Why Business Writing Skills Matter
Many professionals don’t consider writing a core part of their job—much less consider themselves to be writers—but writing is an essential skill every employee in an organization must have.
For example, studies show that 28% of employees’ time each week is spent reading and writing emails. That’s a significant chunk of the work week, especially given that the majority of emails an employee reads are likely written by other employees within the same organization.
It’s not just about email, though. Nearly every function within an organization relies on written communication to operate. For example:
Human resources professionals must clearly and accurately document interactions with employees.
Internal auditors must generate clear and concise audit reports that motivate other departments to take action to correct an issue.
Compliance testing analysts must write clear and unambiguous test reports that enable executives to understand the situation and make informed decisions.
IT specialists must provide clear documentation to employees using their systems, and must communicate effectively with other departments to understand and address issues.
Finance professionals must condense large amounts of data into clear and concise reports so that executives can easily understand them and decide what action to take.
Practically all information in an organization is communicated through written documents. A large percentage of your organization’s workforce likely learned writing in high school or college, but business writing is fundamentally different from what they learned in school:
Instead of being wordy to reach a target page count for a class assignment, employees must condense complex ideas into easily understandable and digestible communications and documents.
Instead of using inflated language and jargon to impress a professor or sound intelligent, employees must use clear, precise language that communicates exactly what they’re trying to say.
Instead of depending on a professor to identify the issues and correct a document for them, employees must have the tools to review and edit their own writing.
Therefore, even your employees with the most impressive academic background likely need additional training to develop strong business writing skills:
Clearly communicating key information using precise and unambiguous language.
Using concise language that makes good use of the reader’s (and writer’s) time and energy.
Writing compelling documents that motivate readers to take action.
Communicating the correct information with no errors.
Being courteous in correspondence with associates and customers. (That’s not just the right thing to do: It also enhances the writer’s personal brand.)
When employees don’t have these skills, on the other hand, their writing can cause misunderstanding, wasted time, and excess risk:
Managers and directors waste time reading (and even correcting) unclear and poorly organized writing.
Business leaders don’t clearly understand the situation at hand, and therefore do not have the information required to make confident and informed decisions.
Business leaders cannot take advantage of opportunities and address risk.
Employees waste time asking follow-up questions and clarifying information that should have been included and clear initially.
Organizations can face increased regulatory and/or legal scrutiny as a result of unclear documentation.
Organizations’ reputations can suffer—not only among customers, but also among the talent pool.
The Biggest Opportunities for Improving Writing Skills
We’ve taught our business writing skills program to thousands of key business professionals in nearly every function of an organization. While we customize the program for the needs of a specific organization and business unit, we’ve found that a handful of writing challenges show up in nearly every group we’ve worked with.
Challenge #1: Planning & Organizing
First, employees tend to struggle with planning and structuring their writing—whether it’s a single email or larger report. Often, we see that employees begin writing without having planned what they want to say, how they want to say it, and in what order they want to make their points. As a result, their writing can “wander” unnecessarily before it gets to the key point they’re attempting to communicate.
When this happens, readers often get frustrated because instead of reading a clearly written email or report, they’re reading the writer’s entire thought process. This not only can frustrate the reader, but also can keep the reader from quickly grasping key information—and taking the action that the writer hoped to get the reader to take.
We help employees address this challenge with our Thoughts-to-Words template, a concrete tool that helps writers get their thoughts out onto the page by identifying the most important information to include and organizing it in a way that makes the best use of the readers’ time and energy.
After planning their writing using the Thoughts-to-Words template, writers can easily flesh those key points into full sentences, resulting in a well-organized email or document.
Challenge #2: Using Clear and Precise Language
Second, we often see employees using bloated, ambiguous, and imprecise language that can obscure a sentence’s meaning, and, in some cases, change the meaning entirely.
Using unclear language can easily cause misunderstanding, which can be costly. In a worst-case scenario, it can lead to costly mistakes and decisions, increased risk, and regulatory and/or legal scrutiny. Even in a best-case scenario, though, it frequently leads to unnecessary follow-up and clarification, wasted time, rework, and editing.
When helping professionals in an organization or business unit use clear and precise language, we review samples from their department to identify which areas they most need to focus on. These often include:
Using vague, imprecise words and phrases that do not communicate exactly what they are attempting to say.
Using bloated phrases where a single word would be much clearer.
Using jargon and buzzwords that make a document more difficult to understand.
Challenge #3: Writing for a Specific Result
Finally, employees often do not identify the business result they’re trying to achieve by writing an email or business document, which may include:
Influencing someone in their own or another business unit to take a specific action.
Motivating an executive to make a decision or take action based on specific data.
Asking a manager to grant them a specific request, whether that’s a deadline extension or additional support.
Many employees may identify the result of an email or report as “to inform somebody about something” or “to document a specific finding or occurrence.” In helping employees identify the more specific result they’re hoping to achieve, we coach them to take their thinking a step further by asking, “What’s the result of informing them?,” or “What’s the result of documenting this finding?”
When writers can identify the clear and concrete objective they’re trying to achieve, they are better equipped to organize key information; to include the right amount of detail; to use clear and direct language; and ultimately to achieve their desired result.
Give your key business professionals the skills they need to produce clear, crisp, and concise business documents.
Writing for Results enhances your team’s strategic communication skills by giving them the toolkit to write clear and concise business documents that eliminate confusion, make good use of both the writer’s and reader’s time, and help the reader make more informed business decisions and avoid costly mistakes.
We’ve customized and provided this training to many different organizations in nearly every function within an organization, including marketing, finance, IT, human resources, operations, internal audit, and compliance testing.
Click here to learn more about Writing for Results.
