CBRE
CBRE’s Health and Safety team (QSHE) write detailed incident reports to prevent incidents escalating or repeating. As well as protecting people and infrastructure, professional reports are central to avoiding reputational damage. For the reports to be effective it’s crucial they are as clear as possible. Tight deadlines and a lack of agreement on style meant that this wasn’t always the case.
The challenge
Incident reports are a serious business. They can even be produced in court at a trial. It’s vital that they are as clear as possible without swamping readers in unnecessary detail. Over the years, different approaches to completing the reports had become the norm. The template structure was not being used consistently. And the writing style erred on the unnecessarily complex.
What we did
Training
Ran workshops with the team to create agreement on the templates and build confidence around writing in a clearer, simpler way.
Templates
Rewrote the templated documents to make them easier to use and more consistent.
Guide
Created a guide that could be used throughout the business and aligned the Tone of Voice with the corporate values.
Included techniques that made the advice easy to use and put into practise.
Advice
The results
Anecdotally the team have all improved their writing. The guide and report templates were commissioned on the back of successful sessions of the workshops.
