Reporting management information

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Introduction to Reporting management information

This chapter looks at methods of communicating management information

Suitable formats for communicating information

For all the variety of methods, communication tends to be of three possible types:

• Oral/spoken
• Written
• Graphical

They have their own strengths and weaknesses:

Oral/spoken

Written

Graphical

Typical formats of written communication are as follows

Letters

‘Dear Sir’: pairs with ‘Yours faithfully’.  ‘Dear Mr Smith’ pairs with ‘Yours sincerely’

Email

Note that emails are:

– Less formal than letters.

– Can easily be sent to the wrong person (with potentially embarrassing results).

– Can be composed and sent quickly without sufficient thought or care.

Reports

REPORT TITLE

The appendices contain detailed information that is referred to elsewhere in the report.

Memoranda

Memoranda do not have Dear Sir/Yours faithfully

Short memoranda might not have numbered, titled paragraphs.

The general principles of distributing reports

Reports will often contain sensitive or confidential information about subjects such as:

• Employees
• Customers
• Competitors
• Products
• Company plans

The information should be distributed only to the appropriate people at the appropriate time. Releasing information too soon or to the wrong people can damage organisations.

If reports or other types of communication, whether written or computer based, hold information about individuals then in the UK they will be subject to the Data Protection Act 1998. Many other countries have similar legislation.

This Act governs and protects the rights of individuals (but not organisations) with respect to information held about them.

These individuals are known as data subjects ie they are the subject of the data that is held.

The holder of the data (for example the company owning the files in which the data is recorded) is the data user.

Data subjects generally have the following rights over data held about them:

• To see the data
• To ask that it be corrected
• To ask that it be removed if the data is illegally held
• To sue if incorrect data has caused damage to the data subject

Organisations which hold personal data must register with the Information Commissioner’s Office. The registration sets out the nature of the information that is held and for what purposes.