Collaborative Writing in the Workplace
Now that I have defined the collaborative environment, I can define collaborative writing. To form this definition, I will refer to “Professional Writing in the English Classroom,” where Jonathan Bush and Leah Zuidema define collaborative writing in the workplace as a type of writing “accomplished through the work of two or more team members” (Bush and Zuidema, 108) where the document becomes “a cohesive finished piece” (108). Perhaps this sounds easy enough, but by looking more closely at each of these aspects of the definition, it will become clear why collaborative writing oftentimes is a difficult process to adapt to.
What does collaborative writing look like?
Collaborative writing exists in many forms. To further clarify the definition I wrote about in the previous paragraph, it is helpful to dive into a term we have to this point taken for granted – writing. When I discuss writing in this project, I have to this point referred to it as workplace writing, but perhaps it is more accurate to consider workplace writing as technical writing for a minute. Generally speaking, technical communication is “a practice in a variety of nonacademic and academic workplaces.” (Rude, 165) According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, technical communication is a very broad field, and technical writing goes beyond “alphabetic text” (Rude, 165) in this regard. Since this is so broad, I would like to narrow the definition down further by defining technical writing based on its purposes and characteristics. Technical documents are often multimodal texts, merging words and images in various formats (Rude, 166). Carolyn Rude writes in “Technical Communication” that the purposes of technical communication are “learning and understanding, completing tasks, solving problems, organizing groups, making decisions, establishing positions, negotiating, and articulating the values of communities.” (166) Furthermore, referring again to Carolyn Rude’s article, forms of technical communication are listed as “instructions, proposals, reports, product and process descriptions, correspondence, white papers” and more (166). Of course, these documents are all examples of workplace writing, and by looking at workplace writing from this specific perspective, the applications of this project will be more easily explained and implemented. In other words, the guidelines I am designing focus around more around documents similar to technical or business documents because they offer specific modes of text to work with while also being general enough to bridge multiple professional fields.
Why is collaborative writing used?
In professional contexts, collaborative writing is necessary. In fact, in a study conducted with working professionals by faculty and student at North Carolina State University, it was determined that 15% of the professionals’ work hours were dedicated to collaboratively creating documents (Bush and Zuidema, 108). How has collaborative writing become such a big part of the work week?
Collaborative writing is important for three main reasons. First of all, it offers a combination of perspectives (Bush and Zuidema, 108). This is helpful as having multiple perspectives clarifies and refines the goals of writing, and helps avoid what could be very costly errors. Second, writing as a team creates a sense of responsibility. I referred to this sense in Collaborative Environment as a natural result of working collaboratively, and it is important to note that this form of accountability is entirely absent from solo-writing – it is a unique advantage of collaboration.
Third, and perhaps the most important reason, collaborative writing minimizes errors. Connected to having multiple perspectives, “Professional Writing in the English Classroom” describes “the cost of a misstep” (107) being so high “that the context itself creates the inherent need for collaboration” (108). A “misstep,” as referred to here, could be anything from a loss of credibility to a lawsuit. Considering this, and because this is a discussion of professional contexts where the product and what is gained from the product is the main priority, I would argue this is one of the main reasons for training collaborative writing. Based merely on the fact that this high a cost can be the consequence of writing mistakes (or bad writing), a sufficient enough problem is established to warrant preventative training.
So What?
At this point, I feel the need to respond to some counter-arguments that might arise against this proposal. It might seem that this idea of a enforcing guidelines is created as a refresher course to teach things that students should have already learned to do in college or even high school, or perhaps don’t even need to be taught at all. To respond to this, I would first of all refer back to what I emphasized about writing being engrained in many as an individual process. I would also like to highlight that not all students (college or high school graduates) have had the chance to learn about collaboration on the same level that is required in the workplace.
As I have mentioned previously, the move towards effective collaboration in the classroom is still a work in progress, and many students have not had the opportunity to learn interpersonal navigation in collaborative circumstances in a realistic sense. What I mean by this is that simply doing group work where students work together to write a project in a classroom isn’t on the same level as a workplace project is – it might be a helpful introduction, but in many cases this kind of classroom collaboration is only a brief look into what actual workplace collaboration is like. It is important to learn how to collaboratively write through tasks that have meaningful implications in a professional setting. Bush and Zuidema describe effective ways to teach collaboration as ones where “students assume roles as professionals,” (110) simulating a real workplace environment.
While these authors are writing to try to improve collaboration in the English classroom, even encouraging reform of collaborative teaching methods, it is very difficult (and perhaps even impossible) to give the true experience of being in a workplace. Oftentimes, things are only learned through experiencing them in the context they are designed to occur in (which is the reason why we often require internships for graduation, and why internships are one of the best things you can put on a resume.). In this case, collaborative workplace writing is best learned in an actual workplace. Again, at this point it might be argued, why should workplaces be responsible for this? Why should managers care if their employees never learned how to collaborate? It can be picked up along the way, perhaps. I would still argue at this point that the high costs involved in faulty collaborative writing justify spending extra time (or even money) on properly guiding employees in collaborative writing. At the heart of it, teaching professionals how to collaboratively write is a preventative measure, and one that can improve efficiency and productivity in the long run.