There are several forms of technical writing. Each form is important to business success and influences their viability and success. Those unfamiliar with how effective technical writing can improve a company’s performance and overall satisfaction of its employees and vendors, often overlook that importance. The data are clear – companies that focus on effective communication succeed. Rich Maggiani, a communications consultant in Essex, Vermont asserts that the return on investment for communications focused companies is 57% higher than those exhibiting poor communications skills. He further states that those companies who lose sight of effective communication can lose up to 15% of their market valuation (Maggiani). Organizational studies further solidify that not only is profitability improved, but also employee retention is improved (Watson, Wyatt & Company). Let us explore some of the ways that technical writing as communication can be effective tools. Throughout this exploration, we will look at three distinct methods of technical writing that businesses use to communicate.
The first technical writing method we look at is proposals. A proposal is the persuasion document that brings to life a project or entices new clients to employ services. The effectiveness of a proposal is highly dependent upon its assembly. The proposal is the first real communication between parties that establish a desire to work together to achieve a common goal. This goal could be a simple business-to-business transaction or a complex plan to develop a spacecraft for deep space exploration. The proposal might outline the submitter’s expertise, time lines for completion, cost of the project and resources the submitter will use to make the project suc...
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...improves morale and increases profits. Essentially all business success is owed to technical writing, especially effectively those written effectively.
Works Cited
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Sam Dillion wrote “What Corporate America Can’t Build: A Sentence” for an audience of college students, employees and corporate people. In his article, Sam points out that companies are spending a lot of money annually on remedial training. According to Sam, the writing problem appears in e-mails, reports and texts. He is informing his audience to brush up on writing skills before entering the corporate world, in order to avoid remedial training. Companies like to hire employees with excellent writing skills but many of employees and applicants fall short of that standard.
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Although numerous internal writing techniques remain evident, some of the major points that Hamill illustrates in his article prove very effective.
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Many scholars agree that technical communication, although considered a professional writing genre, could still be defined as separate from the communication used by business professionals (e.g. professors, business people, doctors, lawyers, etc.) To begin to understand writing in the workplace, one could start by defining what collaboration in the workplace is. Scholars Burnett, et al. describe collaboration in the workplace as communication that occurs across project groups, departments, divisions and other social configurations. This communication serves as a process that allows peers, specifically co-workers in this instance to interact and work together to achieve shared goals, both before and after the production of a text or document. Collaboration is important in the workplace because it enables social interaction amongst coworkers and encourages workers to communicate, help one another, and form productive relationships. Effective collaboration in the workplace has been proven to produce a happier, more productive
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Effective business communication is central to the success of an individual’s career and consequently to that of the overall business entity. It would be imaginable therefore that there is some form of correlation between effective communication skills and such success. To put this into context, University of Kent (2011) has placed Verbal Communication at the top of the ten skills that employers most commonly look for. On the same note, anything that hinders effective communication is bound to have a negative effect not only on the specific message delivery, but also on the overall success of a career. In this paper, some of the barriers to effective business communication are discussed, with a few examples of how they affect the process.
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Another purpose for writing is to inform. Information is power. In today’s society people need a lot of information to perform, thus making information qui...
Writing is one of the oldest forms of communication. It started back as cave drawings and has evolved into so many different forms. As technology changes, our communication strategies are changing as well. Business Communications has always been affected by the changes in our environment, but the digital age has increased the efficiency, speed, and simplicity of the way we communicate.
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Effective communication increases the efficiency and productivity of any business. And also make the employees more satisfied. Researches illustrate that effectual and well-organized communication positively relates to the job satisfaction, performance and positive attitudes of employees.