Communicate with clarity and impact.

This essentials business writing course covers a range of skills designed to resolve typical workplace writing challenges. These include dealing with high volumes of emails, writing short reports, and correcting grammar and style.

After starting the day with planning frameworks to clarify your objectives and audience needs, we explore writing structures that will suit any business document. You’ll then apply these principles to two critical business writing tasks: one-page reports and short summaries.

The course includes an in-depth unit on self-editing tips that will address common writing mistakes, helping participants to correct their paragraph structure, sentence grammar, jargon and punctuation use.

It also includes a substantial unit on emails and other workplace correspondence. Participants will gain practical tips to help write emails for various situations, from formal requests to structured summaries and conflict management.

Fast-paced and fun, the course busts a number of myths about business communication – for example, that big words make the writer sound smarter. You will participate in lively discussions throughout the day and receive feedback on the work you write in class.

The course is a useful lead-in to the more advanced problem-solving techniques covered in the Business Writing Course: Masterclass, and the specialist report-writing skills covered in Effective Business Report Writing. It can be taken on its own or in conjunction with either course.

Aims

This course aims to provide you with the tools to write clearly and concisely, regardless of your industry or role. It also covers the latest conventions in grammar, style, formatting and other systems that govern good writing.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• cross-check that your writing addresses the purpose and audience correctly
• choose the right structure for the task at hand
• write clear and concise, jargon-free emails and other communications
• choose the right level of formality for that context
• edit your text for the four essential elements of good writing style.

Content

This course is organised roughly in the sequence of steps you would take to plan, write and review your daily business communications.

Planning

Considering audience needs, reaffirming your objectives, and choosing the right level of formality before starting to write.

Introduction to reporting

An overview of the three structures (narrative, hierarchy and topic) to use in business documents such as short reports and memos. (You may wish to consider our full-day course, Effective Business Report Writing, if report-writing is your priority).

Tool #1: Short summaries

The report structures introduced earlier can also be used to help professionals summarise from several sources. In this section, participants will complete several exercises summarising content using the given structures.

Refining expression

How to edit your writing in four fundamental areas: clear links, correct grammar, minimal jargon, and correct punctuation. This section includes several pair exercises and facilitator feedback that embed the learnings.

Tool #2: Emails

This unit introduces several frameworks to establish correct etiquette, suitable structure, appropriate level of tact, action-oriented subject lines and more. The real-life examples in the workbook are drawn from scenarios including stakeholder negotiation, conflict management and structured announcements.

Intended audience

Aimed at early or mid-career professionals who need to learn or improve their core skills in business writing. They might be technical staff moving into managerial roles, people returning to the workforce after extended leave, or office managers wanting to adopt current best practice in their workplace.

If your role involves a lot of emails, this Essentials course will provide valuable techniques. If you need better skills to write business strategies and proposals, try the Masterclass.

Prerequisites

This course assumes a basic proficiency in written English, such as Year 12 English. If you are a non-native English speaker, you may also want to consider our English language courses in various specific and general topics.

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter-taught training
• Online training via the platform Zoom

Delivery style

You will learn through a variety of methods including open discussions, group exercises and individual written responses to a range of prompts.

Materials

Course materials are provided electronically using Dropbox.