Why You Should Train Employees To Write Professionally
Bad business writing costs American businesses about $400 billion every year. What causes bad writing? Bad writing can be as a result of a cause or an effect. For instance, some employees tend to write badly when they are having problems at home. Regardless of what causes it, poor writing is seen as lack of professionalism; thus, it should be avoided at all costs, especially if you are creating content that targets new and existing customers. Let’s face it: A less-than-stellar company copy can seriously hamper productivity and in turn, harm your company’s bottom line.
Entry-level employees, in particular, get tossed to the side and in turn, receive little to no training on how to write in a clear and concise manner. They’re often assigned to deal with first-draft emails, poorly written reports, and documents riddled with jargon. All of these cost time and money. Time is wasted through rereading and rewriting; the company receives more customer support calls due to unclear instructions; and, productivity is wasted over incorrectly written memos, letters, and reports.
If poor writing habits drown your company in a productivity-draining fiasco, now is the time to address the problem.
How Can You Stop Poor Writing?
For poor writing to stop, training is important and must be done. However, before you begin training, you should conduct research to help understand the real causes of bad writing skills amongst your employees. Some of the questions that you should seek to answer during the research are:
- How good are the writing skills of your employees?
- What are some of the causes of these bad writing skills?
- How can training be used to address the problem areas of each employee individually?
Such questions will help you understand the root cause of bad writing and help you tune your training program to address the issues affecting your employees.
Causes Of Bad Writing
The leading causes of poor writing and, consequently, poor communication in workplaces are:
- Poor management
One of the major causes of poor writing in organizations is bad managers. Managers who exert too much control and micromanage every activity instill fear in employees, making them censor their written work too much. In turn, censoring leads to poorly written work and discourages creativity. - Lack of motivation
Unmotivated employees do not see the need for improving any aspect of their performance, including writing. To keep your employees motivated to write and communicate better, you can recognize and reward any written work that improves your organization's revenue. - Lack of training
Without proper training, employees cannot hone in on good writing skills. Regular training helps employees learn better writing skills and invaluable writing hacks that can bring in more revenue for your business. Moreover, it also helps new employees learn your organization's in-house writing style and requirements, preventing them from making expensive mistakes. - The domino effect
What does the domino effect have to do with bad business writing? Well, the domino effect is a chain of reactions where one event sets off a chain of similar events. When it comes to business writing, if your executive-level staff has bad writing skills and habits, chances are that junior staff will copy the same. In fact, this is one of the leading causes of poor writing and communication in the workplace. If other workers are doing the bare minimum in terms of business writing, it’s most likely that the rest will follow suit.
Accepted behavior can quickly become the norm and if left unattended, the effects can be seriously detrimental to your business.
You can help your employees improve their writing skills by training them, motivating them, and leading by example. Here are some true and tested benefits from training your employees to write professionally.
Top 5 Benefits From Training Your Employees To Write Professionally
1. Creates Empathy
One of the most important soft skills that employees ought to possess to write better is empathy. Being empathic enables professional writers to relate to others, and there is no better way to drive results with written work than this. Empathic writing shows respect for the reader which, in turn, drives them to act on the message.
During training, your employees will learn how to craft a story that suits the needs of their readers, whether they are fellow employees or target customers. Trainees learn to see the world through the readers’ eyes and ask important questions that enable them to craft better messages such as:
- Who will read this message?
- What action do I want them to take after reading it?
- Which information do they need to take the desired action?
- Why should readers care about this message as it is?
2. Increases Sales
Professional writing helps employees develop savvy sales skills. To achieve better results from sales pitches, employees must learn to do two things:
- Convince a colleague or client to read on
- Pitch your product, service, or idea in an actionable manner
Actionable sales pitches drive better sales results in organizations. However, if your staff does not know how to convince readers to read on, their excellent sales pitches will remain just that, excellent pitches with little or no results. Training employees enables them to understand their target audience and create messages that compel the recipients to act.
If you are worried that your budget does not allow to hire a trainer to train your employees on-site, you can motivate them to seek help from the best rated writing services. These sites will not only give them the best tips with live and relatable examples to improve their writing skills but also allow self-paced learning, enabling employees to gain the most from their training.
Depending on the size of your company or business, it simply makes sense to get help from writing experts. If an employee’s writing requires work in some areas, consider getting the help of the following services:
- Pendrago: A writing service for workers and execs who need expert help with editing their content.
- Grammarly: A popular, AI-powered writing assistant to help users create bold, clear, and error-free papers.
- EduVinci: Premium writing platform that offers editing and writing help for professionals and business owners.
- Edudemius: Writing service for professionals in need of urgent and expert help with writing business reports and letters.
- ProWritingAid: An all-in-one package that features a grammar checker, style editor, and a writing mentor.
- EduBirdie: A writing platform that offers editing and writing assistance for execs and employees who need help with their business plans and PowerPoint presentations.
3. Increases Employee Retention
Did you know that one of the top reasons why employees quit their jobs is the lack of opportunity for growth? While most employers think that growth is all about promotion and salary increment, this is not the case. Growth also includes learning and education that allows employees to do their jobs better, keep their skills up-to-date, and achieve their unique personal ambitions.
A recent study stipulates that 87% of millennials rate professional and career growth as important to them while 69% of non-millennials are of the same opinion. If you want to reduce the cost of hiring and retain top-performing employees, train them to write professionally. Such training ultimately improves the quality of communication within the organization, boosts morale, increases the level of employee satisfaction with your business communication models, and reduces cases of expensive mistakes caused by miscommunication.
Effective Business Communication
If you ask a hundred employees whether they’re good writers, chances are all of them will say yes. The truth is that all of us need to improve our writing communication skills.
Effective business communication is a two-way process of speaking and listening, and it’s an important factor in all phases of daily business life. To create an effective business communication model, you need to:
- Avoid assumptions
All sides should openly communicate their needs and expectations. Assumptions can cause misunderstandings, which can quickly escalate into situations that may be harmful to your company. - Listen first in order to be heard
Don’t begin by imposing a quick solution. If the problem lies in an employee’s poor writing habit, describe it and how it’s affecting the company’s bottom line. And then, ask in an open way, "What can we do to solve this issue?" Stop and listen, and be open-minded enough to hear the other side of the story. Understand well and come up with a mutually acceptable solution. - Be patient and don’t expect instant results
Business writing is vital but could be difficult to master. Ultimately, it’s not all about winning, it’s about strengthening the company’s integrity. However, change doesn't happen overnight.
4. Boosts Productivity
Writing and reading is a core part of the work of employees in white-collar jobs. Such employees spend the better part of their day reading and replying to written communication from their peers and customers.
If your employees write poorly and ineffectively, they fail at their core task, and this affects performance on every level of your organization. This is because everyone spends more time trying to understand written material. Employees who write badly also take a large amount of time working on written material as they lack a natural flow of thoughts and ideas. Top-level management is also affected as they have to extensively edit all material, wasting time that they could have used for other tasks.
When you train your employees to write better, they spend less time crafting and replying to written material because they know exactly what is expected of them. Consequently, they are left more time to work on other tasks that add value to the organization, boosting productivity.
Likewise, you can encourage your employees to write faster—and this doesn’t have to affect the overall quality of their work. Here’s what you can do:
- If you’ve noticed that their speed isn’t up-to-par, simply ask what’s slowing them down
There could be many factors that are causing your employee to write slower than you’d like, and the first big step to finding a solution is to determine the underlying cause. - Don’t be afraid to give clear deadlines
It may also help to prioritize tasks. You won’t know how quickly they can write professionally unless you give them a much-needed push. - Avoid distractions
Find ways to streamline an employee’s work environment and give them a chance to improve their writing skills. Assign tasks a few at a time, determine what keeps them distracted, and try to address those issues. - Give regular feedback
Schedule regular meetings with the problem employee(s), discuss their writing performance and progress, and decide how things are going. Set goals, reward their progress (while still working toward the end-goal), and provide constructive criticism that may make the evaluation a positive experience, instead of something they’ll dread.
5. Increases ROI
If your organization is experiencing low customer retention due to poor writing, make a point of training your employees to write better. In the USA, businesses spend 6% of their total wages trying to understand and fix poorly written material, and this puts a strain on revenue. Improved writing not only helps you save such revenue but also drives better online marketing results as customers do not strain to understand your messages, increasing ROI.
Again, the solution is quite simple: If you want your employees’ business writing skills to improve drastically, then you must conduct and invest in staff training. The benefits of skills improvement programs are far-reaching, leading to improved productivity by reducing the time spent on a single writing task. This, in turn, leads to better information flow, better communication and coordination, and many other growth incentives for your company.
Conclusion
Remember that people require training and management role modeling in order for them to change or improve their craft. Given all this, many employers and managers still don’t train their staff in good business writing skills. Sure, it’s more of a literature kind of thing, but as far as the company is concerned, the stakes are pretty high. Training employees—whether they’re new or have been working for you for a long time—to write professionally can have a huge business impact in the long run.
Now that you know the benefits, we’re handing the reins over to you!