Do your employees have outstanding business writing skills? No? It’s time for you to fix it.
Your employees’ writing skills affect your company in multiple ways. And if you do nothing to help your employees become better in business writing, you will have little chance to succeed in the long run.
Do you want to know why business writing skills have such great importance in the modern world? Keep on reading.
Ensure effective communication
Poor writing skills have a negative impact on communication. When employees can’t express their ideas clearly, misunderstandings and conflicts often happen.
Have you ever seen your team members arguing because one person misinterpreted someone else’s message? Such terrible conflicts can be avoided.
If you improve your employees’ business writing skills, you will significantly improve communication in the workplace. Once your employees learn to articulate their thoughts more clearly, they will have fewer reasons to argue with each other.
Boost your brand’s reputation
Your employees’ writing skills affect your brand image. If your sales managers and customer support managers are careless about the spelling mistakes they make – that’s a huge problem.
Customers do not trust someone who writes in poor grammar. When customers get an email full of grammar mistakes, they presuppose that the email was sent by a scammer, not a representative of a reputable company.
You don’t want people to think bad about your company, do you? Motivate your employees to keep improving their grammar and writing skills. Encourage them to use popular grammar checkers and visit great websites for students to check grammar online.
Boost persuasion
Imagine for a moment that you are a customer. You’ve got two emails from two sales associates who are trying to persuade you to buy the same product:
- The first email is a well written one. It contains all important information about the product, and the email itself has a clear, logical structure.
- The second email is poorly written. It includes some irrelevant information, and it is full of typos.
Which email will convince you to make a purchase? Obviously, the first one.
Business writing skills go hand in hand with persuasion skills. So the better your employees write emails and blog posts, the more prospects they turn into customers.
Increase productivity
How much time does it take your employees to write an email or monthly report? If your employees have poor writing skills, it’s highly likely that writing takes them too much time, so that they can’t focus on more important tasks.
As a business owner, you can help your employees to improve their writing skills so that they can find an extra hour in the day. You can show them that it’s possible to create better reports, emails, and presentations much faster and more effectively.
Just imagine if the productivity of each of your employees will increase by 10%? How will it increase overall productivity? The improvements will take your business to the next level.
Build your employees self-confidence
Some of your employees are aware of their writing issues and feel ashamed of being “not good enough”. They lack the self-confidence to communicate their ideas freely. And that holds them back from growing professionally.
You should explain to your employees that business writing skills are easy to improve. You should provide them with adequate support and encourage them to keep studying. Once your employees master the art of business writing, they will become more self-confident and realize their hidden potential.
Engage your customers
Marketers, sales managers, and customer support agents communicate with your target audience through writing. So if you want to engage your audience, you should teach your employees the basics of engaging writing. You should show them how they can connect with the prospects in a more effective way and achieve higher results.
Build a solid online presence
In 2020, it’s extremely important for companies to create an effective online presence. Why? Because people don’t trust businesses that don’t have a website, blog, and active social media accounts.
The employees, who create content for your brand, should have outstanding business writing skills. They should be able to present your company and your products in the most favorable light and convince everyone that your business is trustworthy.
What can you do to improve your employees’ business writing skills?
Do you want to help your employees to become better in business writing? Do the following:
- Encourage your employees to take business writing courses on Coursera, Udemy, or other educational platforms. Offer to pay for classes.
- Organize business writing training in the office. Invite a professional coach or run the event by yourself.
- Provide free access to proofreading tools like Grammarly and WhiteSmoke.
- Run a competition “Business writer of the month”. Leverage competitive spirit to enhance the learning process.
- Provide adequate feedback. Explain to your employees what mistakes they tend to make and how they can fix them.
Wrapping up
If you want your employees to start working on improving their skills, be an example to follow. Assess your current level of business writing skills and try to become a better version of yourself. Your employees will notice your efforts and will want to master the art of business writing.
The success of your company is in your hands. So if you want to see the positive changes, be the one who will make the first step toward self-improvement.
Daniela McVicker is a blogger and a freelance writer who works closely with B2B and B2C businesses providing blog writing, copywriting, and ghostwriting services. Currently, she blogs for Essayguard. When Daniela isn’t writing, she loves to travel, read romance and science fiction, and try new wines.
