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Management Studies

Ensuring Recommendations Are Specific, Actionable, and Justified

Most reports—written and oral—contain recommendations. These recommendations should be specific, actionable, and justified.

In this exercise, you will evaluate recommendations based on a set of facts you have collected. You will evaluate whether these recommendations are specific, actionable, and justified.

Read the case below and answer the questions that follow.

You are part of a team of five employees who have been asked to draw up new travel guidelines for your organization. Your company has seen falling profit margins in recent years, and you've been told that travel expenses take up a significant portion of the budget. You are charged with identifying ways to reduce travel costs without negatively impacting business revenue.

Your team initially spent one month fact-finding and polling employees within your organization. You came away with the following information:

• Your company spends about $300,000 per year on travel expenses.

• Most of your employees (76%) say that they could forgo some of their trips if the company invested in the latest telepresence equipment.

• Most of your employees (53%) say that they would not want to travel if there was a downgrade in hotel quality.

• Most of your employees (83%) say that they would rather receive a stipend of $100 per day rather than submit receipts for reimbursement of expenses due to meals and incidentals.

• Most of your employees (89%) say that travel is more effective than telepresence meetings. Nearly all of your employees (97%) say that travel is more effective than online meetings or videoconferences.

• Most of your employees (58%) have never used online meeting software.

• On trips, employees are reimbursed an average of $113 per day for meals; reimbursed an average of $48 per day for incidental expenses; and stay in hotel rooms that average $214 per night.

• Most trips are booked approximately two weeks before travel. You estimate that you would save between $40 and $80 per trip if you booked travel at least four weeks in advance.

• Setting up a telepresence conference room costs approximately $85,000 with monthly expenses of roughly $10,000 thereafter.

• Your company president has indicated that she is not willing to invest more than $20,000 into new facilities and equipment during the current fiscal year.

• You estimate that the company could cut the overall travel budget by 20 percent if you replaced some of the less essential trips with telepresence meetings.

1. You recommend the following: We should discontinue our policy of reimbursing employees for meals and incidental expenses. In place of this policy, we should provide $100 daily stipends. This recommendation is best classified as what?

Specific, actionable, and justified

Specific but not actionable and not justified

Specific and actionable but not justified

2. You recommend the following: We should set up a telepresence conference room in the next fiscal year. This recommendation is best classified as what?

Justified but not specific nor actionable