Tips on developing a more engaging writing style for HR projects

Mentioned this to my wife who’s presently doing a free Open University creative writing course. In addition to OU ( and with same cautions about the differences between creative writing and effective business communications) she highly recommends searching Coursera online who seem to link to all kinds of suitable looking material

Hi Laura, I discovered this gap in my skills set too and have spent a number of years doing formal training, reading and learning to improve my employee comms skills. It's helped me flex my style depending on the audience, purpose, context, culture and results I want to have.

I'd recommend checking out:
*Talk like Ted - excellent. Fierce conversations -also excellent.
*You could also look at Communication Skills for Dummies. I've not read it personally yet I find that series a good start for so many topics.
*Working with, learning from and being mentored by Marketing and Comms colleagues.
*CIM courses on marketing communications and writing.
* www.cathywilcoxtraining.com/ Cathy Wilcox is someone I've known, used and rated for many years. She's a former lawyer and her training and coaching is excellent. I'm not on commission :-)
*Practising your own writing with different mediums like blogging or tweeting both of which helped me with brevity.

I also ask for feedback on all the writing I ever do for clients. It can be brutal at times but it helps. Finally, one key word to try and avoid is 'but'....I went to one course where they suggested always try and avoid it and use 'and' or another word instead. Good luck. Learning more about communicating well and not writing everything like a policy or in the same way, truly helps HR.

Thank you - I will download this as I think that would help me from becoming repetitive

Hi Keith,

Thanks for coming back to me. Sorry for the delay in looking at responses. I'm working on projects such as introducing new maternity benefits & it's more the communications to the team about these.

I've just had a browse of this - looks fantastic. Thank you

Hi Sharon,

Thank you for your reply and understanding of my post. I am absolutely looking to be able to flex styles as and when required. I am most interested in the courses option and will reach out to Cathy.

Courses are a great start and I think Cathy will be an ideal person to speak to from a clear writing perspective. Say to her from me.

Once you've built up your skills, I'd recommend branching out into building up your writing tools learning from marketing and communication professionals or training providers. It helped me to pick up some core tools that I feel have improved my writing skills for clients. All the very best.

Just prolonging the various possibly-apt quotes by accomplished wordsmiths and continuing the snipping and sewing metaphor:

A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

(W.B. Yeats)

Hi Laura,

This is such a lovely question to raise! I haven't got much to add to the already excellent suggestions apart from possibly just being sure that you're speaking in your employee's language. Be mindful of using terms that are meaningful to a HR crowd but are confusing or off-putting to the people you're trying to reach i.e. using 'compensation' or 'reward' when people are thinking 'pay' or 'salary' is an easy example that leaps to mind but I'm sure there are others. By just making simple changes with that kind of thing, you might find that it relaxes your style a little.

Good luck!