Plain Language Awards

Celebrate the stories of our clearest business communicators

Winner: Best Plain English Document — Private Sector 2014

Skills Active Aotearoa

Sponsor Christine Murray, Sysdoc with Myra Mortlock, Skills Active Aotearoa


Document name

Information sheets


Judges’ comment

A very clear, well-written set of documents, which can be read by a wide audience.


Media statement

Skills Active Aotearoa is excited to receive this award for Best Plain English Document — Private Sector

Building a skilled and literate workforce is key to New Zealand’s future. Skills Active is totally committed to ensuring this is a reality across the recreation, fitness, and sporting workplaces and industry organisations we partner with.

As an organisation developing qualifications and career pathways for our sectors, we continually strive to provide ‘added value’ for individual trainees and for workplaces. As well as the technical skills covered in our qualifications — such as those needed by pool lifeguards, fitness instructors, park rangers, community recreation supervisors, and sports coaches, to name just a few — staff need skills that underpin all successful organisations, such as customer service, teamwork, time management, and behaving professionally at work.

Our information sheets help address these ‘soft’ skills in a clear and attractive way. They include key points, definitions of terms that may be new to an employee, and activities to encourage staff to apply new knowledge to their own workplace.

These documents go out in trainees’ resource packs across a range of qualifications and are also freely available on our website. Our field staff pass on suggestions for new topics from the workplaces they engage with so we know we are meeting a real need.

We’re proud that this award recognises the ‘continuous improvement’ ethos of our organisation in developing products and services that help our industry partners build a competitive edge, now and for the future.

Dr Grant Davidson
Chief Executive