Castalia Strategic Advisors

Pamela Todd and Mika Butters from Castalia with their fabulous winning cheque

Judges’ comment

Plain English is obviously at the root of all Castalia’s communications to clients and prospective clients. This is reflected by great client feedback. Overall, plain English is a part of your company culture across multiple international locations, and has been for a sustained period of time. Well done.

You support plain English from the top, and staff are actively seeking advice and support to do better and improve. You audit your staff’s writing against the Plain English Standard once a year. Assessments are linked to pay bonuses, giving staff an incentive to write using good writing practices.

You also reflect on any failure and use it to improve performance.

We think you deserve to win because it’s clear you believe plain English helps you communicate with your clients effectively. You can really see the value it brings to your work.

Media statement

Eight years ago we won the Best Organisation category in the WriteMark Plain English Awards. Eight years on, we decided it was time to find out how well we were doing.

We are bigger, more of us are non-native speakers of English (one in three), and we work and write in many countries in diverse and often challenging locations. Our Plain English Writing Standard is the thread that binds us together — it is integral to every document we write, from short email to long report.

David, our CEO, is committed as much now to plain English as he was eight years ago. He inspires us all to be the very best at what we do and to produce documents that report our analysis clearly, accurately, and easily — even though the subjects we write about are often complex. Our rigorous critical thinking combined with our plain English skills mean we thoroughly understand our work and so too do our clients. We are delighted to be a winner in 2015.

Pamela Todd
Communications Manager