Recommendation report

Read the following instructions carefully.

Topic:

Teamwork and
collaboration are valuable, mandatory skills in the twenty-first century
business environment, but the pandemic has made face-to-face meetings and
collaboration challenging or impossible.

Over the past year, many
businesses have had to switch from face-to-face meetings, workshops, and
conferences to online platforms (virtual meetings) in order to keep their
companies viable and competitive. As well, many of their employees are now working
from home. Businesses and people adapted quickly using technologies and equipment
available to them at the time; however, now that its beginning to look like
many of these changes will become permanent, some better solutions are needed.

Your employer has asked
you to write a recommendation report detailing ways to enhance virtual team
meetings and collaboration as well as the overall health, safety, and
productivity of staff members working from home.

Choose ONE of the
following topics:

1. Compare and contrast
at least three virtual platforms and make some recommendations as to which one offers the best features for your
companys staff to attend team meetings and collaborate on written documents.

Consider security,
cost, reliability, accessibility, suitability, technological requirements, and other
features.

You must demonstrate a
complete analysis of all suitable options, which will include arguments and
counterarguments (pros and cons) for each of your choices and make recommendations
accordingly.

*You are
comparing and contrasting at least three different virtual platforms and
recommending only the best one.

2. Given the amount of
time your employees spend sitting in front of their computers, your employer
has asked you to research, compare, and analyze some different options for
ergonomic chairs and workstations (including standing desks or devices that
modify existing equipment). Some health and safety information on ergonomics
would be a great addition to your report.

Choose to investigate either
ergonomic office chairs or ergonomic workstations not both. This report will
not be long enough to recommend more than one piece of equipment. You must compare at least three different options (either
three chairs or three workstations).

Consider factors such
as cost, features, reliability, ergonomics, and ethical / local procurement.

*You are
comparing and contrasting at least three different office chairs OR three
different workstations and recommending only the best one.

—————————————-

The audience for your
recommendation report is Frank Gallagher, CEO of Streetwise Industries.

Please respond to your
employers call for recommendations with a memo-style recommendation report (approximately
750 800 words). There are examples of memo-style recommendation reports in
the text and on Moodle.

You may use academic
and expert sources (examples: peer-revied journal articles, credible newspaper
articles, trade journals, magazines, and websites) as well as information from
retailers that specialize in the technology or products youre researching.

You can use customer
reviews for products, but they must come from a credible, unbiased source not
the retailers own website. One example is a magazine called Consumer
Reports.

*Warning: There is a
lot of information online, but dont cut & paste or copy anything
word-for-word. Im evaluating your writing skills, not someone elses.
Use your own words by summarizing and paraphrasing, and cite all sources to the
best of your ability. Also, be careful about the reliability of your source.
Theres information on Moodle that will help you with this, and I strongly
recommend you get help from the TRU Library.

*I do
check for plagiarism for all assignments I receive.

Conducting Research:

When conducting your
research, use journalistic questions and consider the following important
factors (and any others you can think of) before presenting findings, analyzing,
comparing, concluding, or making recommendations:

–
Appropriateness, suitability, and effectiveness
(for your organizations needs)
–
Reliability
–
Hardware and software requirements
–
Accessibility
–
Ease of use
–
Cost: If you find several products
that are equal in their suitability or effectiveness, you can rate them
according to cost as one way to incorporate a chart or table into your paper.
–
Is training required? If so, is it
available? Is the training free?
–
Are there any potential privacy or security
concerns?

Writing your Report

Structure:

Reports are to be double-spaced
using a suitable 12-point font (do not use MS Word default font, size
and line spacing. This will affect your formatting). Use headers and footers
for your name, email, and page numbers.

Your report will use
the following organization (not necessarily in this order):

Title page with your name, student number, title of your
report, and date.

Transmittal information at the top of the first
page of your memo-style report.

Introduction / Background / Statement of the Problem (provide a background.
Context, or statement of the problem not an entire history of the
technology or poduct youre investigating). Hint: the problem is that Covid
ruined everything and forced us to change the way we do business.

Facts and Findings / Discussion and Analysis

Recommendations more than one
in a bulleted or numbered list
based on your findings.

Conclusion
o Or Conclusions and
Recommendations / Recommendations and Conclusions

In-text citations in APA format.

A brief, complete, correctly formatted References Page in
APA.

Headers and footers your name and page numbers.

Appendices: *Optional if you want to add lengthy
documents like an online catalogue.

Note: The order of the
above elements will depend upon whether youre using a direct or indirect
approach.

Sources and Citations:

As you conduct your
research, keep track of everything and make sure you properly cite all sources
in APA format. You are expected to
provide a minimum of four (4) quality, academic and / or expert sources and two
(2) graphic elements (correctly titled, labeled and cited both in-text and on
your references page in APA format).

Content:

Stay within a clearly
defined scope and dont try to cover too much information.

Your Facts &
Findings and Discussion & Analysis section(s) should take up about half of your
total word count and should contain lots of in-text citations to show that your
work is based on research from credible sources.

You must include at least two
visual elements (graphics) to support your research, but dont just
cut-and-paste random images. Incorporating some statistics or cost comparisons into
your work is a great way to integrate a table, chart, or graph into your paper.

You can cut & paste
graphics as long as theyre not copyrighted and as long as you cite sources,
both in text and on the references page. You can also create your own
charts or graphs if you find some good information or statistics. I suggest
using Piktochart or another graphics program to produce visual content but cite
the source(s) where you found the original information and cite yourself as the
creator of the chart. For example:

(Data
retrieved from Ahmed and Bright, 2007, URL; chart created by Rine, 2020).

*We will
cover skills in design and application of visual elements in the course.

Writing Quality:

This assignment
requires effective writing, editing, and proofreading that demonstrate:
–
attention
to detail
–
correct
grammar, spelling, word choice punctuation, capitalization, parallelism,
sentence structure, mechanics, and conciseness
–
all
the CCCA guidelines clear, concise, and complete

Refer to the text, the PPTs, the OWL website,
and other materials posted to Moodle.

Send drafts of your work to the TRU Writing Centre for help with your
writing and contact the TRU Library for advice on citing sources. Citing online
sources can be difficult.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me right away and
as many times as necessary. Ill be happy to provide you with some brief
feedback on your draft up until three days before the assignment is due (I can only review your draft once).

*See tips on structure and grading criteria at the
end of this document.

ble spaced 12pt font

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