More enlightened organisations see the benefits of rolling out cross-department web writing education programmes.
We have all seen impersonal senior management directives that are full of business-speak. They used to arrive on our desks as memos but today are distributed by email or appear on the intranet.
If they were tedious in print – then with the added headache of screen-reading these missives can be even less effective.
... about mid morning, a voice would pipe up and say 'are our bosses going on this course?'
While staff will always dutifully scan this correspondence it's the writer's approach and failure to adapt content for screen-reading that could be the cause of important messages failing to make their mark.
When communicators have attended our writing for the web courses many say, 'If only everybody in our company adopted this new approach to writing'.
We ran five days of courses for a regional council once, and every day, about mid morning, a voice would pipe up and say 'are our bosses going on this course?'
Management has to embrace and support the tighter writing constraints that their staff now need to work with, in order to improve communications.
Without senior staff 'buy-in' to the new approach, their junior colleagues quickly become demoralised as their attempts at improving web communications are over-ruled.
crucial role
It may be necessary to completely readdress the style and voice of the whole organisation. This would encompass not only web but paper communication as well.
A more enlightened approach can have a direct benefit on corporate performance, as communication improves with the target audiences. To achieve this cross-department web writing education programmes will almost certainly be necessary.
Yes, writing for the web really can directly impact the bottom line!