What does it mean for plain language when employees equal “costs”?

No time to explore this in detail today, but Henry Blodget, editor of Business Insider, is getting a lot of attention for his article “This one tweet reveals what’s wrong with American Business.” The bottom line here is that Henry believes US corporations think only about the short term.

If that’s true, plain language efforts inside those organizations are not going to succeed.  Plain language programs emphasize quality messages. And those require time to create because of the need to plan and test drafts before delivering them. It also means emphasizes employee development so that quality documents can be produced more quickly. Plus a reward structure for recognizing employees who create quality messages.  I just wrote about these issues last week in Why your document can’t be fast, cheap, and good.

I’m still hoping to explore these issues in research this fall. If you’ve got ideas or are interested in participating, let me know.