70 | The Language Revolution: Harnessing the Power of Words for Workplace Success | Charli Nordonne

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

If I can say to someone, I'm going to save you money or make you money or save you time or make people happier, that's when people really start to listen and wake up to the fact that, God, you can do all that just through thinking about your words. Give me a challenge that a business is facing and I will find a way to show how language and changing your language can make a tangible, visible, measurable impact.

Hi there and welcome to this episode of Building Better Cultures with me, Scott McInnes. Before we get into our conversation with today's guest, first, a quick thank you to Workvivo, our kind supporter and sponsor. If you are thinking about how you're going to continue to engage and communicate with your people as we move into this whole idea of hybrid working, then their solution, their platform is definitely worth a look. More on that at Workvivo.com. Vivo.com. On with today's guest. Now, those of you who are frequent listeners to this podcast will know that I do like words. And I was laughing the other day because I said to a client, I was doing a presentation and I said it wouldn't be an Inspiring Change presentation if I didn't mention tone of voice at least once, if not 2 or 3 times during the course of the presentation. Because for me, it's really, really important. I don't think we put enough store on the words that we use in work. I think that often we end up as these automatons who go in and we start writing in a way that's suddenly really corporate and really formal. And I've definitely come to the conclusion that there is a completely negative correlation between formality and proximity to a keyboard. The closer we get to a keyboard, the more we tend to become a bit henceforth and forthwith and pursuant to, and we'll stop saying things like we'll and I'll and you'll, and we start saying things like you will and I will and we will, because we think we have to be a little more more formal in the written word for some reason. Why? I don't know. But I'm hoping that with today's guest, we might be able to get to the bottom of a few of those questions. So I'm really delighted to be joined today by Charlie Nardone, who is the group creative director at The Writer. And The Writer is a London-based brand language consultancy. And Charlie, I know, does a lot of work in the whole area of tone of voice. So Charlie, great to have you on.

Thank you very much for having me. It sounds like we've already got so much in common. You're a tone of voice champ like me.

Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, the more I think organizations can have a we think about tone of voice, the better their communications are going to be, you know, from, from, from top down and peer to peer. Let me start off with the way I always start, just to get you nice and comfortable, maybe by you just telling me a bit about you, a bit about your background, your— maybe something about The Writer and the role you have there.

I can do that. So, I've been with The Writer on and off for 11 years, which is Slightly scary, but yeah, I started out focusing on trainings. My background is copywriting, and I spent a few years with a writer, and then decided I was going to have a go at being a freelancer, and set up my own food walking tour, which was great fun, sort of feeding people around London. But I missed words, I think. I figured out that words are my first love, food is my second. So I came back in-house, and then I've moved up through the ranks, and now Group Creative Director, so looking after our New York and London teams. And you're right, tone of voice is a huge part of what we do. So with The Writer We Say, we do 4 things really. So you've got the consultancy side of things, that's where we're looking at creating a tone of voice for a brand. It might be helping an organization with their brand purpose. It might be helping with their messaging, all the big chunky, you know, big strategy thinking stuff. Then we do naming. Which is pretty self-explanatory. Name a product, name a brand, name a service, whatever it might be. We do lots of training. So that's us getting out there in the world, virtually right now, but usually face-to-face, to talk to people about what makes for better writing and to help embed a tone of voice. Because I think tone of voice is a wonderful thing, but if it's only a document, then you're doing it a disservice. You have to embed it with people, empower them, make them excited about it. And the last bit, again, probably you could guess this one, but writing. So we will write all sorts sorts of things. It could be packaging copy, it can be website copy, anything that uses words, we will get involved. So yeah, language is the key thing there, really.

Wonderful. So let's have a little chat about tone of voice. Because, you know, for me, the idea of tone of voice seems like a strange term to use when we're talking about the written word. It's not voice, it's writing. So Define it for me, define what tone of voice actually is.

Yeah, I was thinking tone of voice, you know, where did this come from? Why was it not tone of writing? Perhaps that was a bit of a mouthful and didn't quite sum it up, but really it's, tone of voice is getting people thinking about the difference between what you say and how you say it. So tone of voice is thinking about the impression your words make, the impact that they have, and sort of really how, they make people feel, what they might then go on to do, 'cause you can inspire people into action if you phrase things in the right way, or, and just think about how you come across. Tone of voice gets called lots of different things also. So it can be brand language, it can be verbal identity, they all mean the same thing. So you can take your pick. And to be honest, I don't really mind what people call it as long as they're thinking about it, because as I'll probably say numerous times today, there is so much that a tone of voice can do for an organization, for an individual, that there are a few challenges, you know, when it comes to a workplace, an organization, that language can't help you solve. So it's something that I think has been undervalued for quite a long time. Thankfully, I'm not hearing that so much. You know, now I'm speaking to clients and they'll say things like, you know, tone of voice is as sacrosanct as our logo. I think, yes, yes it is. But I wasn't hearing that 10 years ago. You know, there was a fight at that point just to get people to even consider why they might want to switch to saying "use" instead of "utilise." You know, I had to work really hard to get people on board and get them to come round and show them the difference that it makes when you do pick out the words that you'd say in conversation and put them into the words you write and say at work.

Yeah, don't start me on the word "commence." Oh, let's not. Let's not go there. Let's not go there. We don't want to fall out that quickly in the conversation. I think what's really interesting and You know, it's interesting that you talk about feel, how it makes people feel. And I think that many organizations and people in organizations still aren't quite comfortable with the whole idea of feeling at work and emotions and things like that. Oh no, no, no. I come in, I'm black and white. It's a bit left brain. It's a bit rational. You know, I don't really do feelings and emotions. I want to just get the message down and do it in as formal and quick a way as I can. And I think, you know, what's really interesting for me is that you're right. It's that whole idea of we can write guidelines, We can write tone of voice guidelines, but actually, if they— a bit like, a bit like values, I guess, in an organization— if those guidelines remain just words in a tone of voice guide, then they haven't done their job. It's about getting, it's about getting the tone of voice guidelines out there, getting people using them. And actually, it's just a big change project, a bit like any other change project in an organization. I remember when, when I was running the tone of voice project in the bank, with John Simmons, who you know from The Writer and who was a previous guest on the podcast. I remember that it got to a tipping point where when somebody had written something, their person that they'd written it for or with might ask them, "Has that been tone of voiced?" So, it became a verb.

Yeah.

You know, "Is that good enough to go out based on our new tone of voice guidelines?" Which I thought was wonderful. And you knew then at that point that you'd maybe passed the tipping point of getting it into the general psyche of the organization.

Yeah, there's an awareness. There. But I think it's like any skill. What skill have we ever learned purely by reading a book about it? You know, if you're learning to play the guitar, you need a guitar, you need the skills, you need to practice. And I think it's the same thing with tone of voice, really. Guidelines are wonderful. They are a good reference tool. You can pack them full of lots of great examples so people can see what good looks like. But if we don't then go on and, you know, support people and train them and give them the skills and give them that space to practice and that sense of permission to know that they can go off and do this, then it's not really going to make that cultural change that you're looking for. Because something I would hear an awful lot when running workshops would be, "When can I start using this?" And the answer will always like, "Now, right now." There is nothing stopping you. Senior leaders are saying to use this. I've got the proof that it's going to make so many different things better for you. Let's just get going. And having that permission makes a really big difference to people because it is a bit of a switch. And it's interesting about what you say, saying, you know, has it been tone of voiced? I think that is great because it means people know what it's about. They're aware that there are benefits and that they should be using it. I think the next stage on from that is even better where they're not thinking about something being tone of voiced. They've written it in that first instance in the tone of voice. And that's what we're looking for. That's when you know, I think that it's properly sort of got out into an organization because it's just second nature. Because I'm not looking to make anyone's lives more difficult by doing, you know, involving them and introducing them to tone of voice. The opposite is true. But it takes a bit of time. Like, as I say, learning any new skill takes practice.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think having those great examples and really holding up— the one thing that I found in running tone of voice projects for clients is holding up really good examples. I remember just very quickly, there was a crowd in the bank They were IT or telecoms or something. And every May we would get an email came around and it was literally in shouty caps, "Turn off your mobile data when you're on your holidays because it costs us lots of money and we shouldn't do it." And da, da, da, da, da, da, finger pointy adult to child. They came on the course because we picked all the kind of the tough nut departments first to train. They came on the course and 12 months later that same email came out, except the headline was, "Have you packed your sun cream?" And we all went, "What?" And what did it do? Well, it made people open the email for a start. So the hook was there, which is great, but also made people read it. And the narrative in the email was much more, have you got your towels? Have you got your sunscreen? Have you packed your flip-flops? You know, maybe also have a wee think about your mobile data. We're not saying don't use it, but what we're saying is use it for a while, turn it on when you need to turn it on, but then think about turning it off again. Because if it was your 250 grand that you were spending, you'd probably think of better ways to spend it. Thanks, Amelia.

Absolutely. Brilliant.

Like, people read it, they got it, and you know, they were probably more bought into that message than than the shouty caps message.

Absolutely. I think there's something odd that happens at work, where somehow we forget that anything that we're writing, it's meant to be read. A lot of the time, you're wanting someone to take action off the back of it. You're wanting them to do something or feel something. But we are all somehow trained to forget that, and just think, "Well, I need to get this message across, so I'm going to write it this way." That usually means that someone will bury the point, say too much, use language that the reader doesn't fully understand because it's something that the writer gets, but the reader doesn't necessarily. And I think that's what tone of voice does, is switches the focus. So it is all about the reader. You know, when I'm writing, I recognize myself as being the least important person in that relationship. It's all about the reader. And that example that you gave, the writer has clocked that, and written in a way that is going to get someone to open it, read it, do what they want them to do.

Yeah, put yourself in the shoes of the recipient.

Absolutely.

Yeah, for sure. Let me ask you this. Why is it important to get one's tone right? And for listeners, I'm doing the inverted commas thing around "right." And what do you think right is? What is a right tone?

A right tone. Well, I don't think there is one right tone. Tone. I mean, we'd be out of business if there was, because we'd just be peddling the same thing again and again. With like a, you know, a logo or a color palette, there's not one right answer that can span every brand in the world, but it's about what is right for that particular brand. So the work we do is ultimately just digging out of other people's brains how it is that they want to come across, how they view that brand, the relationship that they want to create with their customers, with their clients, with the colleague that sits a couple of seats away. And turn that into something that is memorable and tangible and practical so that you can have, you could have two brands with really similar tones of voice, but in different industries. So it could be that you've got an airline that has got quite a similar tone of voice to a retail bank, let's say, but they're in different spaces, different industries, and it's what will make them consistent, but also distinctive. Because in the same way as you have a color palette and a logo, You don't want to look like everybody else. And I'd say you don't wanna sound like everybody else, 'cause there's a good test. If you can cover up a logo and you still know who's talking to you, that is a sign of a really good tone of voice working well because you've got that recognition, you know? So you can tell your, I don't know, your O2s from your Vodafone, your Nike from your Pumas. Then, you know, there's recognition there that there is a difference and it's that personality that comes out. There's just a bit of work to dig it out and then express it in a way that people are going to get, you know, get on with, want to use, and they feel like, yeah, this is the right representation of our brand and our personality.

So there is no one right. No one right. It's just what's right for that brand or what's right more locally for that person in terms of representing their own brand. Because of course, we all have our own brands to represent as well.

Yeah. And it's something we talk about a lot with tone of voice or questions that come up around, Well, how does it flex? Because I wouldn't advocate for you have this one tone of voice and everything sounds absolutely identical. You know, you're talking to different people across different channels about different products, about different topics. And I wouldn't write in the same way if I was talking to a banking customer about bereavement as I would if I was doing a social media post to push, I don't know, some tickets for the Six Nations. You have to be able to flex. And so that's what we do with our tones of voice. We build in that flexibility so that people are still joined by the same essence, the same tone of voice, but there is room to be able to make it work in all those different situations.

Yeah. And for me, one of the things that we've spent a lot of time talking about on the pod recently is the whole EDI agenda, and having the Carmage Rebels on, and Jenny and Vita previously talking about that whole agenda, the D&I agenda, and how organizations are trying to make their workplaces more diverse, more inclusive, more equitable. What role does language play in creating more inclusive workplaces, do you think?

Oh, well, I think a huge role because you can think of it from an external perspective. Say you're trying to attract new people, thinking about what your job ads are doing, what your onboarding is doing, and whether you're unintentionally putting off people that could potentially be absolutely fantastic candidates because of the way just that one job ad is written. You know, if the language in there is is gendered, then there's a chance that you are going to put off a portion of the people that were looking at that advert. But it goes for, you know, the language that you see around you when you're in a business too, thinking all the way down to policy documents. Do they default to his and he and him? Or actually, can we be saying they instead, their, them? Because why should it just be, the male part that sort of takes precedence. So I think there's an awful lot that people can do. It starts with learning and figuring out what sort of changes to make. But I think it's so worthwhile because already there's so much information, so many sort of stats and research that shows the difference it can make when we write more inclusively. And so if I stick with the sort of the job ads, I was reading the other day that if you just have 0.6% of the language in a job ad not being inclusive, that can change whether a candidate is likely likely to apply. So, we're talking really tiny, sort of tiny margins here, that can influence people.

Well, that's got to be like one, I mean, that small a percentage is one he or she?

Well, it could be that, or it can be that there are male-biased and female-biased words. And so, if, and it makes me think, how many job ads have I looked at, and I've deselected myself, when actually, maybe I could have gone for it? But when you get sort of male-biased male-biased words, it can be things like lead and challenge, whereas more female-biased words tend to be things like kind, supportive, communicative, empathetic. It's interesting though, because sometimes, I've been using a tool recently to read for gendered language, and sometimes it misreads things. So, we ran a job ad recently through a particular tool,, and it picked up and said, "This is female biased." And I looked into it and there were definitely things that we could change and we did change, but it was words like kind, where we were saying, "This is the kind of project you'll work on." In that instance, that's not an issue. We're not using that and it's not female biased in that way. So, I think there's a lot that we can do. And like this tool I'm talking about is called the Gender Decoder, and it's pretty simple. It's just scanning for a set list of words. Ads. I found that so useful to be able to go back into that job ad and just see where I'd, yeah, I had used biased language and there are so many options. The English language is great for that. There are so many different options that I thought it wasn't a task to be able to make those changes.

Yeah, I've always said that I'm very glad that I didn't have to learn English as a foreign language because—

I don't know how they do it. How people do it. Bloody hell.

How French and German and other people from other nationalities please learn English. Like, I'm not— there, there, and there. Even people who speak English can't get that right. Yeah, but again, don't start me on that. I think what's really interesting about the point you made there, particularly around that, um, around that tool, is that it doesn't understand context of some of the words, like kind, this kind of thing. But what it does do, I think, is perhaps— you know, I'm always a huge one for, for holding up a mirror. And I was doing some training earlier in the week, and I said to the team I was training, this phrase that I use all the time: awareness precedes action. And that you can't change anything or do anything differently unless you realize there's something to be done or changed differently. And I think a tool like that can help maybe by just throwing up, here's a couple of things to think about, and it just starts to change your mindset very slightly to actually start to write like that in the first place.

Absolutely. And then you're saving yourself time because same as tone of voice, you do it, you know, right the first time. Hi, I'm Cliona from Workvivo. When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other. That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform. It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture, values, goals, and each other wherever they work from. For more See workvivo.com.

Can we talk about high guys?

Let's talk about high guys.

Let's talk about high guys. To me, it's a— but I'm a 48-year-old middle-aged gray-haired man, pale, male, and stale, as my boss, Anth Burrows, another former guest on the podcast, once called me very unkindly. I see it as a very just colloquial, non-gendered greeting. And I suppose part of the reason that I see it as that is because so many women who I know use it as well. Jenny uses it when we're on Clubhouse, Jenny Field. Annemarie uses it on Clubhouse. You said that you use it with your team.

What's the answer? Yeah, it's a really interesting question because Just in recent months, I think we've all become more aware of that. And it's a term we've probably been using for ages and ages, not really thinking about it. And I was interested to find out how my team and the rest of the writers felt about it. You know, did we say, "We're not gonna use that anymore?" So, we polled everyone. We've got a lot of women in our organization. And we all decided that actually we like it, we're quite happy using it, because to my mind, if I had to say, "Hey guys," to the group of people that I work with, it's demonstrating a closeness that we have and the fact that we are a team, we're together. But I was thinking if I were in a workshop, you know, in those first 10 minutes when I don't know the people, my job is to bring them on side and we want to feel like a team. I want to share my knowledge. I don't wanna lecture and I don't wanna teach. I probably wouldn't open with hi guys or say it early on because I don't feel like at that point, they're my guys. We've not built that bond yet. So I might say things like all, everyone, folks, maybe. Team. Team. To be honest though, in those situations, if there's one person that's on their laptop or I just need to bring the group together, it's not necessarily the whole group. So I might just say, Peter, you know, get that, you know, speak to someone individually. But yeah, in that sort of instance where I'm not familiar with a group of people, it would not be my first option to say, hi guys, whereas with my team and this sense of familiarity and the fact that I've asked them how they feel, we've decided we're all comfortable with it. So I think that is also another thing when thinking about the language of inclusion is trying not to be scared to ask, you know, about how people want to be referred to, the pronouns they'd like to use. And so many people now have it in their signature. I have it in mine. LinkedIn, I saw yesterday, has a button you can press and it's prompting you to say, "Do you want to add your pronouns to your profile?". So there's a lot that can be learned by asking questions. And that's why I'd suggest really, if you want to say, "Hi guys," ask the people in the group if they're okay with that, or think about that level of familiarity you have. But again, with English, well, so many languages, we have so many different options that we don't have to say it really. There are so many other ways that you can address a collection of people. Cool.

Yeah, yeah. I agree. I completely agree. And I think that's a fantastic piece of advice, which is having the courage to just ask because it is, I think people do feel maybe a little uncomfortable still with the whole EDI thing, saying the wrong thing, coming across wrong, saying something disrespectful and not meaning it, that kind of thing. I was only chatting to a friend recently who just started a new job and one of his one of his teammates was male, but when he walked into the office was wearing makeup and a lady's blouse. So he just asked, "How do you prefer to be referred to? What pronoun do you prefer to be used?" And it was he or him. But at least he showed respect, I think, by asking the question.

Yeah. I think it's like someone asking you, well, in part, like someone asking you, how do you pronounce 'Your surname' or 'Your first name.' You know, if people ask me that, I don't take offense. I think that shows that you're interested in getting it right and you want to address me in the way that I feel comfortable and I'm familiar with. But it can be a scary thing. I think that's something that we'll all become more comfortable with in time. And also, like I say, just having it in people's signatures starts opening up that conversation or even gives you information before you've met a person, which can be incredibly helpful.

Yeah, I'm always amazed at how people pronounce my surname incorrectly, even though I've said it 2 or 3 times, they still keep doing it. Oh yeah. My wife, my wife is Jeannette, J-A-N-E-T-T-E, and it seems not to matter how many times she says her name, they still pronounce it J-A-N-E-T, Janet. Yeah. It's Jeannette. It's actually, it's not even a different pronunciation of Janet. It's a different name.

It's that thing that happens, you know, when you meet someone and you introduce yourself and then you think 2 seconds later, I completely forgot to listen to what their name was, and then you're in that awkward situation. But I think that a lot of this does come down to listening to one another. So listening to how someone describes themselves, whether that's about the pronouns that they use, or if they have a particular condition, how they might refer to themselves, to then replicate that and kind of take your lead from the person or the people that you're speaking to.

Yeah, definitely. And I've— and I'm one— I am a I'm a bugger for not listening to people's names.

So easily done.

Oh, I'm dreadful at it. And, but I've now gotten to the point where I just say, "Gosh, I'm really sorry, but I didn't catch your name." Much better to do that than to try and fudge your way through a conversation. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, you, yeah, that part. Yeah, no, it's never gonna work.

No, I have to repeat it to myself in my head. Oh, I know that the trick is you're meant to say it back to them. So, "Hi, I'm Charlie." And they'll say, "Oh, really nice to meet you." 'Insert name here.' Try and get it to plug into your short-term memory.

Yeah. Oh, God, my short-term memory is shot. Good luck with that. So, we've had a couple of nuggets already, which I love on these chats and on these podcasts, is getting really practical advice for listeners. And I know that you've run a couple of training sessions and have created a couple of training sessions aimed at giving writers and organizations the tools they need to be a little bit more inclusive and to write for, I guess, that term, an audience of everybody. What are some of the practical things, like, give us a bit of an insight into that course and some of the practical things that, that you're out there telling your clients they can do, that listeners could take away and apply in their writing this afternoon?

Well, it's an interesting session that we run because it's probably the first one that I've ever hoped becomes obsolete really, really quickly. I would hope that we're not running that session in a couple of months, a year's time. And already we're thinking about what we follow that up with and how we evolve it, because the more we have this shared knowledge of things that we can do to write inclusively, the less we're gonna have to talk about it and we can move on to the next topic or more ways that we can write inclusively. But a few of the things that we cover, one is interestingly around business speak and tying that to inclusive language because business speak itself, I think, excludes. If you don't understand a particular term, a particular phrase, and we will have all had that experience, you're sat in a room and people are chucking around 3 three-letter acronyms and using terminology you do not know, you know, what it means, you don't feel part of that group, and it makes you feel silly or stupid because you don't know what it is that they're talking about. And I remember being in, in meetings, certainly when I was younger, that I was too afraid to ask what that meant. And now I, now I ask, and it's so interesting the number of times that I will ask one of our clients, oh, so what does that acronym mean? And then they don't know because they've been too scared to ask for years and years and years. And it's something that they do day in, day out, and they have to, or either they have to really stop and think. So one thing is around business speak because it can exclude, but also there are some types of, or certain phrases of business speak that have some problematic origins, or at least make people feel a bit uncomfortable. One of the examples we've got in this particular workshop is open the kimono, which I've not heard for years, but when I did hear it used, it was I was in a meeting, me and a gentleman, and he said, "Oh yeah, let's open the kimono on this." And I was probably, I don't know, 26. And it really grossed me out because it felt to me that it had both racist and sexist undertones. It was not—

Creepy.

It was creepy. And I just, when I came to know what it meant, I just thought, why could you not say, share information or dig into? Again, there were so many different alternatives. So there are the sort of two reasons there to think about getting rid of the business speak. The third one being the thing that we have been saying for 20 years is because it's not clear. Who doesn't want to communicate clearly? And I just think business speak clouds people's ability to communicate clearly and for the reader, the listener to understand what is being said and take away from it what they need to take away. Other things you can do, as I mentioned, there is this gender decoder tool that I've been finding really useful most recently. Microsoft Word do have an inclusive language checker built into it. I haven't found that hugely useful yet, but maybe that's because I'm hopefully writing inclusively, so it's not flagging anything for me. Another piece of advice is always get someone else to read what you've written, ideally someone that is a good few steps away from from you in terms of knowledge of the topic, because that fresh pair of eyes is invaluable. And also, if you can get people that are really very different to you to read it, they are going to see things that you don't necessarily. I think, as I said, listening out to how people refer to themselves and just really digging into the documents and the policies and things that float around in a business To see how outdated some of the terminology can be, or as I said, how you refer to people with pronouns, or making sure we don't just default to just saying "his" all the time. Those are all really quite small things that we can do, but the area of interest for me at the minute is the sort of how you attract people into an organization, and really starting from that very first point of contact, that, as I said, perhaps in that job description that they see, to build the right picture of your company and attract the right people.

Brilliant. I was only reading yesterday a piece about Apple, and the engineers in Apple who write all the code had decided to get rid of the terminology master and slave. I don't know if you saw that, when referring to processes. For listeners that don't know that terminology, a master process is the big process, and then you have slave processes that feed into the master to process. And they decided as an organization, as an engineering team, that they weren't gonna use that anymore.

Google have done the same. In fact, they have out in the public domain, they've got guidance on how to write inclusively generally, but they go into the detail of when they're actually sort of coding, because there's quite a lot of that. And quite a few tech companies have stopped using words like blacklist and whitelist, because blacklist is, the connotation is that it's negative and the whitelist that it's positive. So they're switching to things like blocklist and passlist. And again, it's one of those things I feel like I say this in our workshops all the time is, why wouldn't you change that language when you've got the opportunity and it's a few keystrokes, but it can make a big difference. Why would we not?

And it's also about, to your point, it's clear, a blocklist or a passlist. I know we know what blacklist, particularly what a blacklist means. I know we know that, but a blocklist, it's not going any further, or a passlist, blacklist, good to go.

Well, it's that, and it comes back, I suppose, to what we're thinking about with tone of voice, is when you don't have a tone of voice, or even just when your writing is not clear, you're forcing your reader to do the hard work, to do this little bit of computation, to go, "Okay, I think this is what they mean." And even just like you say, in those words, blacklist and whitelist, yeah, we know what we mean, but there's a little bit of work that we have to do, whereas blocklist and list, I get it, I don't have to think at all about that. And that's the impact that language can have. If the only thing we were to look at was saving people time, then that's what clear language can do. There's more to a tone of voice than just having clear language. I think that's the least we could do for readers, but it's an important thing to make sure that we're all doing.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. So let's talk a little bit about clarity and saving people time then, because I still think that particularly internally, from a language perspective, of probably less so externally, because I think brand people get the power of language in the external domain from a marketing perspective and a brand perspective. I think internally in bigger organizations particularly, there's still a bit of cynicism around tone of voice, around writing, around the difference it can make. And that whole idea that maybe tone of voice is a bit fluffy and a bit nice to have. And oh yeah, the communication people, that's, that's something that they worry about. I wonder how, you know, I think with any internal comms activity, measurement is really, really hard. And I wonder, have you any ways or seen any ways of proving the impact of better writing?

It's an interesting one with measurement, because I feel like years ago, we maybe weren't being held to account in the way that we'd like to be held to account in terms of, I want to show you a return on investment, or I want to give you some really hard stats that shows the improvement using tone of Voice has made. And now every project we do, we build measurement in. And it can be something as simple as, I'm going to show you how this rewritten version of your customer letter has a higher score, higher readability score than the previous version. That is something you can do really simply in Microsoft Word.

And that's the Flesh Read Me tool? Flesh Can Read, yes.

It's hidden. It's stupidly hidden, but Google Flesh Kincaid, it will tell you how to turn this thing on. And then every time you run a spell check, you'll get a score out of 100. And, well, depending on the client, we'll be aiming for different scores, but I have seen a few zero scores come across my desk, a few minus scores come across my desk, and it is the nerd in me that is very satisfied when I can take something that is scoring, you know, 10 out of 100, and I'm gonna boost it up to 70 and know that people are gonna read it and understand it on the first read. So that is a really simple start. Starting point. Another thing that we will look at a lot is reading time. And I love doing that because you can do some interesting sums around it. So, we've been doing a lot of work around report writing and it, I don't know quite what's happened, but it seems like senior leaders and board members have had enough and are saying, "I am not willing to read this 20-page document that I'll probably read and still not fully understand what it is you want me to know or do." They want it in, one page. In fact, with one of our clients, we work with them on their executive summaries, they've got 7 bullet points to sum it up, to say it all, which is wonderful. And those senior leaders, they were right. Why should they be spending all of this time, multiplied over multiple reports, over weeks, months, years, taking up all that time? So, what we can do is give it a good haircut, also write it better, but we can reduce the time it takes to read something.. And the sort of sums that I like to do is thinking, well, we've reduced this by, I don't know, let's say it could be 30 seconds. It doesn't need to be much, but multiply that across the number of people that need to read that document. And then multiply that by the number of these documents that they need to read a month, a year. And suddenly I can get to the place where saying something ridiculous, like saving 30 seconds in these, this set of reports, that's going to equate to someone's entire yearly salary. And it's not a lot of hard work to do that editing. And with training, we can give people the skills to be able to do that. But there are lots of different ways that we can save people time. So writing more clearly, writing more concisely, writing in a particular brand's tone of voice can save time in lots of different ways. So I know with one of our clients, we were rewriting some guidance and it was about managers that were needing to talk about pay and bonuses with people. We rewrote this, so brevity was king, and it was lovely and clear, and we found that we were able to save them 800 hours in complaint handling time, which is no small amount of time. With another client, we put more of the monetary value on there and said that we've saved them £1.2 million. £1 million. And that was from us taking a stack of letters that go out to customers about picking up a credit card from their local branch. And we chopped that stack down, we turned some of them to text messages. And not only were we able to save them time in the branch or call handling time, we could also, we found we could boost customer satisfaction scores. You know, even just saving people, the staff in branches, saving them time. So we, yeah, we're always wanting to put these measures, however simplistic they might be, it gives us a stat. And I think if I can say to someone, I'm going to save you money or make you money or save you time or make people happier or help you keep your people, that's when people really start to listen and wake up to the fact that, God, you can do all that just through thinking about your words. You know, it sounds really simple. There's a lot to it, but, and you've got to get a tone of voice working. Everywhere for everyone, but it is so worthwhile. As I say, give me a challenge that a business is facing and I will find a way to show how language and changing our language can make a tangible, visible, measurable impact.

Yeah, we did a project with Dixon's Carphone at the end of 2020, yeah, the end of last year, around HR policy and helping them to reduce the size and improve the tone of their HR policies. And they saw a reduction in calls into their call center, they saw reduction of calls to HRBPs, who were then left to be able to do the more strategic value-add work that they should be doing, and not answering questions about mat leave, because the mat leave questions were all answered in the document. So, huge difference. And we used Flesh Concave there, actually, as one measure. And it was amazing, the difference it made. There's actually a case study up on the website, if anybody wants to look at inspiringchange.ie, pop along there and have a wee look. I am conscious of time, Charlie. We've been at this for 40 minutes. It's flown. I know, it's mental. It always does when you're really passionate about something. Tell me where listeners can find out a little bit more about you and about The Writer and what you guys do.

Yep, so, well, you'll find us on thewriter.com. We love to write blogs and white papers. We actually have a readability checker on our website as well. So we've taken Flesch-Kincaid and a few other very similar tests, brought them all together, and what it will do, unlike Microsoft Word, it will give you your score, but it will also equate it to a type of writing. So it might say, you're writing at a level that would be similar to Shakespeare, you're sounding like BBC News, or you're sounding like Barack Obama, or you're sounding like a set of terms and conditions that are completely impenetrable. So it gives people a bit of a frame of reference. So if nothing else, you can pop on the website to have a go at that. Apart from that, we are on LinkedIn and Twitter. And if we're not sharing advice or spotting writing in the wild and commenting on it, then we do things like we rebranded January this year and got people to vote on which one that they thought we should rebrand it to. For a slightly more positive angle than the usual sort of gray, cloudy, not very nice month that we all know, at least in the UK. And we do things like we've created a diagnostic tool to help people assess how their tone of voice is doing, because lots of different organizations are at different phases, and there are some people that will have it getting dusty in a drawer, and there will be some people that are out there training it, and just a way of helping people figure out where they're at and what they might be able to do next. For me personally, you'll find me on LinkedIn or walking a small dog at the seaside most of the time.

There we go. So if anybody sees a lady walking a small dog by the seaside, you can approach her and ask her about tone of voice. It's probably Charlie. Charlie, listen, thanks so much. I really enjoyed the conversation. It's something that we're both really passionate about. So it's been a fantastic conversation. And I hope the listeners have taken some of that really practical advice that they can take and use right now, tomorrow, today, Yeah, no need to wait. Yeah, thanks very much.

Wonderful, thank you.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.