
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