Message Strategies: Writing Routine Messages [LO-4], Chapter 6 As a training specialist in the human resources department at Winnebago Industries, you’re always on the lookout for new ways to help employees learn vital job skills. While watching a production worker page through a training manual, learning how to assemble a new recreational vehicle, you get what seems to be a great idea: Record the assembly instructions as audio files that workers can listen to while performing the necessary steps. With audio instructions, they wouldn’t need to keep shifting their eyes between the product and the manual—and constantly losing their place. They could focus on the product and listen for each instruction. Plus, the new system wouldn’t cost much at all; any computer can record the audio files, and you’d simply make them available on an intranet site for download onto iPods or other digital music players.

Your task: You immediately run your new idea past your boss, who has heard about podcasting but isn’t sure it is appropriate for business training. He asks you to prove the viability of the idea by recording a demonstration. Choose a process that you engage in yourself—anything from replacing the strings on a guitar to sewing a quilt to changing the oil in a car—and write a brief (one page or less) description of the process that could be recorded as an audio file. Think carefully about the limitations of the audio format as a replacement for printed text (for instance, do you need to tell people to pause the audio while they perform each task?). If your instructor directs, record your podcast and submit the audio file.