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How to structure memos that communicate bad news (e.g. termination, company restructuring etc.)

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.
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  • 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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