Illiteracy In The Workplace

I've been wondering lately what's up with today's employees when it comes to writing skills. Doesn't anyone know how to spell anymore? What ever happened to punctuation and capitalization? I would be hard pressed to find much nice to say about the educational system today based on some of the writing I've seen, but it would be disingenuous to the younger people to put out a belief that only the young seem illiterate.

When I was a manager, initially I used to allow my employees to write up their own letters to send out to our customers. That is, until one day I got a look at one of them. Forget about them remembering anything as it pertains to formatting a letter, if they ever took typing in school. Do they still teach typing in school? I couldn't believe the poor sentence structure, let alone the choice of words used. If they were writing to their friends I wouldn't have cared so much. But when you're sending letters to your customers, the main message you want coming across is that you're a professional organization. No matter what the subject is, if the message being sent doesn't look correct your organization won't be taken seriously.

One truth I came upon is that it's not only your front line employees with terrible writing skills. I have met many management level employees who didn't know how to put two words together, let alone write an entire letter. Some of them have been blessed to have secretaries who studied the art and clean up all outgoing letters. But it's these examples that show it's not the intellect of the individuals which leads to their not understanding the basics of writing.

So, what are the reasons? I think there are four main reasons for bad writing. One, many people tend to write how they speak, and there's many of us who don't speak properly most of the time. Two, I don't believe grammar is as integral a part of the school curriculum as it may have been in the past. Not that they don't teach it, but the lessons aren't stressed as much as students move through grades beyond middle school. Three, the proliferation of chat rooms and instant messaging has created a new way of writing, where more people use short little phrases and alpha-words (such as brb for "be right back") to communicate their thoughts quicker. And four, people either don't care to take the time to look at what they're writing or really don't have the time to review themselves before sending something out.

I'm not going to set myself up as being the perfect icon for how writing is supposed to look. I'm a product of my own time also, back in the days where we were taught that some words were pronounced exactly the same regardless of how they were spelled. I learned that, based on where you grew up, not all rules were the same in all places. Being a military child, I had it both ways. First, I had the luxury of learning the different regional rules of grammar. Next, I had to deal with the curse of having to quickly learn what was acceptable where I presently was. Confusion can reign when inundated with so many different styles and systems. Trust me; I've had enough people who've written me questioning how I said something in one of my newsletters from time to time.

The business world of today has to deal with this issue as much as dealing with the issue of reading skills. If you own a factory it's not so much of a problem. However, if you have some kind of business office where your personnel are expected to communicate with the masses it then becomes problematic. It's an even bigger deal if you're promoting personnel to management positions, where they're expected to be able to teach and educate others. Many companies leave the writing of departmental procedure manuals to management level employees. If they don't know how to write well, the message will not get across. If they're writing incoherent memos who's going to understand the company policy? If they're sending these letters out to your customers, why wouldn't you expect them to wonder just who they're dealing with?

Is it fair to give tests up front, either at the time of the job application or as part of the interview process? Not only is it appropriate, but it should be a criteria for certain jobs in every company. I can't think of one business in this country which couldn't benefit from at least one person who has some good writing skills. If your business has one or 50,000 employees, at least one of them has to know how to write a sentence.

Are there answers in how to address this issue as it pertains to companies today? Not many, unfortunately. There has been some talk that more large companies should invest their money into local school systems to not only teach job skills earlier but address some of the skills lacking in both writing and math. While there are some companies that actually participate in the process, the truth is that the costs seem prohibitive in today's economy, not to mention that there are no guarantees for the company that those they help will end up working for them as opposed to their competitors.

Some companies have training programs for basic academic skills, but not many. Estimates range from 1 to 8% of all companies that have such programs. Most of those companies, however, only allow those employees who they feel need the skills to do the job they're presently in properly to avail themselves of these programs. They ignore the facts that not only are there other employees throughout their company who might have higher aspirations and want to improve themselves, but also employees who may not be doing the same job tomorrow as they're doing today who may need these same skills.

I believe that every employee needs to constantly strive to be better. I believe that every employer needs to evaluate the needs of their employees and try to address them, especially if the skills missing are integral to the position. Good communications are the key for companies to not only get their message across to their employees, but to their customers. Such communications will never be effective unless both sides of the employee-employer relationship realize that it benefits everyone to not only have the provisions for improving writing skills, but to have the desire to make the attempt to use the skills learned.



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