2010 WriteMark |
Friday 3 September 2010 |
New Zealand Plain English Awards |
|
Waikato District Health Board
Finalist: Plain English Champion — Best Organisation
Organisation statement
I'm very proud of my Media and Communications and Visual Communications teams — we worked very hard to roll out Get it Right and then Get the Look and we are still involved in ongoing training and support. While we used Auckland City Council's Get it Write resource, adapting its words and illustrations, we took the tool and made it our own. We focussed more attention on the writing issues facing our staff.
My particular thanks goes to Bee Pears who did so much work on the style guide and to ongoing training and also Craig Climo, Jan Adams and the Board for their insistence we stick to our guns!
Our workforce is about as wide and varied as you can get with 5800 staff ranging from administration staff to accountants, lawyers, attendants, doctors, nurses, electricians, physiotherapists and the list goes on.
We've had great support from many of you too and we know from the feedback you see this initiative as a practical step towards better communications. Some still wonder why we did this though. I guess Craig and Jan summed it up best in the foreword to Get it Right. "It's not about bureaucracy or nitpicking. It's about communication and commonsense."
What we offer are practical tips and techniques. Watch this space, we're looking at even more initiatives.
In the meanwhile we might do a little celebrating. By the way there's no truth to the rumour that a Kanye West lookalike tried to take the trophy away from the Banking Ombudsman to give to us! If only!!
Mary Anne Gill
Director
Media and Communications
Waikato District Health Board
Sponsors
We would like to thank the following sponsors for their support in 2010.
