Improve Your Employee’s Writing Skills

Excellent writing skills enable busy HR teams to stay productive. They can attract quality candidates, offer feedback on the work that is being undertaken, and, of course, execute plans. Therefore, seasoned HR Professionals have to help new employees develop and improve their writing skills. This is because business communications generally happen through emails in today’s workplace.

Establishing a comprehensive training program comes with many challenges. This could involve training a candidate entirely or just polishing their poor writing skills. If you want people within your company to get where they should be, you should be training your team for business writing.

In today’s world, the ability to write better and convey your message matters a lot. To improve your employees’ writing skills, you can enroll your team for some basic writing courses. Meanwhile, you can also keep in mind these handy suggestions.

The writing process is a lot easier than you think. These effective strategies will help you improve human resources operations.

Clearly Define Your Expectations

Success is the ability to stay on top of current events. As far as HR Managers are concerned, they have a responsibility to ensure that everyone within the organization is in line with the business’ objectives. Professionals are required to have a certain business writing style and possess skills such as:

• Precise communication
• Be organized
• Incorporation of details
• Maintain confidentiality

Specify what your expectations are from the very beginning. Take a few moments of your time to write the objective/objectives. The purpose of your writing matters a lot. If you define your purpose, you’ll be able to make decisions that ensure a secure future.

Employees should know what’s expected of them. If you happen to be unclear about how things should be done, not only will people be confused, but also unmotivated and disengaged. Here are some examples of reasonable expectations:

• Your employees should be active and willing to take part.
• The team should have the right learning mindset.
• They should be punctual and disciplined.
• Your team should look forward to learning.

Setting expectations makes it simple to get what you need from employees. Your writing should be such that it puts across the message from the first sentence itself. In other words, your message will become more effective and beneficial.

Instill Confidence in Employees

Confident writing is an essential part of business writing. Lack of confidence might encourage employees to write slowly leading to a poorly written message. They might have to think and rethink the simplest things until they feel safe.

Confidence enables people to write in a clear and professional style. Unfortunately, it’s the most complicated skill to master. If you take a few simple steps to improve your employees’ writing skills, you can contribute to boosting their confidence.

Celebrate the Little Victories

Effective business writing means convincing people to listen or act. It’s unrealistic to expect people to master logic and reason from the very beginning. Proper sentence structures and lesser grammatical errors are a result of practice.

After an incredibly long process of trying, employees will eventually get it. You must celebrate their small victories sometimes. Give people a pat on the back – in other words, recognize them for their performance.

Give People A Break

Mistakes are stepping stones to success.

If any of the employees happen to make mistakes like punctuation and grammar errors, you should certainly motivate them to do better. You can ask them to write some sample emails and check their writing style to suggest the required changes.

In addition to this, you can also suggest some online tools such as Ginger, Best Essay Education, or Hemingway Editor. Tools like these allow them to recheck what they’ve written and suggest some mandatory changes.

They can also take up some writing classes to enhance their writing skills. The point is that you need to instill confidence in the members of your organization. Be specific about what’s right, celebrate improvements in writing, and most importantly, encourage people to learn through their mistakes.

Teach Employees to Be Critical Thinkers

You must always think about what message you wish to convey before you write. You should chalk out a brief outline of what message you want to convey through your writing. Clear business writing means clear thinking.

Teach employees just how important it’s to think about what they want to say before actually saying it. Sometimes, the need for writing may outweigh the simple rules. However, it’s not difficult to organize your thoughts. Here are some simple tricks that you can try and pass onto who’s willing to learn:

Determine Your Primary Aim

The one and only purpose of business writing is to bring a change in the minds of readers. You should decide the reason why you are composing the message. Once you’ve established a goal, you have to determine what to do next. You can tell the reader exactly what to do to achieve it or make sure that the reader shares the same goal.

Keep Your Messages Simple

As stated by Larry Moore, Senior Staff Writer at SupremeDissertations, “In business writing, it’s best to keep it simple. Using 2 or 3 words more than necessary will weaken your point rather than strengthening it. There’s nothing more frustrating than having to re-read an email to search for meaning.” Consider using a paraphrasing tool to ensure your message is clear and concise, avoiding redundancy even if you need to expand on your points.

Begin Writing Before You’ve Finished Thinking

While it’s essential to have a plan before putting thoughts to paper, the plan can change as you write. This is why you need to begin writing before you’ve finished the thinking process. In addition to this, you should be open to new ideas as you write.

Hire for Writing Prowess

HR Managers are in charge of many hiring tasks. They review applications, choose the most suitable candidates to interview, and make hiring decisions. Recruiting the right talent is a tedious and time-consuming task.

It would be a lot simpler if you included business writing skills in your job description. Your candidates should have access to details about your job right at the time of job application.

In other words, you should hire for it. Job seekers will have a good idea about what the company is looking for and what is needed from them before applying.

Start by listing the required skills. Having excellent business writing skills may not be mandatory, but it’s something to be desired in a new candidate. Most importantly, screen candidates based on their ability to communicate professionally.

As an HR Professional, you already know that the resume isn’t the best indicator of an applicants’ skills. You have to find out more about the job seeker, with a test or an interview. Pay close attention to how the candidates present themselves.

To sum up, it’s important to give people the opportunity to practice what they have learned.

You’d be surprised to find out that many people lack efficient business writing skills and, more often than not, need remedial training. Make sure employees get the chance to write emails, reports, or whatever.

In the business scenario, communication also helps share thoughts and get work done. Invest time in developing the employees’ skills and helping them improve their writing style.

Owing to the busy schedules of your hiring team, we designed Jobsoid, an all-in-one recruitment software. You can now simplify and streamline your hiring activities and focus more on your employees. You can sign up for a free account and optimize your hiring processes.