Good writing skills are a key ingredient in effective organisational communication and personal success.  This interactive workshop provides participants with the opportunity to review and develop the skills they need to write effective reports and improve the quality and impact of all their written communications.

• Managers and Professionals

• Senior Secretaries and PA’s

• To help participants improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their reports, letters, memos, e-mails, minutes, instructions, briefing notes and other forms of written communication

This will be a practical and active programme involving informal lecture, exercises and discussion.  Participants are asked to bring with them samples of their current business writing which they can use to benchmark their skills against the principles explored.  During the programme participants will also work on writing a report which will be used for further analysis and feedback.

It will be useful if participants have access to laptops throughout the programme.

DAY 1 - Programme introduction and objectives

• The nature and range of business writing and communication
  • Barriers and pitfalls  in business communication
  • Differences between written and oral communication
  • Differences between types of business writing
  • ‘Effective’ writing verses ‘efficient’ writing
  • Identifying your own strengths and weaknesses
• Characteristics of effective reports
  • Putting the reader first
  • The role of introductions and conclusions
  • Setting and meeting report objectives and terms of reference
  • Analysing and understanding the target audience and the readers’ needs
  • Drawing clear conclusions and making recommendations
  • Length of reports and the use of appendices

DAY 2

• The report writing process
  • Concept and application of ‘rapid composition’
  • Developing ideas and gathering material
  • Brain storming and mind-mapping
  • Research techniques
• Selecting material and structuring reports
  • Criteria of relevance - what to leave out and what to put in
  • Developing logical sequencing
  • Using headings and sub-headings as signposts for the reader
• Layout and graphic devices
  • Report layout and structure
  • Developing and following a ‘house style’ - guidance on how to write reports
  • Consistent and correct use of display lists and ‘bullet points’
  • Using and presenting tables
  • Diagrams, figures and graphs
• Editing, proof-reading and computer applications
  • Editing
  • Getting the best from computer spell- and grammar-checks
  • Proof reading
  • ‘Track changes’, ‘auto-summarising’, adding foot notes, hyper-linking and other aspects of getting the best from MS Word

DAY 3

• Clear communication and improving readability
  • Fog factor analysis and readability scores
  • Sentence length and paragraph structure
  • Dimensions of writing style
  • Active vs. passive voice
  • Improving language content and style
  • Choosing your words
• Punctuation and grammar
  • The language of grammar (a guide to grammatical terms and functions)
  • Commas, full-stops, colons, semi-colons, dashes, brackets etc
  • The apostrophe ‘s’
  • Hyphenating words
  • Consistency in using capital letters for proper nouns
  • Relative clauses – ‘which’ or ‘that’

DAY 4

• Additional forms of business writing
  • Transferring the principles from report writing
  • Letters and emails - structure, style and etiquette
  • Meeting agendas and minutes
  • Writing instructional manuals and procedures
  • Job descriptions and person specifications
• Supporting reports with presentations
  • Relationship between report documentation and oral presentation
  • Adapting the content and style
  • Choosing the right language - contrast between written and spoken forms

DAY 5

• Tutorials and exercises
• Participants’ presentations
  • Presentation and critique of draft reports
• Programme review and action planning