How BA's comms team learned to write engaging messages

Time is scarce, especially at the moment and getting employees to read the messages you send to them has probably become even more of a challenge. So how can you energize your prose so that even the most time-poor employee takes a moment to absorb the information?

This was exactly the issue at British Airways when Suzanne Collins (who, at that time, was a communications manager at the airline) decided they needed help from a specialist team to revitalize their writing style.

"We're constrained in terms of channel, appropriate tone and style, industrial relations and media sensitivities," says Collins. "So, every second of 'word time' is precious and I wanted to make sure we made the most of it by writing in the most engaging way possible."

"We asked the team to think of all the BA jargon, buzzwords and 'corporate-speak' that they could, and then asked them to think their way 'out' of them," says Creative Director at The Writer, Neil Taylor, who led a workshop with the BA team. "This sensitizes writers to the corporate words that tend to put the reader off reading. It helps internal communicators become interpreters of corporate messages, rather than just channelling them verbatim."

Read on to find out more about the writing workshop and how it helped the British Airways internal communication team.

Melcrum has recently worked with the team from The Writer to devise a new "Engaging business writing" professional development course that'll be held on 20th May in London and promises to be a great way to sharpen up your writing skills.

Neil Taylor writes: Internal communicators generally have to communicate the same sorts of messages again and again - HR policy, new procedures or the chief executive's latest whim. The problem with repeating similar messages is that it's boring: boring for the writers and boring for the readers. So, how do you keep yourself - and the things you write - as fresh as your first day at work?

The obvious answer is to find good stories to write about. But these still need to be turned into interesting pieces to read, and that doesn't always happen. Why? Because, while writing is a core skill in internal communications, it's often overlooked in the bustle of everyday life. But it's so important. Give it a little attention and it can make such a difference to how your message is received.

It's not just about content
Suzanne Collins, communications manager at Heathrow Airport for UK airline, British Airways (BA), asked us to visit her communication team, to give them some ideas about how to write more creatively within the constraints of the expectations of a corporate audience.

"We're constrained in terms of channel, appropriate tone and style, industrial relations and media sensitivities, not to mention the fact that jargon abounds! The people we're writing for have little time (and sometimes little inclination) to absorb the messages we'd like them to. So, every second of 'word time' is precious and I wanted to make sure we made the most of it by writing in the most engaging way possible," she said.

Root out the jargon
The first thing we did with the willing, but slightly trepidatious BA team, was to get them to talk about their favorite words. Words like holiday, Friday and weekend were chosen because of the associations of what they mean.

People also pick the words because of how they sound, or because of their emotional resonances. For example, serendipity, Alberquerque or spatula. We know this lesson intuitively because of the books we read, or maybe even the songs we listen to - i.e., it's not what you say, it's the way that you say it.

But most of the time at work, we're not always thinking like this. We're often trapped in the world of messaging, and – if you write for the digital media - content.

Get some therapy
We then asked the team to think of all the BA jargon, buzzwords and "corporate-speak" that they could, and then asked them to think their way "out" of them. This process is a little like therapy. Try it yourself: "hurl" your least favorite work phrase at the wall and see how it feels.

Although this is good therapy, it's useful, too. It sensitizes writers to the corporate words that tend to drain the life out of our communications, and put readers off reading. This process helps internal communicators become interpreters and translators of corporate messages, rather than just channelling them verbatim.

Improve your wordpower
The BA team then tried out all sorts of writing to prove that there was more to life than a standard messaging template. We asked them to write the imagined first lines of books they'd never read. They wrote poems (about the new check-in systems at Heathrow, and what it meant for staff... really). They also wrote fake stories for the internal newsletter, in the style of thrillers and romances, telling us about the breathless pandemonium of a crisis day at an airline.

So, why did we get them to perform all these tasks? It wasn't to suggest that they could always transplant these techniques into their business writing (though, in some cases they could). It was to give them confidence that they were better writers than they were allowed to be, or more often, allowed themselves to be, at work.

Developing literary gods
These activities inspired the team to write in different ways, and to expand their vocabulary beyond the corporate "blah". It also reassured them that they could bring their personalities to work, and that doing so should make them better at their jobs. It proved that faced with boring material, we all have it in us to make it more interesting and bring it to life.

When asked what changes had been noticed in the team's output since thinking differently about writing, Collins explained, "While we're by no means literary gods (at least not yet!), the team do now think more about their audience and how their writing can best get the message across. I chuckle at us flexing our new-found verbal muscle in our writing as we experiment with some of the tools, tips and techniques we've learnt."

Writing is the forgotten skill
When it comes to internal communication, the difference between competent writing and great writing can make a massive difference. Internal communicators need to understand how to bring writing to life.

We need to give our communications impact, energy, attitude, personality; our writing should be able to cut through the tons of corporate "twaddle" we're bombarded with and make someone think, or laugh, or shout. That's really our job as communicators. In addition to the content of the communication, you've got to get across tone, character, feel, spirit. This shapes the way people react to your communications.

Avoiding the jargon
The Writer consultancy was recently working with another big client. Its boss had decided the company's major internal comms message of the year was "operational excellence".

Operational excellence were the first words employees saw when they walked into the canteen; employees got emails explaining how their team's operational excellence would be measured, and their manager told them they'd be focusing on how operationally excellent they personally were.

Doing everyday things, better
But six months later, when the measures were measured, had anyone done anything about it? Of course not.

Oh, except for one team. One team where all the scores had gone up. A team that really had become operationally excellent. What had the manager of that team done differently to succeed where no-one else had? He'd run a weekly meeting on the subject, just like the other managers, except he'd changed the name of the meeting from "operational excellence", to "doing everyday things, better". This was a more user-friendly phrase - easy to understand and impossible to ignore.

Members of the Internal Comms Hub are able to access the online version of this article by logging on in the usual way.

Until next time,

P.S. As well as the new engaging business writing course, we've also just launched new courses in "Mastering successful brand engagement" and "How to keep your IC consultancy competitive in 2009".

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