“Communication is the backbone of business.”

That’s what 93% of business leaders told Grammarly and Harris Poll in one of their recent State of Business Communication surveys.

And they’re right!

Across every industry, good business communication is the lifeblood of execution, while poorly handled communication will turn into a team’s greatest obstacle. When a critical report gets misread, misunderstanding can lead executives into bad business decisions. When a project stalls because the status update was unclear, delays and unnecessary expenses result. When a sales proposal loses its persuasive punch after being edited by five different people who weren’t aligned on questions like intended readership, purpose, or style, valuable deals slip through the cracks.

All told, poor communication is one of the leading contributors to project delays, cost overruns, and employee frustration. In fact, companies lose an average of $12,506 per employee per year just due to poor communication!

And while many organizations try to solve this problem with communication tools or new policies, they often overlook a far more foundational (and entirely fixable) factor: writing.

More specifically, team writing.

Most business writing isn’t solo work, it’s collaborative. It’s produced, reviewed, and consumed by whole teams, not individuals in isolation. Then, after the document has been finalized, the quality of writing output will continue to ripple outward, impacting everyone else’s work. Poor communication can thus ricochet through entire teams, ratcheting up productivity losses, cost increases, and work delays with every subsequent hit.

We can even quantify these impacts. The State of Business Communication report showed that less effective communication, including poor writing, results in productivity decreases for 41% of workers, missed deadlines for 26%, and even strained workplace relationships for 31%!

In other words, one person’s writing challenges have consequences beyond individual performance issues. They create team-wide operational inefficiencies that impact the whole business.

And that’s where team writing workshops come in.

What Team Writing Workshops Actually Do

Team writing workshops address these challenges at the root.

Unlike traditional training or academic writing classes, team writing workshops focus on the shared nature of business communication. They build common standards and frameworks for how teams write, review, revise, and respond to feedback. And because they’re interactive, they surface blind spots that often go unspoken such as inconsistencies in style or strategy, misaligned tone expectations, unclear assumptions about readers, and more.

Here’s what a well-run team writing workshop can accomplish:

• Shared Language and Process: Teams learn a repeatable writing process they can all follow from planning and drafting through to revising and finalizing.

• Improved Collaboration: Team writing workshops clarify how to give and receive feedback, reducing friction in the review process and strengthening collaborative effort.

• Customized Solutions: Because the best workshops are tailored to your company’s own documents and challenges, they improve the actual workflows your team uses every day.

Ultimately, good team writing workshops go far beyond grammar. They’re about coordination, cohesion, and communication effectiveness across the whole team.

Better Communication Means Better Outcomes

In turn, the results of improved team writing are immediate and measurable.

Productivity and cost efficiency both improve. For example, when FedEx revised its internal manuals to improve clarity and usability, the time required to find information fell by 28%, and the success rate for finding the correct information rose commensurately by 27%. That single improvement generated $400,000 in savings in just one year.

Perhaps just as most importantly, confidence improves. A study published in Health Promotion Practice found that after participating in a structured writing workshop, the percentage of professionals who rated their writing skills as “poor” or “neutral” dropped from 46% to just 8%. Participants not only improved their writing but also felt more equipped to communicate their ideas and insights.

What to Look for in a Team Writing Workshop

Not all writing workshops are created equal. If you’re investing time and money in training, and you want training that’s sure to generate real business results, make sure it includes these key elements:

• Personalization: Off-the-shelf writing advice won’t move the needle. Workshops should be based on your team’s actual writing samples and communication challenges.

• Interactivity: These aren’t solo writing classes. Look for workshops that encourage group feedback, small team exercises, and real-time editing sessions.

• Strategic Focus: Writing is a tool to achieve goals. Training should include how to plan documents strategically, structure information for action, and tailor messages to specific and sometimes divergent readers.

• Process Development: The workshop should help your team establish a consistent, repeatable writing and review process (something like the Hurley Write’s PROS™ Framework) that integrates into existing workflows.

• Follow-up and Reinforcement: To ensure long-term improvement and cement skills retention, workshops should include some form of post-training review, coaching, or performance check-in.

When these elements are in place, team writing workshops can take skill-building sessions and uplevel them into organizational and operational upgrades. (For more information about the anatomy of a truly effective writing workshop, read our guide to why traditional writing courses won’t solve most common organizational issues with communication).

The Bottom Line

Clarity and grammatical correctness are just the start of good business communication. Ultimately, the best communication in any form requires total team alignment. From internal workflows to customer interactions, from stakeholder reviews to business development, when teams are aligned in how they write, review, and share ideas, everything runs smoother.

Team writing workshops are a uniquely powerful way to achieve that alignment and build a whole team of better communicators. To get started, choose the writing workshop that best fits your team and needs. Or, for a guided approach, just reach out! We can assess your situation and point you to the workshop that will make the biggest difference, right away.