The Resourceful Reporter, Part 11: Contractor Appraisals

Contractor appraisals assess the performance of a hired contractor or vendor to help a business decide whether to continue a relationship with the product or service provider.

• Overview – Products or services vendor provides to business, duration of service, relevant contractor data (e.g., number of employees, physical locations, annual sales, market reach).
• Scope – Framing of appraisal in terms of contractor-business relationship (e.g., geographical or practical areas, offered services, delivery). 
• Standards – Criteria for measuring contractor (e.g., quality, communication, delivery). 
• Performance – Contractor's achievement level in each category.
• Evaluation – Qualitative (e.g., satisfactory) or quantitative (e.g., 4 of 5) assessment for each category and summary assessment.
• Recommendation – Decision of whether to continue, terminate, or modify business relationship with contractor.

Other reports in this series are:

1. Meeting Reports
2. Incident Reports
3. Investigation Reports
4. Inspection Reports
5. Procedural Reports
6. Scopes of Work
7. Test Reports
8. Course Reviews
9. Conference Reviews

The Resourceful Reporter, Part 10: Conference Reviews

Conference reviews are similar to course or seminar reviews since they concern reporting on the value of a learning experience to business's operations. Therefore, you can use the course review template as a rough outline for a conference review. Just keep in mind at least five notable exceptions:

Purposefulness. Courses aim to target specific learners' needs; therefore, learner participation is not only encouraged by required. The trainer should focus not only on learners' knowledge but on their behavioral change, for instance, to present better executive briefings or to increase their number of deal closings. On the other hand, conferences generally have set agendas, compelling attendees to come prepared with their own business aims for appearing at the conference. 

Decorum. Courses tend toward informality and stress comfort level to maximize participation. But every conference detail from the registration process to the individual events to the luncheon to the post-attendee survey has a greater level of formality than the course or seminar.

Depth. While a course review covers one specific training event offered to an organization, a conference review may cover multiple talks, symposia, panels, workshops, and clinics, all of reportable value.

Variety. The topics course will be limited to a specific topic, whereas a conference may cover a broad range of topics of industry interest, ranging from the employee to equipment to materials to products and services to vendors to clients to the environment to regulator factors and so on.

Participation. Course attendees participate in discussions and assignments, and they are often evaluated based on their performance. Conference attendees are less active in their participation. They act mostly as knowledge receptacles for the conference speakers.

Other descriptive reports in this series are:

1. Meeting Reports
2. Incident Reports
3. Investigation Reports
4. Inspection Reports
5. Procedural Reports
6. Scopes of Work
7. Test Reports
8. Course Reviews

The Thousandth Post: WORDS ON THE LINE

I started WORDS ON THE LINE nearly 17years ago, on January 4, 2005, when my plan for it was to write casually about my passion for writing and to help people write better.

A thousand posts later, my passion and objective have not changed. The content in this blog will keep you learning tips for writing at work, school, and home. I will follow this post with part 10 of a 25-part series on The Resourceful Reporter. Other topical series in this blog, in chronological order, include:

• The Employment Application Process (2005, 5 parts)
• Summarizing Successfully (2006, 8 parts)
• Logical Fallacies (2006, 20 parts)
• Constructive Criticism (2007, 6 parts)
• Tips for Better Email (2007, 20 parts)
• Grammatical Guidelines (2007-2008, 7 parts)
• Breaking Writer's Block (2009, 12 parts)
• The Virtues of Reading Your Writing Aloud (2010, 5 parts)
• An ESL Guide (2010, 7 parts)
• Voice (2010, 11 parts)
• Getting Creative (2010, 7 parts)
• Staying Creative (2011, 7 parts)
• 120 Influences (2011, 14 parts)
• Why and How I Teach Writing (2011, 12 parts)
• Finding Inspiration (2012, 5 parts)
• Punctuation Pointers (2012, 4 parts) 
• Five Things I Learned from Teaching in China (2012, 5 parts)
• Style Standards (2013, 4 parts)
• The Reading-Writing Continuum (2014, 11 parts)
• Why We Get Words Wrong (2015, 10 parts)
• Writing in Plain Language (2016, 9 parts)
• Things Writers Do (2016-2017, 21 parts)
• What Writers Say (2017, 25 parts)
• Starting with What Matters (2017-2018, 20 parts)
• Tone Tips (2018, 14 parts)
• Splendid Sentences (2018-2019, 15 parts)
• Do You Know How to Argue? (2019, 3 parts)
• On Taking Notes (2019, 8 parts)
• On Writing for the Web (2020, 4 parts)
• Improving Style Through Syntax (2020, 20 parts)
• Improving Style Through Diction (2020, 20 parts)
• Using the Writing Process Effectively (2020, 4 parts)
• Surprising Sentences (2021, 18 parts)
• The Art of Writing (2021, 6 parts)

And many more standalone pieces in this blog will surprise, stimulate, and inspire you to becoming a better writer. Happy reading—and learning!

The Resourceful Writer, Part 9: Course Reviews

The course review is a descriptive report that a company may request of a staffer to see whether a course, workshop, seminar, or webinar offered to its employees delivers its promised objectives, among other reasons. The more writers understand management's concerns about a course, the better chance they have of crafting a valid and reliable review. 

Course reviewers would do well to work from a checklist of details. Below are some of them.

1. Purpose. Why did the company make the course available to employees? Do not stop with a personal reason; extend the purpose to a business aim. For example, instead of writing just to improve the presentation skills of business analysts, write for business analysts to summarize industry trends and forecasts to executives with greater authority, clarity, and conciseness, enabling faster, accurate responses in the marketplace.

2. Context. Was the course a part of a series? A segment of a course certificate program? A pilot project? One of several seminars in an industrywide conference? Does the course provide professional credits? 

3. Logistics. When was the course delivered? What was its duration? Where was it delivered? Who offered it? Was it offered live or recorded? In person or online?

4. Administration. How easy was the registration process? Was support offered by the service provider before, during, and after the course?

5. Accommodations. How was the facility? Refreshments? Rooming if in a location remote from the employees' workplace?

6. Attendees. How many people attended the course? What were their professional titles, education, experience, and training needs?

7. Facilitators. What were the credentials and experience of the facilitators? How was their teaching style? Were the responsive to learners' questions about the content?   

8. Objectives. What were the goals of the course? Were the goals affective (e.g., appreciate the challenges of presentation skills), behavioral (deliver an executive summary of a business case in 3 minutes), or cognitive (e.g., identify five vocal and five body traits)?

9. Content. What topics, principles, and maxims did the course cover? Did they enable learners to achieve the course objectives. 

10. Activities. What discussions, exercises, tests, audio-visual learning experiences, etc. were assigned?

11. Applicability. Are the learned skills transferrable to the employee's job?

12. Recommendations. Should other people in the organization attend the course?

Many businesses spend huge amounts for staff education and training. The course review is a critical part of validating this investment. 

Other descriptive reports in this series are:

1. Meeting Reports
2. Incident Reports
3. Investigation Reports
4. Inspection Reports
5. Procedural Reports
6. Scopes of Work
7. Test Reports

The Resourceful Reporter, Part 8: Test Reports

The test report is the seventh of nine descriptive reports in this series on report writing. We may be tempted to consider test reports analytical in nature because they require an in-depth review of the test results. But the elements and style of the test report are so prescribed, and the standards so strict, that the report itself seems definitely descriptive. We expect test reports to yield observable, verifiable results. Nothing is left to opinion.

Test reports are indispensable to any business. They prove the reliability of the products we habitually use and ingest. The taste of a peanut butter cup never changes and a ball point pen releases ink with the same the color and thickness thanks to test reports. We start our car and walk onto a plane or train only after engineering teams have delivered numerous test reports on them. Construction crews break ground for buildings in areas whose soil was assessed in test reports. We can safely say that efficacious test reports feed, employ, and house us.  

A test report requires several elements. Below are 11 of them: 

• Purpose – Why was the test necessary? How did it apply to the business or related project?  
• Objective – What outcome did the test aim to achieve? 
• Testers – Who were the assigned testing staff?
• Scope – What part of the material, equipment, facility, environment, or project did the test cover? 
• Standards – By what criteria was the test to be conducted and its results to be measured? 
• Metrics – What were the sequential and final passing and failing measures and adjustments? 
• Methods – What were the procedures, including contingencies, of the test?
• Inputs – What tools, equipment, materials, specimens, or other inputs did the test require? 
• Results – What outcomes did the test produce? 
• Judgment – Did the test meet the standards? Did it pass or fail?
• Follow-up – What consequential next steps were necessary? 

Other descriptive reports in this series are:

1. Meeting Reports
2. Incident Reports
3. Investigation Reports
4. Inspection Reports
5. Procedural Reports
6. Scopes of Work