Effective Business Writing

Effective business writing is clear, concise, and purposeful. While writing well takes effort – even seasoned writers face challenges – and practice builds confidence. This workshop equips participants with essential tools to improve their writing by revisiting grammar, formatting, and audience awareness. It also introduces new strategies, including the use of AI, writing various business documents, email etiquette, and how to receive and apply constructive feedback.

Course Objectives:  This workshop teaches participants to:

• Make your writing clear, complete, concise, and correct.
• Compose professional emails with clear subject lines, appropriate greetings, and timely follow-ups
• Understanding the proper format for specific business documents such as business cases, executive summaries, proposals, business letters, and cost benefit analyses
• Best practices for using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in business writing
• Accept and apply constructive criticism to improve writing with professionalism

Course Outline

LESSON 1: Course Overview

The instructor will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Participants will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.

LESSON 2: Essential Writing Skills

Proper grammar is at the forefront of effective business writing. In this session, participants will review the use of the 8 parts of speech as well as other types of consistently used words. Writing mechanics, sentence structure, and paragraph building will also be practiced as a refresher in this session.

LESSON 3: The Core Principles of Business Writing

All writing should be clear, concise, complete, and correct. We will look at each of these elements in detail during this session and will delve into the basics of what purpose-driven writing means in business. Participants will also practice writing for specific audiences.

LESSON 4: Writing Business Documents

In this session, participants will take an interactive look at the format used for business documents that often come up as trending business needs: business letters, executive summaries, business cases, cost benefit analyses, requests for proposals, proposals and persuasive writings, and reports. Participants will also delve into the correct way to document and cite sources in those documents.

LESSON 5: Digital Communication

Participants will explore proper business email etiquette rules and best practices for using Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a tool for writing business documents. They will practice using AI prompts to understand how the AI tool works in business writing.

LESSON 6: Review and Revision

Participants will learn and practice the proofreading and editing process, and how to give appropriate feedback by using a feedback template.

WORKSHOP WRAP-UP

At the end of the day, students will have an opportunity to ask final questions, complete a training satisfaction survey, and fill out an action plan.