Acting on advice given to me at work, I’ve been practicing my journalistic writing style recently.

With more opportunities to write in a professional and technical capacity, more and more of my writing has been exposed people in my workplace. While receiving generally positive remarks, it has become clear that my style could be made more palatable for corporate consumption.

My forays into the world of corporate communication really began back in the summer of 2009. While on placement with my current employer, I was given the opportunity to participate in the organisation of a launch event for an offshore wind farm collector platform. Being exposed to activities outside my normal engineering remit, I met and made an impression on many people within the company’s marketing, government, and communication teams. We worked together to produce presentations, literature and visual aids framed within a gala event that showcased the business’ success in building what was, at the time, a novel and innovative structural solution. We were joined by coleagues, clients and partners from all over Europe, and the event was a massive success.

As I moved into the business proper, I settled down into a team following a year and a half on a graduate training scheme. Based on the reputation I had garnered both from my events management experience and my sheer volume of writing, I was given a task: Raise the profile of the group through a quarterly newsletter. No other department had yet tried this, so there was much interest when the newsletter finally did come out.

The publication soon attracted attention from not just colleagues at the team-level, but from directors and managers from higher up the business hierarchy as well. By this time, the communications department had been re-shuffled and streamlined, with a new manager who had earned the job from his successes in another part of the business. Seeing an opportunity to use the resources available, he called me to his desk and offered me the benefits of his experience.

I gladly received his advice, and have been applying the lessons he has taught me to my factual writing where I can. Most recently, I did so in writing a report for the company-wide newsletter on a recent event organised by our team. I’m not quite there yet, so you can probably expect to see more posts written in this style; As always, I’ll be very glad for any feedback you might provide!

M.