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Persuading 960 legal colleagues to communicate clearly.

 

MetLife is one of the largest providers of insurance, annuities and employee benefit programmes in the world. Having recently introduced a new brand philosophy that included a new tone of voice, MetLife were keen to ensure it was being adopted in all communications – both internal and external.

Using plain language is a fundamental part of MetLife’s new brand philosophy but the Communications.Simplified Committee understood they’d have a job persuading colleagues to use it. So they established the Legal Affairs Academy and with it a training programme that would help them to communicate simply, directly, accurately and in an audience-friendly way.

Knowing that we’d already become MetLife’s tone of voice experts – we’d crafted their tone of voice training materials and rewritten marketing materials to reflect the new style of speaking – and that we had vast experience in running tone of voice training sessions, the Legal Affairs team asked us to kick-start their training programme. Our interactive global webinar on the why and how to write clearly helped colleagues understand the huge value in making sure the MetLife tone of voice resonates in all their communications. And when not to use the passive voice…

 

What we did

First, we needed to truly understand what made it so difficult for colleagues to adopt the new MetLife tone of voice. We uncovered the myths and misconceptions that stopped colleagues from embracing a clear way of communicating – that clear English means ‘dumbing down’ and that complex topics shouldn’t be simplified, to name just a few.

Armed with this intel, we created a bespoke session with three distinct objectives:

  • Colleagues will understand the benefits of clear writing – both for their own communications and for the business as a whole
  • Colleagues will be able to apply the new tone of voice to their everyday communications
  • And the session will spark a culture change among legal and compliance colleagues towards clear, not complex, communication.

Conducted as a face-to-face and WebEx workshop to colleagues around the world, the training session explored our expert techniques for writing in clear language, before applying those to their own real-life legal communications through MetLife-specic interactive activities. Colleagues were able to see first-hand just how easy it is to incorporate clear English into their everyday comms.

We also laid bare the corporate benefits of using clear language, examining case studies from other businesses who’ve reaped extraordinary rewards through simpli ed communications – did you know that by rewriting one form in clear language, Royal Mail saved £500,000 in just nine months?

Throughout the session, MetLife employees were encouraged to chat, share ideas, take part in quizzes and contribute to polls, enabling them to truly immerse themselves in the session, start applying the learning to their own communications straight away, and have some team fun with words.

 

The triumph

If breaking MetLife’s Webex training session attendance records wasn’t evidence enough of the programme’s success, here’s what some of the attendees had to say about working with us:

Need help convincing your people about the change journey you’re on?

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Let’s get to work connecting your people with what’s important – you talk; we’ll listen. Or maybe you’d like to know a little more first? You can email “hello” to one of our chief storytellers below, wherever you are in the world.

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Privacy policy / cookie policy

GDPR and Privacy Policy

Introduction

This privacy policy tells you about the information we collect from you when you use our website. In collecting this information, we are acting as a data controller and, by law, we are required to provide you with information about us, about why and how we use your data, and about the rights you have over your data.

 

Who are we?

We are Write the Talk Limited. Our address is 24 High Street, Hillmorton, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV21 4EE. You can contact us by post at the above address, by email at hello@writethetalk.com or by telephone on +44 (0)116 253 3499.

We are not required to have a data protection officer, so any enquiries about our use of your personal data should be addressed to the contact details above.

 

How we use your information

Information we may collect about you
When you use our website
How long we keep your Information
Your rights as a data subject
Your right to complain
Updates to this privacy policy

 

Information we may collect about you

When you use the Website and/or when you otherwise do business with us we may collect the following information about you (‘Information’):

Personal information including title, first and last name.

Contact information including current business address, primary email address and/or primary phone number, Skype identification and other personal contact information required for business use as outlined in our terms of engagement.

Technical information including IP address, operating system, browser type and related information regarding the device you used to visit the Website, the length of your visit and your interactions with the Website.

Information obtained through our correspondence and monitoring in accordance with the statement below (Monitoring) and details of any enquiries made by you through the Website and any offline channels, together with details relating to subsequent correspondence (if applicable).

Monitoring:
We may monitor your use of the Website through ‘cookies’ and similar tracking technologies. We may also monitor traffic, location and other data and information about users of the Website. Such data and information, to the extent that you are individually identifiable from it, shall constitute Information as defined above. However, some of this data will be aggregated or statistical, which means that we will not be able to identify you individually. See When you use our website below for further information on our use of cookies.

 

When you use our website

When you use our website to browse our products and services and view the information we make available, a number of cookies are used by us and by third parties to allow the website to function, to collect useful information about visitors and to help to make your user experience better.

Some of the cookies we use are strictly necessary for our website to function, and we don’t ask for your consent to place these on your computer. These cookies are shown below.

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How long we keep your Information

Where we are processing your Information on the basis of consent we will hold your data until consent is withdrawn.

 

Your rights as a data subject

By law, you can ask us what information we hold about you, and you can ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate. If we have asked for your consent to process your personal data, you may withdraw that consent at any time.

If we are processing your personal data for reasons of consent or to fulfil a contract, you can ask us to give you a copy of the information in a machine-readable format so that you can transfer it to another provider.

If we are processing your personal data for reasons of consent or legitimate interest, you can request that your data be erased.

You have the right to ask us to stop using your information for a period of time if you believe we are not doing so lawfully.

To submit a request regarding your personal data by email, post or telephone, please use the contact information provided above in the Who are we section of this policy.

 

Your right to complain

If you have a complaint about our use of your information, we would prefer you to contact us directly in the first instance so that we can address your complaint. However, you can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office via their website at www.ico.org.uk/concerns or write to them at:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
SK9 5AF

 

Updates to this privacy policy

We regularly review and, if appropriate, update this privacy policy from time to time, and as our services and use of personal data evolves. If we want to make use of your personal data in a way that we haven’t previously identified, we will contact you to provide information about this and, if necessary, to ask for your consent.

We will update the version number and date of this document each time it is changed.

 

Version Number – 1.0
23/05/2018

Why the rabbit?

You might be wondering that.
Well, ‘rabbit’ is a verb that means to talk:
Let’s meet up for a good old rabbit.
It comes from the rhyming slang rabbit and pork.

It's also an idiom:

Pull a rabbit out of the hat
which means creating a solution to a problem, against the odds and often quickly. So if you get the rabbit right, your successes will multiply.
Like rabbits.