Writing and Reading in Business

          From people that I interviewed, I know that the requirement of writing and reading in certain areas and certain positions of business are different.  Brad, the Compliance Consultant of a bank, requires a lot of reading and writing besides emails; while Debby the production manager just needs to check and respond to emails.

          According to Brad, eighty-five to ninety percent of his job involves reading and writing. Let’s see what kind of reading is required for Brad’s job. He reads US and foreign banking laws, US and foreign Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorist Financing regulations. He is required to read and understand the US Bank Secrecy Act, the USA PATRIOT Act and related laws and regulations. Brad also needs to read internal Relationship Memos, Compliance Calls and other data from an internal data warehouse, emails from colleagues, internal processes and procedures, and various reports created by colleagues and the Line of Business that he supports.  Brad indicated that those readings are very important to his job since he needs to answer his colleagues’ inquiries from the Line of Business about the laws and regulations. Besides the laws and regulations, Brad reads Wall Street Journal,  New York Times and other periodicals in order to have news updates about how people are doing in the business world. “Negative financial news from those newspapers gets our attention and allows us to inform our colleagues in the line of business how to avoid the same negative event or events from happening to them,” Brad said.  Wow, I didn’t know that reading news is so important in the business world.

            Besides reading, writing is a very important part of Brad’s job too. Brad told me, “Besides emails, I write internal reports, reports to Senior Management, procedures, comments on line of business procedures and other various documentation, reports to external customers, regulators and colleagues.”  Brad points out that reports to senior management need to be brief because senior managers don’t always have time to read long reports.