Chile Suffered
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On August 5, 2010, a small copper mine located in Chile suffered a cave-in which left 33 workers trapped underground. With workers being trapped 300 meters below ground with limited food, water, and oxygen, nobody knew for sure how long they would survive. After four days of being trapped, there was still no idea if any of the miners were even alive. Never before have so many workers survived being trapped underground for so long (Yang, 2010). Fortunately, in this case, tears turned to amazement as all 33 miners were located and rescued without any lives lost. Nobody really ever expects to encounter a situation like this until it happens. What does the employer tell the families of those who are trapped in the mine? What does the employer tell its employees? These are questions that many people do not prepare themselves for. These types of communications must be handled delicately and with the audience in mind.This paper will discuss some of the potential needs of the families of the miners in receiving a message about this incident. It will also discuss the potential needs of the companys employees when receiving a message about this incident. Finally, this paper will talk about what actions a person must take before and after the message is delivered to ensure that it was received as intended.
As mentioned earlier, there are some considerations a person has to remember when communicating with the families of the victims and employees in this matter because of the different roles and people in the audience. If the audience is not taken into consideration when conveying a message, the communication could be lost, misunderstood, or incomplete. This could leave the audience misinformed and angry. When communicating with the families, there should be a sense of empathy and sympathy directed toward them. Communication to the families should be prompt so that they do not have to hear about what happened to their loved ones on the news. The families of the victims would probably like to know how this could have happened and what is being done to get them out. The families do not know as much about mining as the employees do so they would probably like an explanation of what went wrong. These types of situations are tough because the company wants to keep the families informed, but sometimes the sender knows as much about the incident as the families do.
Communicating to the employees about the incident would be a little different. People