Unlocked: the secret of great reports

I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to write a report.

I had recently graduated and was two months into a new job with the Environmental Health department of a local authority in Swindon.

The day before, I’d accompanied my manager on his safety inspection of a Royal Mail regional distribution hub. It was a vast, hangar-like building, big enough not just to accommodate several jumbo jets but to allow each to complete a three-point turn simultaneously.

Scribbled notes

We’d spent hours inspecting sorting machines, conveyor belts and dispatch bays, quizzing staff on the many opportunities for personal injury that each presented.

By the time we were done, the new reporter’s notebook that I’d liberated from the stationery cupboard only that morning was almost full of frantically scribbled notes.

My feet still ached as I stood at the coffee machine the next morning. That was when my manager sidled up to announce that he’d like a report on the visit by the end of the week.

Then he promptly turned on his heels and was gone.

 

 

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Familiar tale

That was it. No discussion on the format. No guidance on what to write. No clues about what the report’s readers might want to know.

All I had to rely on were guesswork and telepathy.

To this day, I still don’t know how I managed to bumble my way through it. What I do know is that the experience was not unique.

My colleague David Cameron has a story that sounds eerily familiar. And I’ve heard many similar tales down the years.

Given how much every sizeable organisation relies on reports, it still puzzles me why most people get so little guidance on how to write them.

It’s as if we assume the work is done once we’ve gathered the information. The facts can speak for themselves. (See this previous issue for why that’s simply not true.)

Complete guide

There is some good news, though. You don’t have to rely on mind reading, because David has written a detailed, step-by-step guide for you. Even better, it’s free to access.

How to write a business report is a complete playbook that covers everything from getting started to running the final checks.

It’s full of exactly the sort of help I wish I’d had at Thamesdown Borough Council, all those years ago.

And you can read or download it here.

Image credit: Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock

Author: Rob Ashton

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Rob Ashton is the founder of Emphasis and posts mainly about writing and the brain – a topic he's been researching for seven years. You can read more of his work in Writing Matters – our weekly bulletin of career-building writing advice backed by science.