Enhancing the quality of reports and letters at Principality Building Society

Improving the quality of written reports

With over 500,000 members, Principality Building Society is the largest building society in Wales and the sixth largest in the UK. The organisation has helped members and customers with their savings and mortgages for over 150 years.

Writing Machine Academy was first invited to meet with Mike Fenton, Senior Manager, Leadership, Management and Talent Development at Principality, as staff had recognised that they could improve the way they were producing reports for the management board. They wanted to ensure they were getting information across in a clear, concise and consistent manner, and Mike was tasked with finding a suitable training course.

“The Board asked us to source a training course that would empower staff to produce better quality reports that convey key messages in a clear and professional style,” says Mike. “We felt that Writing Machine Academy’s Structured Business Writing course would meet our requirements, and were particularly impressed by the fact that their trainers are professional writers themselves.”

A new way to think about writing

Writing Machine Academy has to date delivered 13 Structured Business Writing training courses to Principality. The course teaches delegates a new way to approach writing, following the Structured Writing Method. Staff were shown how to define their objective and structure their work, before finally crafting their writing.

“Writing Machine Academy’s Structured Business Writing course has not only improved the way we write our reports, it has also changed the way we think as a business,” says Mike. “By thinking and planning before writing, staff are able to produce more logical, better structured and higher quality reports. And they are also able to get their message across in a clear and more concise way. We’ve run thirteen courses already, and I don’t doubt we’ll run more in the future – in fact, I have people knocking on my door asking to attend the course.”

Writing more professional customer-facing letters

Shaun Middleton, Head of Regulated Sales at Principality Building Society, was trained on one of the first Structured Business Writing courses. He was so impressed with the quality of the training, the trainer and the unique techniques taught on the day that he wanted to train his own team of mortgage advisors.

“My team writes letters to customers to confirm advice and recommendations, following a meeting,” says Shaun. “We’d recently reviewed the quality of these letters and I knew there was a real variation. Some were good, but some were poor and I was concerned that those letters could be negatively impacting our brand and leaving a poor impression with our customers.”

As a result, Writing Machine Academy ran four Structured Letter Writing courses for Principality’s mortgage advisers. The training teaches delegates a variety of techniques and processes to follow in order to write better quality letters. By following the Structured Writing Method, letters can also be produced more efficiently. Specifically, the course covered structuring, how to merge legal caveats with soft facts, tone of voice and grammar and punctuation.

“One of the most interesting things to come out of the training was to learn that people had been writing letters with the ombudsman in mind, rather than the customer. The training taught people to think about exactly who they are writing for, and why before they put pen to paper, which informs everything that follows,” says Shaun.

“People were pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable and interactive the day was, which kept everyone engaged and interested. But most importantly the quality of letters has improved dramatically. The structure, clarity and tone of voice of our suitability letters are far improved and I can rest easy knowing that the letters going out properly reflect the Principality brand.”