Recently, I have been receiving a lot of spam through my email at work, Organizational Announcements. I am getting these emails more often than viagra or cialis email and the spam filters don’t seem to catch these. You know the ones:
I am pleased to announce that Josephine Smosephine has been promoted to Director of Sales. Josephine has been working tirelessly for the past 3 years to increase our sales in the northern region. Key responsibilities will include this and that. This position will report to the President of Sales. Please join me in congratulating Josephine on her promotion and supporting her new position.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, this post might be a little bit of “sour grapes” because I received a promotion over five years ago and my boss at the time forgot to send out the announcement. I am apparently still bitter.
So, what is the purpose of these announcements, other than cluttering up the company email? I guess one purpose would be so that other employees understand their position in relationship to the newly promoted person. Maybe, but very few people in the organization are typically affected by the promotion (other than the promoted person.) Secondly, wouldn’t a company organization chart be a more effective method to let fellow employees know how they fit into the organization with relationship to the newly promoted employee? Yet, company org charts are notoriously difficult to find…see if you can get a copy of your companies org chart. Nine out of ten employees will be successful. Those that are successful might be surprised who they technically work for!
Another possible reason for sending these announcements to the general employee population is to give the appearance that there is a path to bigger and better things within the organization, thus giving hope to the remaining employees that if they work hard and smart, they too could be promoted.
I suppose a third reason is to pump up the ego or the person receiving the promotion and giving them an email that they can save and savor occasionally when the stress from the new position makes them wonder what the heck they were thinking when they accepted.
Regardless what the reason, you may need a template for the next employee that you promote, so here you go. You can cut and paste it from this post and just update the names and positions, indicated in brackets [ ]:
Date: [Today's Date]
To: All [Company Name] Employees
From: [Your Name]
Subject: Organizational Announcement
I am pleased to announce that [Promoted Employee's Full Name] has been promoted to the new role of [New Position] (Note: The more titles you string together here, the better. Any combination of Executive, Senior, Vice, President, Director, Manager, etc., is acceptable and desirable.) [Promoted Employee's First Name] has been working hard for the past [Time Period] (Note: This is tricky. If the time period is too long, it can be a de-motivator. To short a period of time and everybody will see through the purpose of the promotion) as [Old Position] and during that time has maintained a high standard of excellence (Note: It is important not to get to precise or explicit here, for a couple reasons. If this is a mercy promotion and you are just trying to promote the employee to a position where they can do less damage, you can’t really say this. If the employee is actually very good, why are you promoting them? Keep them where they are so they can keep doing good things. Regardless, if you put real reasons for a deserved promotion, they will be conspicuously absent in the inevitable mercy promotions.) In their new role, [Promoted Employee's First Name] will be responsible for driving improved business processes in the [Responsible Area] (Note: Don’t be to precise or explicit here, because someone might be saving these emails and comparing promises with results when the next “organizational announcement” for this employee is sent out.), additionally, they will be responsible for ensuring timely responses to [add some nebulous measurements here]. In their role, [Other Employee Name number 1] and [Other Employee Name number 2] will report to [Promoted Employee's First Name]. (Note: You must be VERY CAREFUL when announcing who will work for the promoted employee. At some point, this will require that you tell these employees that they now work for the promoted employee. The same reasons that org charts are not published may be applicable here. To prolong the need for informing these employees, just leave organization specifics out of the announcement.)
Please join me in congratulating [Promoted Employee's First Name] and supporting them in their new role.
Hope this helps those of you responsible for writing these spam Organizational Announcements.
Now, if you happen to be one of the people on the receiving end of all the spam Organizational Announcements, you can put a filter into Outlook that will send any emails whose subject contains “Organization Announcement” directly into your Deleted Files folder. Sometimes, it is valuable to read them though…just to figure out who you really work for.
Tags: Organization Chart · Promotions · Spam
