Are you an HR professional struggling to improve your internal communication? If so, this is when you should invest your efforts in improving your writing. Wondering why? As you know, writing is the most common way to communicate ideas in the corporate sector. Sending written messages and documents to employees and senior management is the daily routine of hiring managers.
Being good at writing means presenting your thoughts and opinions. This reduces the chances of confusion and unnecessary delays in essential processes. However, the question is how HR can take its internal communication to the next level through writing.
Well, anything can be learned, and writing is no exception. In this article, we will walk you through some practical tips that will enable you to enhance your written communication as an HR. So, come along to explore all the valuable techniques.
Benefits Of Better Writing Of HR In Internal Communication
Before discussing how HRs can improve their writing, let’s discuss the benefits of improving this skill in internal communication. Here are listed some prominent advantages in this regard:
- Better writing leads to communicating ideas transparently.
- A well-written message better guides the teams for the intended purpose.
- Precisely crafted documents and emails ensure instant responses.
- Accurate and readable policies ensure that legal details are understood.
- When HRs care about what they write, they send digestible information.
- The HR’s ability to write builds a trustful environment in the company.
- The reduced risk of errors in professional writing minimized misunderstandings.
- Efficiently written conversations of HRs reflect professionalism in internal communications.
How Can HR Improve Their Writing For Better Communication?
By now, you may have understood how improving writing as an HR can impact internal communications. Now, let’s learn some efficient practices to make your writing much better than before.
Consider The Recipient While Writing
Taking your audience into account is one of the essential steps to writing clear messages. Forbes sees it as a key strategy for HR to enhance internal communication. Therefore, whenever you write a short email to someone, keep the following things about them in your mind.
- Name
- Job role
- Matter familiarity
- Decision-making power
- Potential queries & concerns
- Ability to understand things
When you have a clear idea of who you will write for, you will write personalized text. As a result, the recipient would not have to struggle to comprehend things, leading to faster and more relevant replies.
Stay To The Point And Focused
Brevity is at the heart of corporate or HR conversations. Indeed, a leading hiring platform keeps conciseness at the top of the 7Cs of professional communication. From this, it should be clear how important it is to stay on point and focus when writing things. So, whether you are an HR manager or executive, ensure that your messages and documents are concise. For this purpose, you can
- Ensure to write only essential things.
- Eliminate unnecessary words and phrases.
- Avoid repeating ideas and thoughts.
- Use shorter yet complete sentences.
Together, these things enable you to write concisely, which helps ensure clear internal communications. By being direct and to the point, an HR professional increases understandability and shows respect for the recipient’s time.
Use Simple And Clear Language
Simplicity in language is key to effective yet easier HR communication. Emphasizing this point of view, one of the Nielsen Norman Group’s articles says, “Plain language is for everyone, even experts.” Therefore, hiring managers and executives must adopt simple language to convey their thoughts. When writing any type of professional content
- I prefer everyday words.
- Avoid corporate jargon.
- Use simple sentences.
- Be careful about word choice.
- Prevent using less-known acronyms.
The simpler you keep the text, the higher the chances of the recipient understanding things quickly. When employees, stakeholders, senior management, or owners see a message written in a familiar language, they better comprehend the context. This enables them to take the right action.
Make Post-Writing Language Refinements
Never send a document or message right after completing it. Wondering why? Your initial drafts may contain awkward phrasing, redundancy, jargon, or excessive technical terms. Ignoring these things might create complexities in your internal communications. Therefore, always find room to improve the language so your message can be understood clearly.
- Read and remove redundant words.
- Identify complex lines and simplify them.
- Replace jargon with suitable alternatives.
- Spot passive sentences and turn them active.
- Break longer sentences where needed.
In addition to using their creativity, HRs can refine post-writing language using online tools designed to refine written content. For Instance, a word changer helps rephrase text while maintaining its original meaning, making messages more engaging and professional. Incorporating such digital aids saves time and effort and offers a better opportunity to improve the overall language and flow of internal messages.
Structure Content For Easy Reading
In internal business communication, HRs are usually responsible for presenting policies, regulations, training material, and different reports related to hiring. Each of such documents contains key components that must be presented in an ordered way for easy readability. That’s why creating a structure before writing is necessary to ensure all the essential things are appropriately included. For this purpose, you should
- Use clear headings and subheadings.
- Break information into short paragraphs.
- Connect paragraphs using transition words.
- Utilize bullets and numbered lists.
- Use shorter sentences for clarity.
Adhere to all these things in your document to ensure each component is presented as it should be. A good structure creates a flow in your writing and helps employees and senior management understand things clearly.
Keep The Things Crystal Clear
Remember, vague instructions in HR communication can cause direct confusion among employees. For instance, if you end a conversation with a CTA, “submit reports as soon as possible,” the recipient may get confused about the exact time. In contrast, stating, “Submit reports by 11 AM” will guide the reader about the deadline. So, keep things clear. From formal messages to documents, you should
- State the purpose of communication upfront.
- Avoid vague language and generalized points of view.
- Provide clear examples when necessary.
- Define clear time frames for time-bound tasks.
- Keep the action statements straightforward.
Once you have clarified everything, you don’t have to be involved in further clarifications later. This saves you time and lowers the probability of unnecessary delays due to a lack of clarity in internal communication.
Incorporate Visual Aids When Necessary
The combination of text and visuals enhances the ability of readers to digest the information quickly. So, as an HR, you can use this rule of human psychology for your benefit to convey your message yet effectively. Incorporating the right visuals can make a big difference in improving your internal conversations. So,
- Use infographics to simplify lengthy information.
- Add flowcharts for step-by-step processes.
- Highlight key points using icons or symbols.
- Include visual charts in hiring-related reports.
- Incorporate vector pictures to guide through the process.
For this purpose, you can get assistance from your company’s graphic designer. You can ask them to create relevant graphics that support your written material correctly. Apart from that, you can also benefit from pre-made templates provided by online editing tools. Try to use visuals that you or your company owns the right to.
Wrapping It Up
One of HR’s great powers is creating clear, engaging, and error-free material. Enhancing writing capabilities can enable a hiring manager or executive to ensure smooth communication across all departments. That’s why every HR professional must improve their writing skills. The tips mentioned above can help a lot in this regard. Consistent implementation of these practices can improve an HR professional’s written communication.
