Sharpening Employees’ Business Writing Skills Is Good for Business

In the age of artificial intelligence, employees' writing skills are at the top of employers' wish lists when hiring and training, with good reason.

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 prices, specs and hundreds of other things. They're communicating with with each other – internally. They're also communicating externally with the organization's clients, patients, vendors and customers every day. Depending on who’s reading, their writing errors have the potential to wreak havoc, causing delays, misunderstandings, lost opportunities or even legal problems. And: What is put in writing is forwardable … anywhere.

Organizations typically hire for technical skills. Engineers, nurses, loan officers, IT pros – these roles are specialized and technical. While on-the-job writing is secondary to their work, the ability to write well affects their efficiency and the organization's image.

As AI seeps into organizations and roles everywhere, it's easy to put writing skills on the back burner leaving them for AI. And AI is extremely helpful to people who aren't strong writers. But because a big part of writing involves organizing your thoughts and considering exactly what the other person needs to know and how to say it so they'll understand as you intend, it requires human thought. 

The state of today’s workplace writing skills

Recent college grads are coming up short in writing skills, 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 and a multitude of collaboration and communication tools 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 when the job doesn't specifically require writing. But even for these jobs, poor writing has significant consequences including more stress, lower productivity, strained relationships, lost innovation and missed deadlines.

SkillPath trainer, Jeanne O'Orleans agrees. “If you're going to lean on words to bring all that information forward, organizations need to pay attention to that.” She says helping technically brilliant professionals become better writers is often about helping them give more consideration to their audience. What does the person reading the message really need to know? How can they be concise? If they're handling loan applications, it's likely that some customers barely look at their bank statements. Writing concisely in words that person will easily understand is critical to that role even though the entire communication is about money.
 

Consider a couple workplace writing challenges

A salesperson makes contact with a prospective client. Now they must follow up with a reply email. Before they even begin, they have to plan 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 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 timesaving, 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, the email or customer service plan they create 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.

3 takeaways about workforce writing skills development:

1. Writing effectively with confidence and speed is a learned skill. 

2. Writing well initially takes time but eventually adds productivity. 

   Training followed up with guidance by skilled colleagues can help all employees save time, prevent mistakes, and lower the stress that writing under pressure can cause.

3. Good writing affects reputation, efficiency, and innovation. 

   It reflects 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.

    

As a corporate training provider, SkillPath creates targeted writing workshops specific to the industry or a department's tasks. Read our most recent case study covering our program for one of the largest financial institutions in the U.S.