I’m a new mom of a beautiful 16-month-old little girl. One of her newfound loves is watching a television show called “Sofia the First.”  Sofia is a little girl who suddenly becomes royalty after her mom marries the king. Sophia lives with her step-brother and sister, James and Amber, as well as a loquacious family steward, Baileywick. In a recent episode, a witch stranded Sophia and her mother on a boat in the middle of a lake.  James, Amber and Baileywick wanted to help them, but needed a boat. Luckily, there was a fisherman with a boat nearby.

Here’s how the rest of the scene plays out:

Baileywick: “Excuse me kind sir, might we inquire about engaging your vessel for brief yet utterly vital excursion?”

Fisherman: “Huh?”

James and Amber: “We need to borrow your boat. It is an emergency.”

Fisherman: “Why didn’t you just say so? Go ahead.”

To state the obvious, both asked the same question, but only James and Amber were able to effectively communicate with the fisherman.

Don’t Leave Employees Saying: “Why Didn’t You Just Say So?”

In the world of compliance we have to balance legal defensibility with effective communication with employees. That can create significant challenges.

Part of my job is to assess codes of conduct for companies in a wide variety of industries. I often find many of these codes have the same communication issue as Baileywick: they are filled with overly complex words and sentences that are very difficult to read or understand. 

View our webcast, “Inspiring Ethical Behavior: Code of Conduct Best Practices” to learn more about ensuring your code is the best it can be.

The good news is that there is a sometimes-overlooked process that can make a significant improvement in our ethics and compliance materials:  a readability assessment.

Improve your Program Effectiveness by Using Readability Tools

Companies need to make sure their code, policies and other key compliance communications are understandable to all employees—no matter their education level. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) conducted a study that found the average American reads at a 7th or 8th grade level.

This information is very important for anyone in a compliance, HR or legal role. If your code has a readability grade of 8.0 or higher, many of your employees, like the fisherman in our opening example, may be saying, “Huh?”

Other research has also confirmed the link between readability and successful communications. In one study, the owner of a subscription-based newsletter found that authors who wrote with the highest “reading ease” score prompted the most renewals. This is a fantastic example of a direct relationship between writing simplicity and success. 

The Flesch-Kincaid scale is the most common tool for calculating readability. It calculates a “reading ease” score on a scale of 0-100. On this scale, you’re aiming for a score above 90. This indicates that your text can be easily understood by an average 11-year-old student. The Flesch-Kincaid scale also calculates a Reading Grade Level score that tells you what grade level the text is most appropriate for. You’ll want to aim for a score of approximately grade eight or below.

Four Steps to Improve Readability

I suggest that you and your team get in the habit of checking the readability of your documents. Consider adding a readability check as a step in your document creation and review workflow.  You can use free online tools to calculate your score. Or, you can enable a Flesch-Kincaid readability score check in Microsoft Word—and even in Outlook. Search “test your document's readability” on the web to find instructions for your specific version of the program. (Be aware: there can be significant differences in the way different tools calculate readability scores. Microsoft Word 2010 tends to grade a little higher than some of the other tools. This is fine with me: I like to err on the side of caution.)

If your scores are out of your target range, look for places to simplify language and sentence structure. To improve the Flesch-Kinkaid score of documents I’m working with, I focus on making the following changes:

1. Replace long or complex sentences with shorter sentences. As Thomas Jefferson famously said, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” Shorter sentences improve both readability and clarity, resulting in an increase in writing quality. 
2. Replace complex words with simple words. From our opening example, the word “use” rather than “engage”; “trip” rather than “excursion.”
3. Use natural, conversational language whenever possible. Read your document out loud. Hearing it will help you spot those places where the language could be improved.
4. Replace passive voice with active voice. Active voice is more straightforward and easier for readers to understand.
5. Embrace whitespace. “Whitespace” refers to the space between the text and graphic elements in a document.  If everything is crammed together, a policy or code of conduct can be very difficult to read.  Make sure you give your text, images, lists, and other elements in the document room to breathe.
6. Include photos, illustrations, charts and graphs: Good pictures, embedded videos and graphs can speak a thousand words.

The end result of your focus on increasing readability will be a document that is clearer, more concise, higher quality, more accessible to more of your employees—and most importantly, more likely to be understood and complied with.

“The Shorter and the Plainer the Better”

As compliance professionals, we have the chance to improve the quality of the documents we write—and improve our stakeholders’ experience when reading and complying with the principles in our materials.  

One of the key ways to measure the effectiveness of a compliance program is how well it can be understood. Writers whose primary audience is children understand the vital need to make things simple, direct and easy to understand. As the creator of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter once said, “The shorter and the plainer the better.” Words worth remembering.

P.S.: For those of you who are curious: from the opening example, Baileywick’s line scores a Flesch-Kincaid Reading Grade Level score of 10.4. James and Amber’s Reading Grade Level score is 2.8. 

How has your organization tackled readability? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.