Retailer still feeling the pain of holiday data breach
A full five months after its enormous data breach, Target is still scrambling for ways to convince shoppers to come back. The big red retailer’s latest move was to give CEO Gregg Steinhafel the boot, allegedly to bring in new leadership that will, “help restore consumer confidence”, but so far all the move has done is spook investors.
“You got to wonder what prompted it now. What else will come to light,” said Dieter Waizenegger, executive director, of CtW Investment Group, which advises union pension funds with about $250 billion under management, including those owning about 3.3 million Target shares.
“We would hazard a guess that first-quarter sales continued to be hurt by the data breach aftermath and that the Canada expansion is still in trouble,” Carol Levenson, an analyst with bond researcher Gimme Credit, said in a report.
“We believe this to be a very inopportune time for a change at the top of Target, given the challenges the company is facing on multiple fronts,” Moody’s [Investors Service] Vice President Charles O’Shea said.
Any dip of this magnitude is bound to take time to climb out of, even when everything is done properly. Between the stumbles with external crisis management and what comes across as difficulty keeping things together internally, Target has a long road ahead.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Bob Bly Copywriter of the Year Image courtesy of awaionline.com
Bob Bly Shows Us How
Bob Bly is the author of more than 70 books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Direct Marketing (Alpha Books). Bob has been dubbed “America’s top copywriter” by McGraw-Hill and praised by legendary ad man David Ogilvy. With a 30+ year track record as a top freelance copywriter, when Bob writes, people listen – then they move on his Calls to Action.
In his famous book, The Copywriter’s Handbook (Henry Holt & Co.), Bob shares, among many valuable things, his inside experience with over 100 top-notch clients: writing headlines that get attention – and then draw the reader into the body copy. The excerpts below are tips directly from this rich book.
Powerful Headlines
Bob quotes David Ogilvy, author of Confessions of an Advertising Man:
“The headline is the most important element… It is the telegram which decides whether the reader will read the copy. On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. If you haven’t done some selling in your headline, you have wasted 80 percent of your client’s money.”
The very same concept applies to Blog content. According to Bob, when readers browse headlines, they want to know: “What’s in it for me?” The effective headline tells the reader: “Hey, stop a minute! This is something that you’ll want!” As mail-order copywriter John Caples explains, “The best headlines appeal to people’s self-interest, or give news.”
Good Headlines Have Very Specific Jobs
Bob explains that your headline can perform four different tasks:
1. Get attention.
2. Select the audience.
3. Deliver a complete message.
4. Draw the reader into the body copy.
Bob gives crystal clear examples of how headlines perform each of these jobs:
1. Good Headlines Get Attention
We’ve already seen how headlines get attention by appealing to the reader’s self-interest. Here are a few more examples of this type of headline:
“Give Your Kids a Fighting Chance” – Crest
“Why Swelter Through Another Hot Summer?” – GE air conditioners
“For Deep-Clean, Oil-Free Skin, Noxzema Has the Solution” – Noxzema moisturizer
Another effective attention-getting gambit is to give the reader news. Headlines that give news often use words such as new, discover, introducing, announcing, now, it’s here, at last, and just arrived.
“New Sensational Video Can Give You Thin Thighs Starting Now!” – Exercise videotape
“Discover Our New Rich-Roasted Taste” – Brim decaffeinated coffee
“Introducing New Come ’N Get It. Bursting With New Exciting 4-Flavor Taste.” – Come ’N Get It dog food
If you can legitimately use the word free in your headline, do so. Free is the most powerful word in the copywriter’s vocabulary. Everybody wants to get something for free.
“Free New Report on 67 Emerging Growth Stocks” – Merrill Lynch
“Three Easy Steps to Fine Wood Finishing” – Minwax Wood Finish
“How to Bake Beans” – Van Camp’s
2. Good Headlines Select the Audience
If you are selling life insurance to people over 65, there is no point in writing copy that generates inquiries from young people. Here are a few more headlines that do a good job of selecting the right audience for the product:
“We’re Looking for People to Write Children’s Books” – The Institute of Children’s Literature
“A Message to All Charter Security Life Policyholders of Single Premium Deferred Annuities” – Charter Security life insurance
“Is Your Electric Bill Too High?” – Utility ad
3. Good Headlines Deliver a Complete Message
According to David Ogilvy, four out of five readers will read the headline and skip the rest. If this is the case, it pays to make a complete statement in your headline. That way, the copy can do some selling to those 80 percent of readers who read headlines only. Here are a few headlines that deliver complete messages:
“Caught Soon Enough, Early Tooth Decay Can Actually Be Repaired by Colgate!” – Colgate toothpaste
“Gas Energy Inc. Cuts Cooling and Heating Costs Up to 50%” – Hitachi chiller-heaters
“You Can Make Big Money in Real Estate Right Now” – Century 21
4. Good Headlines Draw the Reader into the Body Copy
Certain product categories—liquor, soft drinks, and fashion, for example—can be sold with an attractive photo, a powerful headline, and a minimum of words. But many products—automobiles, computers, books, records, home study programs, life insurance, and investments—require that the reader be
given a lot of information. That information appears in the body copy, and for the copy to be effective, the headline must compel the reader to read this copy. To draw the reader in, you must arouse his or her curiosity. You can do this with humor, or intrigue, or mystery. You can ask a question or make a provocative statement. You can promise a reward, news, or useful information.
“The $5 Alternative to Costly Plastic Surgery.” The reader is lured into the copy to satisfy her curiosity about what this inexpensive alternative might be. The headline would not have been as successful if it said, “$5 Bottle of Lotion Is an Inexpensive Alternative to Costly Plastic Surgery.”
“If You’re Confused about Buying a Personal Computer, Here’s Some Help.” You’ll want to read the copy to get the advice offered in the headline.
Read more about Bob and see how he applies his own advice in examples of his own blog posts. Thanks, Bob, for mentoring us!
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.
.. _____ ..
ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:
Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. She helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com.
Ms. Chapman’s book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:
In their 2010 book, Non-profit Sustainability – Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability, the authors, Jeanne Bell, Jan Masaoka and Steve Zimmerman, emphasized the fact that a non-profit’s “financial sustainability and programmatic sustainability cannot be separated.”
It’s impossible to have a successful non-profit that pays attention to just one of those principles, but yet most of the financial information and information about program impact is not discussed in an integrated manner.
The tool that was developed by the authors as a means of integrating this type of information and displaying it in a useful fashion is the “Matrix Map,” which combines group programs and financial information by business line as a means of developing an understanding of the actual impact of various programs.
I do recommend that you pick up a copy of the book because this post presents just one small example of the concept, and of the techniques covered.
The idea that both financial sustainability and programmatic impact are essential to non-profit success is sometimes referred to as the “dual bottom line.” The Matrix Map is a tool that places the various programs on a quadrant type chart, along with the related descriptions and financial results.
• The “Heart” programs are those that are important to core of the non-profit’s mission, but they do not generate significant revenue;
• The “Star” programs do both;
• The “Stop Sign” programs may be ones that have outlived their usefulness, and should just be discontinued, or given to another non-profit; and,
• The “Money Tree” programs are ones that produce significant revenue but do not have a big (direct) impact on program. They are, however, more important than may first be realized because they “provide the water” for the Hearts.
The “Money Tree,” at the least, is the category where a well-run CFC program for your non-profit should end up.
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See Part II of this piece next Wednesday, May 28.
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During his 25-year career in the Federal sector, Bill Huddleston, The CFC Coach,
served in many CFC roles. If you want to participate in the Combined Federal
Campaign, maximize your nonprofit’s CFC revenues, or just ask a few questions,
contact Bill Huddleston
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Have you seen The Fundraising Series of ebooks.
They’re easy to read, to the point, and inexpensive ($1.99 – $4.99)
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2. Evaluating The Chief Development Officer – III
by Tony Poderis
Last week I noted that not all of a Chief Development Officer’s responsibilities are directly related to fundraising … another reason why his/her performance should not be evaluated based just on dollars-raised.
Chief Development Officers are often involved with, if not supervising, marketing, public relations, communications, budgeting, etc., thus further complicating an assessment of that person’s effectiveness in carrying out her/his responsibilities.
The CDO’s bottom-line accountability depends, in great part, on the degree of coordination required and desired with fundraising volunteers, and the number of them organized, trained and managed in order to carry out the various campaigns and special events to their fullest capacity and effectiveness.
Another reason not to judge the CDO based on dollars is that where there is often the “blessing” of a serendipitous major donation, too often there is also the “curse” of a totally unexpected loss of a major gift which greatly and negatively affects the bottom line, but no way was the fault of the Development Director.
Along with the CDO’s ongoing work to help meet the current and impending funding needs, that professional will also be working with key volunteer leaders in the process of identifying, meeting with, and cultivating potential donors for their future (near and long term) giving.
That development professional may also be involved in the planning for a future endowment or capital campaign. And the results of those efforts will not be seen for some time … not now, as part of your current review and evaluation of your CDO.
Ideally, another area of activity on which your CDO should be evaluated … your organization will also have programs and services which can be “packaged” for corporate, foundation, or individual sponsors and underwriters.
Projecting those activities over time, well beyond the end of the current fiscal year, again gets one into the realm of “development,” a word denoting action and forward movement, but with results and evaluation being on a stretched sliding scale of time.
A final thought: When a Chief Development Officer is hired, s/he should have enough experience/expertise to tell an organization about the criteria on which s/he should be judged … and in what timeframe.
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Have a question or comment about the above posting?
You can Ask Tony.
There is also a lot of good fundraising information on his website: Raise-Funds.com
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Have you seen The Fundraising Series of ebooks ??
They’re easy to read, to the point, and inexpensive ($1.99 – $3.99)
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If you would like to comment/expand on the above, or would just like to offer your thoughts on the subject(s) of this posting, we encourage you to “Leave a Reply” at the bottom of this page.
When you are gathering input, ideas, and issues from your group at warp speed, it will inevitably be challenging and tedious. As a meeting facilitator, you must employ several techniques for recording information in a session to make it a manageable process. Here are a few methods taught in our course, The Effective Facilitator, that make the process easier – for you and your participants.
To make the recording process manageable, use the following techniques:
Offer participants a format for their responses.
Record only as many words as necessary to ensure that the participant’s comments are clear, concise and can stand alone.
Use common abbreviations where appropriate.
Use the headline technique to get participants to shorten long comments.
Offer participants a format for their responses
One method for managing the recording process is to give the participants a format for their responses. For example, you may ask for a “noun-verb-object” response from participants – e.g. “The Human Resources Department (noun) manages (verb) the onboarding process (object).”
The format method helps participants understand the information you are requesting. It also helps you listen for the information you desire and helps you to know what to document.
Record only as many words as necessary
As the facilitator, your goal is to ensure that your record of the participants’ comments are words that they said, clear to the reader and concise. The words you record must also be able to stand alone without having to rely on preceding comments to make sense.
To achieve these goals, it is not necessary that you record all of the speaker’s words. In fact, given the way most of us speak, recording all the words may reduce clarity! The key is that whatever words the facilitator writes are indeed words that the participants said.
For example, one participant says, “Somewhere early in the process we in HR place an ad in the paper.” You, as the facilitator, might record, “HR places ad in paper.” While 14 words were spoken, only five words were recorded, and each of these were words that your participant said.
Use common abbreviations where appropriate
Another technique for managing the recording process is to use abbreviations. When using abbreviations, be careful that the abbreviations are clearly understood by the participants and will still be understandable days later when the documentation is finalized.
For example, abbreviations might be used for departments (“Depts”) and Human Resources (“HR”).
Use the headline technique to have participants shorten long comments
Have you ever been faced with a participant who has given you a long, wordy comment? And, there you stand with a pen in hand and have no idea what to write. The headline technique is used for these situations. As the facilitator, you might say, “If the comment you just made was an article in the newspaper, what would the headline of the article be? Would you headline that comment for me?”
The headline technique can be quite effective in helping reduce an 83-word comment to seven words.
The headline technique can serve as a fail-safe mechanism for facilitators. When all other techniques fail, you can use it to bail yourself out when you have little idea of what to write. Keep in mind, however, it should be a fail-safe technique – not a technique used after every participant’s comment. The other techniques described earlier should prevent you from having to use the headline technique very often.
What are other techniques you use when capturing information in your meetings? There are much more to learn. Discover additional facilitation techniques plus get hands-on practice with these techniques in our training course, The Effective Facilitator.
During strategic planning, as your team arrives at the stage of defining the broad activities – the strategies – your team will undertake to move your vision into reality, we recommend a specific format for writing those strategies.
To ensure clarity of your strategies, use the verb-object-purpose format.
Since strategies are “broad activities” the verb-object-purpose format starts with action (verb), states what is acted upon (object) and explains why (purpose). The sample strategies that follow demonstrate the verb-object-purpose format.
Sample Strategies
Create sales leveraging tools to assist sales team in growing accounts
Develop and implement vertical marketing strategy to increase revenue by capitalizing on existing customer knowledge
Implement incentive bonus program to reward caregivers for productivity, client success and client satisfaction
Hold briefings with at least three agencies a quarter to hear about their needs and update them on our programs and direction
Revamp partner program to increase number of partners, revenue, and residual
Reengineer our product development process to reduce cycle time and increase efficiencies
Establish partnership with Japanese manufacturer to revamp the northeast plant
Hold quarterly committee fairs after meetings to increase member involvement
Implement program to widely promote our success as a quality producer
Develop a manager “professional development” program to improve managers’ ability to coach their teams and to increase morale and productivity
Strategy Verbs
With the verb-object-purpose format, the selection of the verb is important.
With strategies, be sure to start with a “strategy” verb and not an “objective” verb.
The table that follows illustrates the difference between objective and strategy verbs. Verbs on the left column of the table will tend to lead you to describe the results to be achieved. The verbs on the right will tend to lead you to describe the action to be taken. While objectives focus on results, strategies focus on action.
This is why you need to look at advertising with an eye for crisis management
Dove has been quite successful as a brand in recent years, in part thanks to its campaigns focused on women with a wide range of body types. Its latest campaign never went to print, however, thanks to an early reveal from the New York Times that got stakeholders fired up.
Have a look at the proposed design, which would have gone up on billboards in New Jersey this summer:
That’s right, the ad, which, considering it came out of a multimillion dollar organization, had to have passed through several committees and was signed off on by company leadership, seriously addresses New Jersey as “The Armpit of America”.
For our readers not in the States, this is not a term used endearingly, but rather the go-to insult for anyone looking to take a dig at Jersey. Making the choice even more baffling, Dove parent company Unilever is actually headquarted in New Jersey!
As far as we’re concerned, this is a complete crisis management failure. An ad like this, that is so clearly offensive to a large group of your stakeholders, should never make it to the public eye. Heck, if we were Dove artists and drew this up as a joke amongst ourselves we’d be putting it through the shredder twice before we clocked out.
Predictably, Dove’s Facebook and Twitter pages bubbled over with comments from angry and offended New Jersey residents defending their home state and blasting the billboard, waking the brand up enough to let everyone know their feedback had been heard and the ad would be pulled.
It feels like we’re dishing this advice out nearly every week, but here goes again – when you finish drafting up that edgy new ad campaign, how about taking a little survey?
Ask your family, friends, colleagues…heck, maybe, if you’re one of the largest manufacturers of personal care products in the world, you might even have the budget to bring in a focus group of those in your target area to ask what they think.
Just sayin’.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[The following guest post from Rick Kelly, Vice President of Strategic Communications at Triad Strategies examines the dangers that arise when you let the legal department override common sense.]
Failing to balance legal concerns and reputation can create major crises
When conducting crisis management training, one of the points we always make is that what works in a court of law and what works in the Court of Public Opinion aren’t necessarily the same things.
General Mills, which possesses an exceptional stable of iconic food brands, learned this the hard way last week when it changed the terms under which its customers are permitted to interact with the company online. The ensuing public backlash caused the company to revert to the earlier agreement and apologize after three days of social media turmoil.
Like many consumer product companies, General Mills capitalizes on social media and other digital communication tools to build and strengthen brand loyalty. Customers are able to get recipe ideas, download coupons, take advantage of promotions, view videos, etc., and in doing so, imply their acceptance of a “terms-of-use” agreement.
And again, like many consumer product companies, General Mills is interested in limiting its legal liability and avoiding the over-the-top awards that plaintiffs extract from deep-pocketed corporations on occasion.
What caused everyone to choke on their Cheerios was when General Mills updated its website terms-of-use agreement to include a provision requiring website visitors to give up their right to sue the company. Instead, they would be required to resolve any claims through binding arbitration, an approach that tends to be more favorable toward the defendant and eliminates class-action opportunities.
The New York Times began the buzzkill with a business-page article that posed the question of whether downloading a 50-cent cereal coupon could cost customers their legal rights. Facebook and Twitter were immediately onto it, and posts questioned whether “liking” the company’s Facebook page or following it on Twitter constituted a forfeiture of consumers’ right to sue as well.
The Times reported that the company had made the revisions following a California judge’s ruling last month against a motion to dismiss a case brought by two mothers who accused General Mills of deceptively marketing its Nature Valley products as 100 percent natural when they are not.
Digiday, a media company for digital media, marketing and advertising professionals, quoted National Consumer Law Center attorney David Seligman as saying arbitration clauses are more common than most people realize.
“General Mills was public about it, so it caught people’s attention,” Seligman told Digiday. “The vast majority of companies already have arbitration clauses. I don’t think this will put pressure on companies to remove them, and there are all kinds of sneaky ways to put these things up.”
In other words – and we apologize in advance for our lack of restraint – the folks at General Mills aren’t the only ones with Trix up their sleeves. We’re likely to see more about arbitration clauses moving forward, and we’ll watch with interest to see which court – court of law, or Court of Public Opinion – prevails.
Is poor customer service creating unnecessary crises for your organization?
Customer anger affects business today to such a degree that there are studies focused entirely on the subject. The 2013 National Customer Rage Study aimed to determine what causes rage in customers, how to best mitigate it, and which systems could help to minimize its impact.
The study found plenty of reason to make providing quality customer service an integral part of your crisis management efforts, including that:
– Since 2011 the number of people who have gone online to post information about problems with an organization has nearly doubled.
– Overall customer rage has increased 8% since 2011.
– MOST complaintants are dissatisfied with how companies are handling their complaints.
– 56% of complaintants felt they got NOTHING as a result of complaining.
– 76% of these just wanted an apology, only 32% got one
– Automated response phone systems, understaffing of customer care agents, and lack of empowerment for agents to make necessary changes are all major factors contributing to customer rage.
– When companies added non-monetary remedies (most often a simple apology) to the monetary relief they provided customers, complaintant satisfaction DOUBLED.
– Word of mouth resulting from dissatisfied complaintants is nearly three times higher than the word of mouth communicated by those who were satisfied.
– Posting information on the web about customer problems has almost doubled since 2011.
As you can see, a huge percentage of customers are left unhappy not necessarily because they encountered issues with a brand, but because of how the issues were handled. In fact, the study shows that MOST complaintants are dissatisfied with how their problems are being handled, and, even with the technology at our disposal, complaintant satisfaction is no higher than it was back in the 1970’s.
To us the item that stood out the most were the figures regarding apologies. The fact that with figures like a literal DOUBLING in satisfaction as a result of adding an apology to any monetary recompense, as well as seeing a huge majority of complaintants walking away unsatisfied with customer service because they weren’t even offered a simple, “We’re sorry”, means many organizations out there are just not putting in the work they need to keep customer-related crises at bay.
The rest of the survey contains many more as eye-opening findings and figures. Take a look, and make customer service an asset, rather than a detriment, to your organization’s crisis management.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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1. Preserve Institutional Knowledge to Ensure Better Proposals
by Jayme Sokolow
Most of us work in or with institutions that pride themselves on their ability to identify and access information quickly, but those institutions very often have short memories.
As Ron Ashkenas has pointed out in the Harvard Business Review Blog Network, although organizations “spend a lot of time and resources developing knowledge and capacity . . . most of it resides in the heads, hands, and hearts of individual managers and functional experts.”
But as time goes by, the effects of entropy take over and, as individuals in the organization leave, retire, or take on new positions within the organization, the knowledge fades.
There are, however, ways that nonprofits can institutionalize knowledge in proposal development to create better processes, better content, and more informed proposal team members.
Following Ron Ashkenas, I recommend three approaches to overcoming institutional amnesia:
• Recognize that the preservation of institutional knowledge is an organizational challenge and responsibility, and formulate an explicit strategy for the maintenance of that knowledge, especially within your proposal team.
• Identify those important pieces of information that every member of the proposal team should know and make sure they have easy access to that information.
• Use technology to create a simple but effective database where the proposal team can access the “institutional memory,” and where they can record new institutional knowledge as the proposal develops. (You could use SharePoint to do this or imitate Intel, which has its own internal wiki named Intelpedia.)
As people age, we learn that our precious memories can become quite fragile. And, even though nonprofits seem more resilient than any individual, they seem to age even more quickly. As a result, nonprofits need to actively preserve their institutional memories. If they do not, proposal development is likely to become less efficient and less effective.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Dr. Jayme Sokolow, founder and president of The Development Source, Inc.,
helps nonprofit organizations develop successful proposals to government agencies Contact Jayme Sokolow..
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Look for Jayme’s ebook on Finding & Getting Federal Government Grants.
It’s part of The Fundraising Series of ebooks
They’re easy to read, to the point, and inexpensive ($1.99 – $4.99)
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2. Evaluating The Chief Development Officer – II
by Tony Poderis
Last week I suggested that there are many factors that can impact the success of a development program, and, thereby, affect how the CDO’s performance is perceived.
— Significantly high startup costs for new and emerging organizations can greatly and negatively affect the raising of donations and the bottom-line in terms of numbers of gifts, amounts, and when they are received.
— Initial “investment” costs for new major campaigns, such as for capital, endowment, sponsorships and underwriting. All do take time, maybe years, i.e., the word “development” in our profession. These long-term efforts significantly influence when and how much money comes in.
— Focus on time and money spent for telefunding, direct mail, social media, and Internet fund-raising activities differ from organization to organization.
— Impending and costly new and expanding program and service initiatives to be installed by the organization as directed from the long-range strategic plan, will certainly impact the development officer’s performance and results.
— How much, how little, or how not at all, the Board of Trustees directly assist and participate in the development activities. This makes a huge difference from non-profit to non-profit regarding how development staff is evaluated and of course it directly affects the efforts to win new donations, and certainly impacts the results of refused, increased or decreased donations.
— The quality, skills, experience, and capability of any given development staff person can and do range far and wide to greatly influence the development officer’s performance evaluation.
— Performance, good or bad, is greatly influenced with the development office resources at hand and willingly provided by the organization’s leadership in terms of adequate support staff for the Director of Development to satisfy fully all of the requirements and directives of campaign volunteers, donors, and prospects.
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All too often, a development person is required to perform other activities
within the organization which are peripheral to fundraising. I’ll address that
issue and a few others in Part Three of this series, next Wednesday.
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Have a question or comment about the above posting?
You can Ask Tony.
There is also a lot of good fundraising information on his website: Raise-Funds.com
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Have you seen The Fundraising Series of ebooks ??
They’re easy to read, to the point, and inexpensive ($1.99 – $4.99)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
If you would like to comment/expand on the above, or would just like to offer your thoughts on the subject(s) of this posting, we encourage you to “Leave a Reply” at the bottom of this page.
In reviewing the previous post, it is noted that even though we came up with more drawbacks for the employee as a remote communicator, the benefits still outweighed the drawbacks in the long run, due to a better quality of life. But now, let’s talk about the benefits and drawbacks for an organization when working with employees who are telecommunicating remotely.
Benefits for the organization
Decreasing real estate costs as the writer takes up less work space within the organization.
Decreasing productivity costs as the employee is paid only when services are needed and completed.
Having access to the employee 24/7 for immediate and urgent discussions.
Having skilled, experienced, and trusted professional work accomplished any time anywhere.
Pressing changes can be immediately communicated to the remote employee.
Transmitting documents between the remote employee and the organization can be immediately achieved without losing any down time.
Working and communicating with more remote workers with different skill sets, talents, and concepts can bring more innovations to the organization.
Drawbacks for the organization
Lacking or loss of good communication.
Conveying what the organization requires from the remote communicator is challenging.
Coordinating last-minute meetings can be difficult and stressful.
Missing team dynamics due to absent members can lead to a decrease in good relationships.
Losing confidentiality of work required can be detrimental to the organization.
Increasing costs due to longer conversations resulting from not being able to have one-on-one quick conversations. This can increase costs exponentially especially when there are immediate simple changes that must be made, but the explanation for the change takes more time to explain than to execute.
Failing to get immediate questions answered. This can cause delays especially if the remote worker is in a different time zone and the result leads to missed deliverables.
Misunderstanding the environment, goals, and mindset of the organization can occur, especially if the organization deals with global practices.
Receiving unexpected poor quality or inferior work from the remote writer.
Losing control over time and expenses relating to the project.
Losing control of immediate availability of service hence resulting in poor work quality.
Decreasing in the quality of work received if the writer is based in another country which uses different terms or spellings.
From reviewing both posts, it seems like there are more disadvantages than benefits for good communication between the remote worker and the organization, but companies and individuals still hire flexible writers, organizers, developers, or workers in any field where flexibility is an option. Hence, even though a number of drawbacks seem to exist, having remote workers can be beneficial for both entities as long as good communication is maintained. This is also assuming that the organizations would not hire the remote communicator or writer if they did not trust the employee nor feel that they could not produce consistent quality work.
What have your experiences been for working with telecommunicating workers? What were your positives and negatives?
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