Writing Skills for the Public Sector

Engage and inform customers, colleagues, and decision-makers well. Gain essential writing skills for every task in the public workplace.


Course Duration: 7 hours
Participants: Up to 28
Audience: All public sector employees

Great for onboarding employees as they learn agency culture; provides a comfortable intro to writing in regulatory environments.

Gain reliable skills for any writing task. Learn to write email, memos, letters, FAQ sheets, executive summaries. Respond to requests for information well. Learn how to respond to high-conflict people and scenarios in writing–to reduce or resolve conflict. Learn how to capture subject-matter expert knowledge and convey it plainly, briefly, and accurately.

Course Scope

Learn to write anything–users can skim and scan what you write for key information without error. They can then read details quickly and accurately to find information they need. Learn how to engage and inform colleagues and customers well.

You’ll learn how to reduce complexity in directives, procedures, and regulations for your customer, using plain language.

Performance Objectives

Move beyond theory to practice using each principle in hands-on course activities, followed by review and discussion. Learners design, revise, and write documents that:

  • Meet customer and colleagues’ needs.
  • Use simple, clear language.
  • Include only important, relevant information.
  • Lead readers to find what they need and use what they find.
  • Use brief, informative, friendly, firm messages to reduce or resolve conflict.
  • Keep sentences and paragraphs short.
  • Use active sentences to clearly show
    who does what, when—and how they do it.
  • Help readers see how they relate to the message and implied or stated tasks it contains.
  • Write without error or ambiguity. Learn the basic grammar all workplace writers must know, in a relaxed and simple way.

Competency covered in this course: Written Communication

undefined Resources

Write Words provides a computer lab for live revision courses within 50 miles of Olympia, WA. Laptops provided for regional agencies beyond 50 miles when possible, by request. We also provide workbooks and all materials needed.

Host agencies provide a projection system that we can use to present from a laptop. We can use anything you have: a Smartboard, smart TV, or projector system with Display Port, HDMI, wireless, or VGA connection.