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>
> I now have another challenge: It
> is now my duty to take
> our four content writers, and improve their
> efficiency by 20 percent. I have
> been tasked (love that word) with proving that by
> editing and training, I
> can help our writers produce content 20 percent
> faster, because things like
> consistency issues, time to edit, etc., will be
> reduced.
Anna:
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you are asking
what can you do _as_an_editor_ to improve the
efficiency of the writers. In other words, how can you
improve the output of the writing group through your
efforts. And I think, from your words, that you are
not officially in charge of these people - you wrote
of helping them rather than writing about directing
them.
Assuming that I am right on those points:
Have you yet amassed any information on what
efficiency/quality problems are appearing? Not only do
you need to know what you're fighting before you can
decide on tactics, but we could give you better
answers if we had more specifics.
And have you arrived at any kind of understanding with
your superiors about what can be done if you can prove
that problems are rooted outside the tech writer
group? (i.e., SMEs taking way to long to return
reviews, nobody answers the writers' emails asking for
info, etc.)
What kinds of tools are your writers using? There may
be a lot of tool-use tips that would help but we need
more information.
One thing you could do regardless of your tools is,
try to get all your input from reviewers in electronic
form, rather than them marking up hard copies. Instead
of sending print copies to the reviewers, send PDFs
and have them use the commenting tool. If you have
Word use the change tracking features.
If your tech writers are using Word, they can
streamline a lot of repetitive work by using macros.
For example, if they have to reformat a lot of old
docs and they keep having to change the layouts of
tables, macros can make that a lot quicker. Their use
of macros could be significantly improved if you could
get someone to show them how to use Visual Basic to
come up with more versatile macros.
Sounds to me like you're the one under the gun and
your superiors have dared you to prove your worth to
the company. Good luck.
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