The flex approach to writing staff magazines
Powerful writing only needs to be read once. It’s about simplicity, directness and understanding your audience.
We have written for sales assistants, dentists, prison officers, accountants, head teachers, builders, chefs, hotel staff, cement makers and bank employees and our benchmark is always the same – do they get it first time round?
Researching and understanding client culture and aspiration is the first thing we do. Creating a language that builds, illustrates or reinforces their vision is the next – and making critical business messages mean something to the widest set of people is imperative. There’s no lip service in our editorial – if a feature doesn’t work it won’t get published.
Our articles motivate, excite and educate – but above all they inspire people to change their behaviour at work, get behind key commercial initiatives and remain loyal to their employers. Great staff communication makes a significant difference to staff retention.
As professional writers our research, accuracy and creativity is all-important. As editors, experienced in sub-editing other people’s submitted stories into journalism that sits seamlessly next to our own writing, our talent for developing and sticking to a compelling tone of voice is well-honed.
No publication, print or online, will work without a deep understanding of who is currently reading it and who we still need to win over. Great staff magazines motivate everyone wherever they are located in the organisation, be they at head office or in stores, factories and warehouses or ‘in the field’. Magazines and newsletters are effective at times of change when many employees might be feeling their way as part of a new organisational structure, or worried about the future. Our language, drive and focus must be directed at them.
We don’t dumb down business messages but we do write them so they have relevance, interest and impact for the core people and the lifeblood of the business’s new success.