One of every three workers don’t write good.

1 n 3 employees can’t write.

Thirty three percent of your active workforce fails at the task of adequately presenting information in a concise, understandable written format.

One third of all professionals write poorly. That’s not hyperbole — it’s data right from the Harvard Business Review.

Nor is it a particularly new trend. Organizations began seeking ways to improve their employees’ writing chops only shortly following the advent of the written word itself, and to date, few strategies have made much impact.

In the last century, businesses have looked both inward and outward for solutions to their coherent communications problem. Outwardly, many have made public statements pressing high schools and colleges to put more emphasis on writing and to begin teaching persuasive writing earlier and earlier. Inwardly, many more have piloted training regimens by the dozen — from instructor-led continuing education sessions on business writing and creating effective emails to individually-targeted performance improvement plans. And still most would report results from those efforts to be modest at best.

Lost in the battle to improve professional writing skills, however, may be a worthwhile point to consider — the written word was never created as an end in itself, rather, humans invented writing as a means of exchanging information and ideas.

And now more than ever, there are other ways professionals can present what they know.

In our personal lives, video has already become a common means for people to share moments and express themselves. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram have all seen a massive rise in video postings. New tools like Meerkat and Periscope have brought live streaming video to the hands of anyone and everyone. And let’s not forget YouTube, the world’s 2nd largest search engine and the go-to resource for how-to explanations on virtually every subject.

Now in our professional lives, more and more of us are seeing the same power of video translated into our daily work. We rely on video to scale training and internal events, to make sales enablement and marketing communications more engaging and versatile. And to flip our meetings and present our talking points ahead of time — so we can get right to the discussion in person.

Best of all, video rewrites the rulebook on what’s required for professional communications. A third of us may be poor writers, but in the grand scheme, writing is still a new skill for people. Presenting, however, goes back hundreds of millennia — human beings have been sharing ideas one-to-one and one-to-many as long as we’ve been able to. Writing used to be the only means to make those messages available over time and distance — but now common tools like modern laptops, smartphones, and “corporate YouTubes” enable just about anyone to communicate with video just as easily (or perhaps even more so).

With video, poor writers — and even strong writers — can tap into a more engaging communications medium to share information in a format that’s often faster to produce and easier to understand. And when supported with a searchable video platform like Panopto, those videos are still just as easy to search, find, and reference as the emails and memos of old.

Drop the pen. Take the stage. This week we saw more and more people taking advantage of the power of video to share ideas, send messages, and make a statement. And in the spirit of passing it on, these are just a few of the ideas shared this week with Panopto’s video presentation software.

2015 Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture Series featuring Dr. James H. Cone

The Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School shares this recording of its 2015 Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture, featuring Dr James H. Cone as the guest lecturer. This annual lecture series features distinguished speakers and preachers who address the issues of justice, peace and liberation in relation to the black religious experience. Cone, the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, is an author and has lectured throughout the world. His works include Black Theology & Black Power, A Black Theology of Liberation, God of the Oppressed and Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare?

The Surprisingly Serious Science of Laughing Babies

The laughter of little babies is infectious, enchanting and may play an important role in their early development. Yet it was largely overlooked by science. Dr Caspar Addyman has conducted a large global survey of new parents to discover what makes their babies laugh — in this talk, he presents the results of his research and shows how it reveals a serious and important purpose to this delightful behaviour.

Measles Outbreaks, Vaccines, and the Law

The recent measles outbreak in the US highlights the risks and harm of non-vaccination and anti-vaccine misinformation. What legal steps are states taking in response? What other options are available? Join the University of California Hastings College of the Law and panelists Dorit Reiss, Alusha Mamchack, and Lois Weithorn for a discussion about the legal implications of the measles outbreak.

Fish + Oil + Heat: A Recipe for Ecosystem Shifts in the Gulf of Mexico?

Sit in on the Duke University Marine Lab seminar, featuring Dr. Joel Fodrie from the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Science. Fodrie explores how fish are responding to climate change, long-term fisheries, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and how the cumulative effect of those responses may represent a notable ecosystem shift overall in the Gulf of Mexico.

Leeds College of Music Gala Concert 2015

Each spring, the student performance season at the Leeds College of Music culminates in the Gala Concert – featuring some of the best student work from across the conservatoire. Featuring the Big Band, Edd Ody, Lucy Fox, Beth Temperley, Chamber Choir, Skinner, The Tenmours, Hamstead/Cliffe Quintet, Adam Gouldin, Lenin, New Music Collective and Saturday Music School – be sure to take in this unmissable evening of music by some of the College’s most innovative musicians.

 

Try It For Yourself!

Panopto makes it easy for anyone, anywhere to record presentations and share them online, both as live streaming webcasts and recorded on-demand video. To see how Panopto can help you share your ideas, contact our team for a free trial today.