Courses

Writing reports

General duration

1 or 2 days - depending on needs and required reports

Target group

This program will highly focus on the preferred format and style of written documentation required by organisation. The facilitator will speak with your representatives to determine required formats, structures and any style guides established within the business The facilitator will also send a pre-course questionnaire to participants asking them to submit 3 pieces of writing they have recently prepared.

From this material, the facilitator:

• assesses their writing ability
• gains a thorough understanding of the written work they prepare, and
• extracts examples for use as training material within the program.

This personalises the program. Learning points become more relevant and specific to the participants as they use their own work as examples and exercises.

Learning objectives

At the completion of this program, participants will be able to write short, long or technical reports which are clear, concise, complete and correct for the reader, and in the format required by the organisation.

Course content

Communicating in business 

• The difference between academic writing, creative writing and business writing
• The Government Style Guide as a source of technique
• Internal style guides

Reports 

• Short reports
• Longer reports
• Identifying the reader and purpose of the report

General structure of reports 

• Cover page
• Executive summary
• Table of contents
• Standard heading structures
• Writing clear conclusions and recommendations
• Appendices
• Inclusion of diagrams and tables
• Referencing
• Formatting
• Layout
• Version control

 The different formats and structures of reports 

• Factual
• Analytical
• Proposals
• Minutes of meetings

 The composing process

• The 4 step process to writing 
  • Gather material for the specific purpose of the document
  • Order information
  • Draft
  • Edit

 Techniques to increase comprehension: 

• Sentence length and structure
• Main message first
• Passive/active voice
• Conversation style
• Use minimum words
• Modern formatting techniques and visual presentation
• Using AI - issues to consider for research and polishing

Writing one-page Board reports

 Executive summary

Techniques to influence 

• Writing a cost benefit analysis
• Conducting a force field analysis
• Writing a convincing argument 
  • substantiating claims
  • statistics
  • specifics
  • features/benefits
• appropriate level of glamour

Take-aways 

• What are five major changes each participant will include in their next document?