10 C\'s of Employee Engagement

Bad Letter
The author of this brief report has been asked to review a letter from Bobby Johnson. Specifically, the analysis will be done while keeping the 10 C’s in mind. Those C’s, of course, are content, completeness, correctness, clarity, coherence, conciseness, connection, creativity, courtesy and closure. After troubleshooting and identifying the issues with the email, there will then be a rewriting of the email that acts upon what was missing, incorrect or placed in error within the original draft of said email. While the letter written by Bobby Johnson does basically address what was needed, there are some clear-cut things that could and should have been done much better in the email.
Analysis
Overall, the content of the existing letter is fairly positive. There are some issues with the way things are phrased and presented. However, the important parts are there, albeit some of them done incompletely or otherwise poorly. Further, the completeness of the latter is also fairly positive. There are some parts that are there yet incomplete. However, everything that needs to be there, again, would seem to be at least partially present. When it comes to correctness, there does not seem to be anything that is overtly wrong in terms of facts. Again, there is just a little lack of precision and specificity that really needs to be there. When one starts to talk about clarity, this is where things start coming into focus regarding what Bobby did wrong. For example, he presumes that all fifty people on the email know about the retirement. That is unlikely to be accurate. It should be rephrased to say something like “as some of you may already know, Joe Banyon is retiring” or something else along those lines. Something else that would be very important to be more precise about is the actual date of the party. The fact that only the day of the week and the time, and not the precise date, are mentioned in the letter is a rather notable oversight. Something like Friday, August 11th, 2017 would be much more appropriate. Also missing is the address, city and ZIP code of the restaurant. This will leave no doubt as to where the restaurant is located. “City Café” is a little generic and it is easily possible that there is more than one location that uses that name. This would especially be true in a metropolitan area with more than one suburb or urban area.
When speaking of coherence, the basic logic and consistency is mostly acceptable, with one exception. The letter keeps using plural people references and in a way that does not make a lot of sense. The tensing in general is rather slipshod. For example, the use of “you” when referring to the fifty recipients is obviously not correct. Bobby is not precise about who he means by “we hope you can make it”, although he presumably means Joe Banyon’s friends. However, that is not clear. He errs in the same way when he ways “we would like to give him a gift certificate”. Again, it is unclear who he is referring to. He could mean Joe’s friends, some of the coworkers on the email list or something else entirely. Finally, the “we are asking everyone to contribute” line is also confusing. He absolutely should have been more precise to note who he was referring to with each idea and stanza in the letter. Even with the inconsistency, the connection being established in this email is clear. A coworker of the gropu is retiring and the idea of Bobby is a good one, and that is to organize and facilitate a positive send-off of Joe Banyon. The overall creativity is a little lacking. Even if it was done in a fully cohesive manner, the creativity involved with the letter is not really obvious and inspiring. Even with that, the letter is fairly courteous, although it could have done better. There is a greeting on the onset of the letter but the ending is pretty lacking. “Hope to see you there” or something more encouraging would have been much better. The salutation that is there is complicated by the fact that he apparently sent the letter as a BCC because only Bobby is listed in the “To:” field. Even if mass letters like this are to be avoided, this situation does call for one. Beyond that, it could be useful for the recipients to see who is on the letter cc list and who is not.
With all of the above in mind, this is how the author would have written the letter:
From: Bobby Johnson
To: Jane Doe, John Doe, etc., etc.
Subject: Retirement Party for Joe Banyon
Everyone,
Apologies in advance for the mass letter to you all, but I did want to loop in you all to make sure you know about something important. As many of you may know. Joe Banyon is retiring and some of his friends would like to give him a positive send-off in the form of a party. The party will be next Friday on August 18th at 6 pm. It will be at the City Café at 100 Primrose Lane in Acme, NY.
Some of his friends have suggested that we pool some money to give him a gift certificate. If you are interested in contributing to that certificate, please contact Jane Doe and she will advise you on what to do. It is the hope of Joe and his friends that as many of you as possible can make it to the dinner party on Friday. Even if you cannot, please send your regards to Joe Banyon as he enters retirement.
Thank you so much in advance if you can come to the party or contribute to the gift certificate, or in any other way.

Sincerely,

Bobby Johnson
References
Insight Link. (2017). The 10 Cs of Employee Engagement. Insightlink.com. Retrieved 12 August
2017, from https://www.insightlink.com/ten-cs-of-employees-engagement.html
Intranet Connections. (2017). Apply the 10 C's of Employee Engagement to your Intranet.
Intranetconnections.com. Retrieved 12 August 2017, from
http://www.intranetconnections.com/blog/apply-the-10-cs-of-employee-engagement-to-your-intranet/