Writing is the backbone of business. Proposals secure clients. Reports shape decisions. Emails keep projects moving. Conversely, poor writing erodes organizational performance. “Poor writing creates a drag on everything you do,” argues business writing expert Josh Bernoff. “It functions like a tax, sapping your profits.”

That unofficial “tax” can even be quantified: Bernoff’s research has found that U.S. businesses lose hundreds of billions of dollars annually due to poor writing.

So, it’s no wonder many organizations turn to writing training programs to strengthen their team’s ability to write quickly and effectively.

But does writing training work?

The evidence says yes, with an important qualifier: it takes the right kind of writing training. For example, academic-style classroom training isn’t going to meet the needs of professionals producing technical documentation or strategic, goal-driven business materials.

The real question for managers is not whether writing training works in general, but whether a specific program will work for the kind of writing your team does. This is where evidence really matters. When you understand why writing training works, you can choose programs with a real chance of improving both writing and business outcomes.

What Is Writing Training?

To start, let’s set a baseline: for our purposes, writing training for professionals does not mean diagramming sentences or memorizing grammar rules. Rather, it’s any skills development program designed to equip employees with strategies, tools, and skills to write clearly, persuasively, and efficiently in the contexts that matter most to business or technical performance.

Programs vary. Some broadly aim to improve overall business writing skills, while others focus on specific aspects of the writing process (such as revision and feedback) or on specific types of writing (such as proposal writing). Some training is self-paced. Some approaches start with a communication diagnostic in order to customize the course. Regardless, the key is that effective training meets the needs of the team for the writing they do.

The good news: professional-oriented writing training has been shown to be enormously effective at improving writing outcomes.

Does Writing Training Actually Improve Writing Outcomes?

Yes, when the training incorporates certain protocols. For example, the program should use personal, real-world examples drawn from the participants’ actual work. “The study showed that the personal example group retained the information more from the prompts,” concluded researchers in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. In other words, personal writing samples made it easier for participants to integrate new concepts into their existing knowledge base, which in turn boosts learning retention.

For a more detailed breakdown of what makes for successful writing instruction, read our guide to “The Anatomy of a Professional Writing Course for Teams That Guarantees Results.”

Today, however, we want to focus on the evidence behind why writing training works.

To begin, simply learning and practicing new skills will, unsurprisingly, strengthen those skills. One study looked at participant self-ratings of writing aptitude and performance after participating in an intensive writing workshop. “Most participants believed their writing skills had significantly improved from pre- to post-workshop,” wrote the researchers.

Another study looked at long-term impacts of writing instruction, specifically for medical professionals. After participating in a two-day writing workshop, researchers found that “workshop participants published significantly more scientific articles and had higher citation rates … after the workshops.” The researchers argued that workshops on planning and writing should be viewed as a tool with which to increase long-term writing productivity.

Another study focused more on scientific and technical writing. Before training, the participants often struggled with organization, clarity, and proper citation. Afterward, post-test scores showed statistically significant improvements across every category: introductions became more concise, arguments more logically structured, and referencing errors fell. For a professional, that translates into clearer documentation, stronger proposals, and fewer costly mistakes.

Other studies look more directly at specific aspects of writing training. For example, writing training aimed at professionals will ideally incorporate strategic, outcome-oriented skills. To that end, one study looked at the impact of teaching goal-setting skills. Participants who learned to articulate the intended purpose of each document (e.g., whether to persuade, inform, or instruct) produced higher-quality writing and wrote more efficiently.

Altogether, the evidence paints a consistent picture. Writing training improves measurable outcomes in quality, productivity, and confidence, but only when it is tailored to purpose.

How Will You Know If It Worked?

Managers evaluating training want to know how to measure return on investment. Research points to several reliable metrics:

• Writing quality: In practice, you can benchmark your team’s documents before and after training to track improvements. Expect to see clearer messaging, fewer errors, and more succinct writing after a well-designed program. In turn, improved quality can pay off in surprisingly big ways. One computer company saved $19,000 in production costs simply by reducing the length of a user manual.

• Productivity: Formal studies often use concepts like ‘writing fluency’ and output as outcomes. In the workplace, this translates into faster turnaround and more documents completed. A 10% to 25% gain is realistic. That’s thanks to simply writing faster and requiring fewer rounds of edits. Since the average business person spends about 20 hours each week writing, that level of improvement will open up as many as five hours every week in their schedule.

• Bottom-Line Improvements: Consider a hypothetical sales organization that submits 50 proposals annually, each worth $1 million. If training improves the win rate from 20 percent to 25 percent, that humble 5 percent increase would equal $2.5 million in additional revenue per year. Even incremental improvements matter. Faster report completion reduces project delays. Clearer compliance documentation minimizes regulatory risk. Stronger client emails improve retention. And more! We’ve produced a more detailed assessment of the ROI of writing training under different conditions here, here, and here. These scenarios might provide a template for your own ROI tracking.

• Psychological Effects: Writing training can have hard-to-quantify emotional benefits for participants too. Multiple studies show writing training boosts confidence. Surveys of your team can track whether employees feel more capable and less anxious. Increased confidence often correlates with greater efficiency. Plus, the mere fact of investing in your employees can boost loyalty and morale.

The key is to set realistic expectations. Writing training will not turn every employee into a best-selling author. But it can produce measurable, incremental gains that compound into major business results.

Why Writing Training Will Work For You

In the end, the choice for managers is whether to let writing remain an invisible drag on productivity or to treat it as a strategic capability worth investing in. The data shows why writing training is more than a nice-to-have. It is a tool for saving money, speeding projects, and strengthening relationships with readers inside and outside your organization.

By focusing on evidence-based outcomes and tracking the right metrics, you can move beyond poorly tuned training programs and into writing workshops that prove their value. Bottom-line: writing training, when done right, pays off.

To learn more and to find time-tested and proven professional writing training options that truly work, contact Hurley Write for a custom, no-obligation consultation.