Open Enrollment offering for all employees in the Multi-Family Division, as well as specialized training for Asset Management and Capital Markets
CHALLENGES
After an exhaustive search, Freddie Mac chose Instructional Solutions to provide general business writing training to all positions. Four courses were offered each quarter on a multi-year contract. The training needed to elevate overall business writing skills, with application to specific Freddie Mac financial documents. Documents prior to training were often bloated and lacked precision.
Additionally, customized training was needed for highly technical financial reports that conveyed financial recommendations and risk to leadership. These documents were complex and subject to regulatory review. Leaders were receiving too much information that wasn't well synthesized into clear implications.
SOLUTIONS
Instructional Solutions built a two-part writing program for Freddie Mac’s Multi-Family Division. Through a multi-year open enrollment contract, employees across roles could attend four course offerings each quarter, based on our Effective Business Writing and Executive Summary Writing courses. The training gave them a consistent process for identifying the reader’s needs, organizing information, and writing with greater clarity and precision. Exercises connected those skills to the financial documents employees produced at Freddie Mac, with individualized feedback to help them apply what they learned.
For Asset Management and Capital Markets, we developed specialized training around each team’s writing demands, based primarily on our Technical Report Writing and Financial Writing courses.
Asset Management participants worked with anonymized watchlist and transfer-brief examples to distinguish key issues from supporting detail and communicate underlying risk. Capital Markets training focused on translating complex financial data and analysis for readers who did not share the writer’s technical background.
Across both groups, the emphasis was on preserving accuracy while making the implications and recommendations easier for leadership to grasp and documents more effective under regulatory review.
OUTCOMES
Individual improvement at every level
Evaluations exceeded 4.5/5 in every training session.
Program expanded due to demand
Over 350 Open Enrollment participants opted into the training. In response to positive employee feedback, more advanced, customized training was developed for highly technical financial reporting teams.
Reduce writing time by over 25%
After training, participants reported that they expected to reduce their overall writing time by 25% for all documents, freeing that time for other productive work. Additionally, managers reported far fewer rewrites were needed.