Changing The Way We Work Due To COVID-19
Effective business writing in times of COVID-19. It has been a couple years since the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the daily lives of people around the world. This virus has led to many new categorizations of essential workers, a large-scale moved to remote working and the rapid increase of unemployment that is of no doubt, unexpectedly increasing.
Amid the work-from-home (WFH) orders across the country, corporate employees have ditched their daily commutes to work from dining room tables, couches, and beds in their own homes. Many have found themselves in this situation for the long haul as businesses now struggle to find a path forward while restrictions are slowly lifted.
Working In An Office As A Status Model?
While many of us split our time between working in the office and from home, organizations may open regional hubs or provide access to co-working spaces where corporate employees are concentrated rather than having most of the workforce at one central office. This results in the corporate offices to become a status symbol for the organizations that somehow still have available budget and a workforce that is big enough to do so.
Business Writings Overtaking Meeting Agendas
Business writings have been more important since most of us are not physically present in our meetings. Nothing beats a physical meeting that’s more effective right? But what other choices do we have now when most of our meetings are delivered virtually? How do we know we get our point across effectively with impact to your team, bosses, and stakeholders?
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a technological equalizer of sorts where employees who are previously unaccustomed to using tech tools in the workplace have no choice but to adapt. In some cases, some employees are becoming more efficient and tech-savvy as they learn to be more patient in learning new technologies. At this rate, we can all expect a generally more agile way of working and communicating with your team, bosses, and stakeholders. Additionally, these meetings will become emails, and more emails will become instant messages.
Why Has Business Writing Become So Important Right Now?
“Expect your post-pandemic work calendar to contain fewer meetings overall”, says Nadjia Yousif, Managing Director and Partner of Boston Consulting Group’s London Office.
Business writing is a targeted form of writing designed to facilitate clear communication within and between organizations, your team, bosses, and stakeholders to produce desirable business results. This could include sales and marketing materials; training and educational content; communications such as emails and memos; reports and presentations; administrative materials such as Standard Operating Procedures (SOP); and many more uses. In fact, the term “Business Writing” mainly refers to any form of writing that’s involved and required within a business environment from any industries.
Writing today is the primary way business gets done in today’s COVID-19 world. When you produce an effective business writing, you generate higher revenue for your organization with deeper insights from your memos and reports and smart marketing material that boost your reputation. When business writing is not done well, it creates a slew of problems within the organization and most of all, undercutting the business performance.
Creating Positive Impact For Career Advancement
Learning and honing business writing skills can have a major positive impact on your career advancement. With effective communication in place, your team responsibilities and the organization will run smoothly. Writing professionally improves your productivity and the ability of all functional areas to work together, particularly in an increasingly global working environment where collaboration is always an essential key.
By understanding the importance of having the right essential skills for effective business writing, it will gradually improve your skills in this very important management area in the organization. Reason because, quality written communication is important for good management, helping the employees hone their writing skills and prepare them to rise in the organization – which strengthens the internal talent pipeline and in turn, aids in retention as employees are generally happy to learn valuable skills.
Persuasion Is Important
Communication in writing for both internal and externals will benefit from persuasive writing techniques. Sales and marketing professionals are particularly skilled at using the written word to persuade customers to purchase the organization’s products and services, or at least you can garner some attention to your advertisements.
Another example would be such that the Chief Financial Officer of an organization makes a written recommendation to the Chief Executive Officer about expenditures. A Human Resources Manager will try to create a written case for recruiting a particular individual to the Manager to whom the person will report.
How Do You Know Your Writing Is Effective?
How do you identify if your writing is bringing your main point across? Here are some pointers you may want to look at,
Keeping It Brief
Yes, you read it right. One of the ways to make your writing clear is to keep things brief. The clarify in writing is one of the most difficult skills to master, and word choices come more easily for some businesspeople than for others. Venture capitalists sometimes will receive business plans that are so long-winded, over-written, and unclear that makes it difficult for them to tell what business or industry the organization is in. Presumably, expressing it clearly on paper or email proved to be too difficult for them.
Basically, just avoid “big” words and jargon, and look to see where you can omit unnecessary words as much as you can.
Engage The Professional Courtesy In You
In this modern world, communication in organizations has increasingly come to be a shorthand fashion. Even an email has a much less formal style as compared to a letter. Taken to an extreme, this type of business writing can seem “lazy” – If communication becomes too abrupt, it can deliver a message that the receiver was not important enough for the sender to take the time and put in the efforts to communicate in complete sentences by checking for spelling or grammar errors.
Do not doubt it, but a carefully written email can be more impressive as compared to a letter in view that an added element of rapid transmission is involved – in short, the receiver will feel important of themselves as the sender ensures the message is delivered quickly and efficiently with effective business writing.
Do Not Beat Around The Bush, Cover All The Main Points
Business writing can easily be deemed ineffective if the intention is not clearly indicated. An example would be an instruction manual on how to operate the machinery – one must not have gaps in the sequence of steps or the how-to explanations. This could result in an incomplete information and a possible failure in operating the machinery, which could also potentially cause an injury to the machinery operator. A financial report with a quality of information completeness would be the one that answers the readers’ queries before one has the time to ask. In short, an effective business writing would typically cover all the main and relevant points.
Build Your Confidence With Effective Business Writing
You can express your feelings and intentions clear in writing, which inspires your confidence in your ability to not just for yourself, but to your team, bosses, and stakeholders. Sharp writing conveys the impression that a sharp mind composed the words. Slobby (ineffective) writing on the other hand, concludes that the sender is not intelligent (sorry not sorry!), and some readers might even question their job-related competence.
Organizations have known to be generous in spending the time, effort, and money from their budget to help employees learn and develop new skills in areas such as Management, Compliance, Sales, Customer Service, and many others. But why not writing? Many organizations do not recognize how essential effective business writing is for success. Many think that writing training can significantly improve employees’ writing where others seem to just rely on the educational system to have given them sufficient writing skills where clearly, this is not happening and most observation in their writing skills have declined in recent years (likely due to texting and social media).
It is undeniable that written contents may be covered somewhat in some of the other content areas such as managerial and supervisory, interpersonal skills, and executive development. But there is no doubt that effective writing is underrepresented in most organizations’ learning priorities and given that why effective business writing is such an essential skill, it needs to be more than somewhat covered in trainings.
Effective Business Writing And Meeting Minutes Course
A company’s dependability and professionalism are often assessed from its written communication. Therefore, it is essential that anyone who is required to communicate in writing or handle written documents to be trained systematically with the right written words, to ensure effective business writing is in place.
In Aventis, we offer Effective Business Writing And Meeting Minutes course in any training modes feasible. You can choose to have this as a customized in-house training or a lunch and learn (60 to 120 minute) session where the course content can be contextualized to you and your organization or department’s training needs. Additionally, this course is available as a 4-hour self-paced e-learning where it covers the following main key points,
- Plan and organize your documents
- Express your ideas to suit the audience and purpose
- Use specific tools as guidelines for effective business writing
- Learn how to identify and avoid the common errors in writing
- Apply the principles in writing business correspondences
An essential effective business writing skill and a worthy investment not to be missed.
Starting at a nominal fee of SGD2,000 per lunch and learn session for up to 300 participants and SGD300 per self-paced e-learning course, what else are you waiting for?
Still feeling unsure on taking up this essential skill course? Check out this link to watch a short teaser on the secrets to Effective Business Writing with our experienced trainer.
Business Writing In Times Of COVID-19, Has Yours Been Effective? You decide.
