Pharma
The writing problem that was hiding a production failure
An F1000 eyecare company recovered $145,598 a year and 45% of its lost output in one department, once we found what a routine review never would have.
The Complaint
Slow reviews and weak writing.
An F1000 multinational eyecare company came to us with two priorities: reducing the time managers spent reviewing, and improving the quality of their team's writing, specifically their engineers'.
The Reality
Something bigger.
Their principal engineers were the writers. Most had no formal writing training beyond college, but were expected to write SOPs, deviations, and protocols. The reviewers, also engineers, had been promoted with no formal readability review training either.
The Risk
One experiment completed where five were required.
Engineers were tasked with completing at least five experiments a month. Most completed one. Production was falling behind, and experiments were often run in parallel because results weren't required to be published until Q4, hiding the real cause until it was too late to fix quietly.
In Their Words
"I feel like I'm in a time-crunch all the time because I don't want to hold up a project based on how long I take to review. I often just approve a document without reviewing it because of this." Reviewer, F1000 Eyecare Company
What The Assessment Found
Missing standards, not missing skill.
- Writers created their own standards because none existed
- Reviewer feedback focused on pet peeves, not document quality
- Reviewers felt pressured to approve quickly without a real review
- No shared style guide, so teams defaulted to outdated, generic references
- No tools in place to define when a report was due or how it should be reviewed
See what a real review would find in yours.
This is one of three blinded assessments. Take your own Readability Risk Check, or talk to us about what we'd look for in your organization.
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