Importance of Short Report – Short Report vs Long Report

Importance of Short Report in Communication

• Internal communication: Short reports are very useful in communicating internal operational information. Management always collects reports from various departments and divisions to carry out organizational activities..
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• Preparation and execution of plans: Through short reports, organizations internally exchange information. It helps in preparing up-to-date plans and execution of those plans. It serves as a technical report regarding the entire report.
• Routine reporting: There is no alternative to short reports for routine reporting. Short reports are frequently and periodically prepared concerning sales, production, inventories, finance, and maintenance, and so on. Serves as informational report on specific subjects for rapid communication amongst a large audience.
• Performing day-to-day activities: Through short reports, an organization provides necessary information, guidelines, and instructions to the members of the organization. As a result, they can perform their assigned duties effectively and efficiently.
• Taking routine decisions: For taking decisions, people require information. Short report supplies that information to the concerned persons. Hence, making routine decisions become easier.
• Integrating various departments and divisions: Another important role of short reports is that they ensure popper integration among the various departments and divisions by building communication network within the whole organization. By sharing such article type, individuals across the organizational structure can have access to original articles.
• Keeping the employees aware: Short reports are also useful to keep the employees aware of organizational affairs. Such reports supply detailed information on various organizational aspects to almost every internal participant. This can be used in place of original articles to provide technical reports about preliminary findings or supplementary material.
• Increasing employee efficiency: By keeping the employees informed of their duties, responsibilities, and performance, short report makes the employees conscious about various article type and their relevance. It ultimately increases their efficiency and enhances rapid communication.
• Enhancing employee satisfaction: Continuous communication with the employees through short reports increases their level of job satisfaction. Whether it is in the form of formal reports, review articles, analytical reports and scholarly reviews, they helps boosts the performance and satisfaction of employees.

Differences between short Report and Long Report

Although short reports and long reports are common in many respects, still some differences exist between them. Some of their differences are highlighted below:

Short Reports

• Need for introductory element: Short reports need little introductory material.
• Dominance of order: Usually shorter reports begin directly with a catchy headline not more than 100-150 words. It should always end with conclusion and recommendations regardless of the article type.
• Writing style: Writing style is more personal in short reports. They usually take the form of informal reports.
• Need for coherence plan: Coherence plan is less important in short report.
• Personal Relationship: In short report personal relationship may exist between the writer and reader. Example of such is parent-child communication.
• Degree of formality: Short reports are informal in nature.
• Nature of problem: It is written for routine and recurring problems.

Long Report

• Need for introductory elements: Long reports contain some introductory materials in sequence. It contains the central findings whilst presenting a structured abstract of the scholarly reviews.
• Dominance of order: Long report begins with prefatory contents highlighting the problem statement, objectives, scope, methods followed, etc. It can contain unreferenced abstract compiled and written by more than a single author.
• Writing style: In a long report, the writing style is formal and impersonal.
• Need for coherence plan: Well-designed coherence plan is very important.
• Personal relationship: Personal relationship is unlikely to exist between the writer and reader.
• Degree of formality: Long reports are usually formal in nature.
• Nature of problem: Long report is suitable for complex and non-recurring problems.