The S.B.A.R. Method: Write Better at Work

Do you want to write better emails and reports? The SBAR method—Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation—can help you. It’s a simple way to organize your writing and share important information clearly. While it is used in hospitals, you can use SBAR in any workplace. In this video, you will learn how to use SBAR to make your writing easier to understand and more effective. After watching, take the quiz to practice what you’ve learned. Watch now and start improving your writing with the SBAR method. Let me know in the comments after you try using this method at work. https://www.engvid.com/the-sbar-method-write-better-at-work/

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In this lesson:
0:00 Improve Your Writing with the S.B.A.R. Method
1:57 S: Situation
4:39 B: Background
8:16 A: Assessment
10:36 R: Recommendation

TRANSCRIPT:
Hello.
My name is Emma, and today I am going to teach you my communication secret.
I'm going to teach you how to improve your communication by using the SBAR method.
Now, this is not my method.
I did not create this, but I use it all the time.
So, SBAR is a way to organize your speech or your writing or your emails to make your
message easier to understand.
So it's a way to be clear in your speech or your writing.
So, SBAR stands for "situation", "background", "assessment", and "recommendation".
I'm going to give you some examples of SBAR communication, and we'll talk about how to
write an SBAR communication in a moment, but what I first want to say is that SBAR is used
very frequently in hospitals, it's used in the military, it's used by a lot of companies,
because a lot of places know this is a great way to communicate, so they actually encourage
people to use this method in their workplace environments.
And as I mentioned, we're going to talk mainly about writing today, such as emails, but you
can also use SBAR when you're talking to people in a workplace environment, when it's
important for you to communicate something clearly and concisely, so in a clear, short
way.
So, let's get started by finding out about "situation", "background", "assessment", and
"recommendation".
The "s" in SBAR stands for "situation".
The first thing you want to do after you say, you know, "Dear so-and-so" or "Hello, team",
is you write the situation.
What is the problem?
Why are you writing?
So, let's look at some examples.
So, imagine I want to write to my boss, and I want to tell my boss, you know, "I'm feeling
sick today.
I'm not coming to work."
That would be a situation, so I could write, "I'm feeling unwell today and am unable to
come to the office."
So that's one example.
Here's another example of a situation in a workplace.
There are these types of emails called "phishing emails" which are scam emails, so maybe there's
a problem at the workplace where they're getting too many of these emails, and they want to
tell people what to do.
So, IT might write something like, "We've noticed an increase in phishing emails."
Here's another situation.
Maybe you work at a company, and your team has not finished the work on a report, and
you need to let your manager know that the report isn't finished, and you need more time.
So, you might write something like, "We're experiencing a delay in completing the report.
The team needs more time."
Or a fourth example, "At work the other day, the coffee machine broke, and we needed to
figure out what to do about it because we need coffee.
It's very important in the workplace."
Out of all of these, I think this is the biggest emergency.
So, a situation might be that you have a broken coffee maker.
What do you do?
Well, here's the situation.
I might write to somebody, "The coffee machine is not working."
You can also, as I mentioned, use "S-bar" in conversation as well if you need to explain
something well.
So, maybe, imagine I want to invite somebody to a party.
That's the situation.
So, I might say, "On Friday night, I'm having a party, and I'd like to invite you to it."
So, the situation is just explaining what is happening.
Now, let's talk about the "B" in "S-bar", which stands for "background".
When you use "S-bar", the situation should be pretty short and to the point.
You want to communicate the main idea of why you're writing, or why you're communicating.
So, it should just be one or two sentences, ideally, very short and to the point.
After you explain the situation, then you're going to give the background, or the history,
or the important details about the situation.
So, this way, people can appreciate, okay, here's the situation, what are some of the
details about the situation I should know? […]