Situation

You work as a team-manager for a company that is working remotely now due to COVID-19 restrictions. The lack of physical face-to-face contact with your colleagues definitely has disadvantages. For example, when a teammate seems to be upset about something, you wish you could go for a walk and talk with the person rather than rely on Zoom meetings, phone calls, email, texts, or IM.

In the past couple weeks, John Smith, the graphic designer working with you on a new e-commerce website project, seems to be complaining about everything. His negative attitude is starting to wear down the teams enthusiasm at a critical point in the project. In particular, he has complained several times that no one on the team seems to care about his design work. His work is rarely mentioned in team Zoom conferences, and no one asks him about it. That part is true, actually, but the reason is that there is nothing wrong with his worksome critical technical issues unrelated to the graphic design are consuming everyones attention.

Task

After a couple unsuccessful attempts at encouraging Smith over the phone, you decide to write him a brief email message to assure him of the importance of his work on this project and the quality of his efforts. Let him know that graphic design is a critical part of the projects success and that as soon as those technical issues are resolved and the project is completed, everyone will have a chance to appreciate his contributions to the project. Make up whatever additional details you need to craft the message. In addition, remember that time is money, so make sure that every word in your email has a purpose.