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How to structure memos that communicate bad news (e.g. termination, company restructuring etc.)
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Quick reference
Communicating Bad News
Memorandums are used to communicate bad news internally.
When to use
Use this section as a guide on how "bad news memos" should be structured.
Instructions
- All recipients should be clearly identified in the addressee section of the memorandum, as well as the name and job title of the sender.
- The first paragraph should state the purpose of the memorandum, and should not be more than three sentences long.
- The second paragraph should contain the details of the change. Multiple changes should be listed with bullet points or numbers.
- Support or justification for the change may be provided in the third paragraph.
- The final paragraph should outline the next steps, and let the recipients know what is expected of them.
- There is no need for a signature block, though it may be included at the end of the document.
- 00:04 So now let's craft a memo where we're communicating bad news internally.
- 00:09 We'll follow the structure we learned before using our template, but
- 00:14 we'll be adapting it based on the nature of the message we're sending.
- 00:19 You'll notice that for memos, there's a double space between
- 00:23 the bold memorandum lettering at the top, and our header section.
- 00:28 In the header section, let's fill in the placeholders.
- 00:32 Here we have the recipients, and we can enter their names or
- 00:35 their job titles here.
- 00:37 This is important so that everyone knows who is getting a copy of the memo.
- 00:43 Next we have our own name and job title.
- 00:48 And we need to fill in today's date.
- 00:53 In the subject line we use a specific topic that this memo will address.
- 01:00 So now, Paragraph One.
- 01:03 Here, we have to state the purpose of the memo.
- 01:08 Since we're communicating bad news, in this paragraph we can prep our recipients
- 01:13 for what's coming, but there's no need to linger over it.
- 01:21 In the next paragraph we'll state the actual bad news.
- 01:25 We want to be straightforward without being too blunt.
- 01:29 To do this, we'll give the details of whatever changes we want to share.
- 01:34 In this case we have a list of three specific changes.
- 01:40 So we'll enter them as a bulleted list so they stand out as main points.
- 01:46 Since we want to explain or justify this changes, we'll do that in a new paragraph
- 01:51 since the previous one had this list of items And so what
- 01:57 we're doing here is to share the process by which we arrived at the bad news.
- 02:05 Now we're on to the final paragraph.
- 02:09 Here we outline the next steps.
- 02:11 What can they expect to happen next?
- 02:15 We can tell the employees what we'll do.
- 02:18 And we also tell them what's expected of them.
- 02:27 Notice that, in this document we mentioned two attachments.
- 02:31 So we'll just type the word attachments in the left at the bottom of the document.
- 02:38 The documents were already named, so
- 02:40 there's no need to restate the name below the word attachments.
- 02:45 And this is what the layout of our memorandum looks like.
- 02:49 Notice that for memos, we don't indent the paragraphs,
- 02:55 so we skip a line between each paragraph.
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