Best Individual or Team Archives - Plain Language Awards

Shine bright like a diamond — enter the champion category of the Awards in 2021 | Image by Dimitris Christou from Pixabay

You’ve read about the Champion category for Best Organisation. But, rather than an organisation, you have an individual (maybe it’s you?) or a team that deserves recognition for its plain language achievements.

The Plain English Champion — Best Individual or Team award honours the people who work hard to make plain language a reality in their organisation. The award is open to individuals or teams who have significantly contributed to a plain language initiative in any New Zealand organisation.

Now is your time to shine, so don’t be shy!

We know that so much work goes into projects that support clear communication. Over the last year or so we’ve seen some amazing examples of this. These communications played a big part in us reinvigorating the Plain English Awards for 2021.

To the people behind New Zealand’s public health communications about COVID-19, we’re looking at you! And we know many other teams and individuals have done similarly inspiring work, whether in the public eye or known only to their colleagues or customers.

Here are some examples to get you thinking. You or your team might have:

influenced senior leaders to support a plain language initiative
led a plain language project, large or small
run workshops or regular team meetings on using plain language
formally or informally supported other writers to help them produce clear, reader-friendly communication more consistently
written newsletter articles or intranet resources about plain language for your team or organisation
rewritten template letters into plain language, saving time for your team
created clear, easy-to-use policies or guidelines for your organisation.

Meet the winning entry in 2018

Here’s what the judges said about the impressive entry from the MSD Better Letters Project team in 2018.

This initiative is representative of the nitty gritty, down and dirty, battlefield for plain language. They are making appreciable change at scale. And making a difference in the lives of people in vulnerable circumstances. Very well done. The Better Letters Project at MSD is a worthy plain English champion!

Meet finalist Andy Baldwin of WineWorks

The judges loved Andy’s passion as a champion of plain language in his organisation. Read how he did it.

I enlisted some help and formed a team. I began to study plain English and promote it within the organisation, presenting my ideas to managers and directors. Like any movement it took time to get momentum, but once we achieved ‘critical mass’ people began asking me to teach them how to write better. I think this is the biggest compliment of all. Now we have people throughout WineWorks writing and using great plain English SOPs in their daily work. This is improving our processes and helps to upskill our teams.