What I Learned from Battling a Behemoth Email

By: Lisa Noury, Director, U.S. Corporate Internal Communications of Bayer U.S. 

Keeping things simple. Making communications easy to read. If you’re a writer like me, you know it can be far from easy to make things simple and stay inspired as a writer.

Oh, the battles we fight as employee communicators …

1. First, there’s the one against corporate jargon. Let’s take this offline to leverage a deep dive into the data to find some low-hanging fruit to tackle our challenges.
2. Second, we have the battle against reviewers, especially our “friends” in Legal.
3. Third, we have the battle against ourselves. It’s not okay to give in after a long road developing a communication. No matter how long it takes, we can’t allow long sentences, countless syllables, too many descriptive words or too few paragraphs.

The battle for simplification is easier said than written. The spoken word is more casual. It doesn’t strive to be perfect like the written word. Generally, people use different grammar when they’re speaking or writing. Let’s face it. The written word is harder especially when you’re in the trenches fighting the three battles (and maybe more) I listed above.

Instead of battling, I recommend practicing. My resolve has kept me in this simplification battle for a long time. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit along with a large workload that I did an about-face. And where did this epic about-face to practicing occur? On Wikipedia of all places!

As I was fighting through another 1,400 word email, I found long sentences, many descriptive words and too few paragraphs. I lost interest in the battle at hand. My mind wandered and soon my fingers searched for the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests. The table under Flesch Reading Ease on Wikipedia caught my eye. The calculations for reading ease include the factors I focus on—total words, sentences and syllables. I had never linked reading ease to grade level before. Sure, I had seen scores and grade levels when I used the spelling and grammar check in Word. But now armed with this new insight and the meaning of each level written in plain English, I felt like someone had breathed new life into me. Phrases like “fairly easy to read,” “plain English” and “easy to read” inspired me to practice what I learned. Now, I would get that 1,400 word behemoth email to “plain English.”

What did I learn?

• Allow yourself to be inspired by the unexpected.
• Be open to new material even about old topics like Flesch Kincaid.
• Practice, practice instead of battle, battle!

You never know what will help you simplify your next behemoth email.

About Bayer
Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the life science fields of health care and nutrition. Its products and services are designed to benefit people by supporting efforts to overcome the major challenges presented by a growing and aging global population. At the same time, the Group aims to increase its earning power and create value through innovation and growth. Bayer is committed to the principles of sustainable development, and the Bayer brand stands for trust, reliability and quality throughout the world. In fiscal 2019, the Group employed around 104,000 people and had sales of 43.5 billion euros. Capital expenditures amounted to 2.9 billion euros, R&D expenses to 5.3 billion euros. For more information, go to www.bayer.com.