ASSESSMENT TASK 2A – SHORT BUSINESS REPORT

1. THE TASK

You have been appointed as a consultant to report directly to Mr E Kho, CEO of EckoTours Australia (a fictitious organisation). EckoTours Australia conducts a number of different tourism activities, including ecotourism, which caters mainly for international tourists. Of these, by far the most come from China.

EckoTours Australia operates from Melbourne, Australia. It has an administration department, which answers queries from potential clients and prepares advertising material as well as doing the normal administrative tasks, and a team of tour guides.

Kho has identified a number of communication areas he believes need attention. These include:

Preparing effective marketing literature
Developing good interpersonal skills (such as effective listening, appropriate non-verbal communication,
providing effective feedback)
Intercultural communication, particularly in relation to Chinese people
Delivering effective oral presentations
Conflict management
Developing an effective organisational “culture”
Effective team communication

In order to improve communication skills within the organisation, Kho has asked you to advise him on the implementation of a training program for employees.

As the first step, you are to identify TWO areas of communication from those listed above that you think are especially important and will commence the process. You will need to justify your choice of areas, outline the content to be delivered and provide practical advice for its implementation. To be credible, it is important that your advice is based on expert opinion or research based concepts and knowledge relevant to business communication.

This task is to be presented in the form of a short business report, with an introduction, information/analysis, conclusion and recommendations.

Your report must contain to a minimum of FIVE reference sources. Two of these must be academic journal references sourced from the University’s library resources (www.federation.edu.au/library). Other appropriate references would include your textbook (Eunson) and other Business Communication textbooks. If you use google or another search engine to find information, you should consider the issue of reliability.

Note that the report is an academic exercise and therefore appropriate referencing (APA format) techniques must be used.

Length: About 1500 words including all appendices

2. DATE DUE:

4.00 pm on the Friday of week 8

3. SUBMISSION:
Is to be by email to the lecturer. The email should be an appropriately worded and formatted business email that explains briefly what the report is all about.

4. ASSESSMENT CRITERIA:
Marks will be allocated using the attached marking guide.

5. FEEDBACK AND RETURN OF WORK:
Work will be returned with marks and feedback on performance in class in week 10. By that time, marks will also have been recorded on FDL Grades.