Simple Communication Works Best: Apple’s Finger Tips

Finger Tips
Keep it simple. That’s some pretty good advice for employee communication. You know that.

Here’s a really well done idea for simple communication: Finger Tips. It’s Apple’s super quick overviews of functions for the iPhone. Finger Tips are 20- to 40-second little “movies” that tell the essentials of what works.

You know how tempting it is to wedge in every last little piece of information into your employee communication? Well, you can’t do that. There isn’t enough paper or attention span to write down every idea. But what about the opposite? How about little Finger Tips, simple blurbs about the essence of what you want employees to know? Yep, that’s the way in 2007. Short is the new long.

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One-Minute Writing Lesson

Scott Adams wrote a post that’s a powerful lesson for HR people who have to write for a living. (Don’t we all?) In The Day You Became a Better Writer, Mr. Adams says:

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

and…

Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.

That’s your one-minute writing lesson from one of the finest writers and cartoonists out there. Now get writing. Keep it short.

A Really Great Resume Cover Letter

You only get one chance to make a first impression. That goes double for the cover letter that you attach to your resume.

I’ve seen some bad ones, which is why I was intrigued by an article titled What Does a Good Cover Look Like? on Ask a Manager. It’s an example of a really great resume cover letter.

Wouldn’t it be cool to put a reference to this letter on your career site? Wouldn’t it be great to give candidates a cover letter roadmap? I’ll bet you recruiting managers out there have seen a lot of good ones — and a lot of bad ones. Why not show your potential employees what success looks like right off the bat? Sometimes your best candidates just don’t know how to write a knockout cover letter. You can help.

Advice to HR Writers: Pluck Your Little Flowers

I went to journalism school for a few years, and the best advice I ever got was “pluck your little flowers,” which meant that writers need to recognize when their prose turns purple. That’s why I like this quote by Samuel Johnson so much - it’s about plucking your little flowers:

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

This advice is particularly pointed information for HR. Write in an active voice. Be authentic. Be clear. Leave the HR and business jargon to others. Your job is to communicate with employees. If you want to be cutesy and convoluted with your writing, join a Victorian Poetry Club.

Who Does It To Whom

Who does it to whom. That’s the rule of when to use “who” and “whom.” It’s as simple as that. Dan Santow, whose (another “who” word) Word Wise is a fun read, summarizes the who/whom “controversy”:

Okay, enough qualifying. Who is a subject. Whom is an object. Who does something. Whom has something done to it. In other words, who does it to whom.

Simple enough. Write clearly. Say what you mean. And don’t worry about who/whom taught you twisted English in 8th Grade. As Winston Churchill once said to a civil servant objecting to ending sentences in prepositions:

This is the kind of tedious [sometimes "pedantic"] nonsense up with which I will not put!

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