Sharpening Employees’ Business Writing Skills Is Good for Business

Effective writing is part of every company’s success because businesses run on communication.

And every employee plays a role. Whether the on-the-job writing is internal between colleagues or external with customers or vendors, the ability to write well affects efficiency, innovation and the organization’s image.
 

The state of today’s workplace writing

Workplace writing is fluid. It’s often unplanned. Emails, chats, and instant messaging buzz around us as we work. Employees quickly compose instructions, share deadlines, discuss pricing and hundreds of other things. Depending on who’s reading, writing errors have the potential to cause delays, misunderstandings, and lost opportunities.

That’s probably why it’s at the top of employers’ wish lists when hiring.

Recent college grads are coming up short, according to a National Association of Colleges and Employers survey. While four out of five employers named “written communication skills” as the quality they value most in addition to GPA, the study shows that only 41.6 percent of employers rate these newest employees as proficient in this area.

And the pressure is on current employees as well. Grammarly’s State of Business Communication report in 2022 found that miscommunication in the workplace costs U.S. businesses an estimated $1.2 trillion each year.
 

Help your team develop strong writing skills. Book training: The Business Writing for Professionals Workshop.

Technological advances have made it nearly impossible for today’s workers to avoid writing. For some jobs, it’s a core skill: Client service and salespeople interacting with customers; HR pros communicating with prospective employees; marketers convincing people to buy. But what about the rest of employees?

For other roles, it may seem like an afterthought: the designer, the engineer, the accountant, the nurse, an IT professional. These aren’t writing jobs. But even for these jobs, poor writing has significant consequences: more stress, lower productivity, strained relationships, lost innovation and missed deadlines.
 

Consider a couple workplace writing challenges

A salesperson has made contact with a prospective client. Now they must follow up with a reply email. Before they even begin, they have to plan for what they’ll say. They must consider all the factors related to the client, all the details from the conversation about the product and pricing. They’ve got to answer all the questions while using a convincing and friendly tone. They may get a jumpstart with Artificial Intelligence (AI), but even a jumpstart will take planning. And even if AI writes the email draft, they’ve got to be able to check it, shorten it, and make sure it’s all accurate and conversational.

A customer service manager has an idea for a change in how some accounts are serviced. They’ve mentioned this to leadership, who then asked them to draft up a plan. The manager is convinced the change will save significant time and money, but has no idea how to make the plan sound convincing. Where do they start? How do they organize the document to help ensure that this time-saving, money-saving idea appeals to leadership and is adopted? If this idea is not expressed clearly and in a positive tone, the leaders won’t understand it or even know what’s been missed when they unknowingly dismiss it.

We often don’t think of the planning stage as writing, but it’s a critical part of the process – one that many employees have never learned. Without it, this email or this customer service plan will be disorganized. It may not win the sale or the approval of leadership. It may make the sender and – in the case of the salesperson – the organization look bad.

Writing effectively with confidence and speed is a learned skill. Training followed by guidance by skilled colleagues can help all employees save time, prevent mistakes, and lower the stress that writing under pressure can cause.

Good writing affects reputation – reflecting well on the writer and the company. Good writing affects efficiency – messages are concise and organized so those receiving them don’t have to waste time asking for more information or instructions. Good writing affects innovation – ideas are expressed in the clearest ways so accurate decisions can be made with ease.