Janice McLeod
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My background is in adult education and training and I have a first degree in Social Administration and a Masters degree in Education.
I worked for NSW TAFE for ten years as a literacy and numeracy teacher. This gave me extensive experience in interviewing, assessing and teaching students from a wide range of cultural and educational backgrounds, managing educational staff and programs, and liaising with industry groups, government agencies and the local community. I also worked with vocational teachers from a range of subject areas helping them to prepare instructional materials that their students could and would read and understand.
In addition to my teaching and administrative tasks, I set up and managed an adult study centre and was involved in a range of staff development and writing projects.
What I do now
I have been self-employed for the last fifteen years and my work as a plain English consultant has included the following projects.
Training programs
- Preparing and presenting customised writing skills courses and programs for a range of staff from both public and private sector organisations.
Some examples of these programs are:
- a correspondence coaching and review program for the Department of Local Government
- a plain English training program for staff at the Health Insurance Commission
- a series of business writing skills courses for senior staff at the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
- a two day competency based writing skills program for civilian and service personnel from the Department of Defence at locations throughout NSW and the ACT
- effective writing courses for staff at SBS, the Powerhouse Museum, the State Library, the University of New England, and RACV and MFESB in Melbourne
- technical report writing and effective minute taking courses for staff at the Department of Land & Water Conservation
- a training program in ministerial correspondence writing for staff of the Department of Industrial Relations, Employment, Training & Further Education.
Plain English projects
- Planning and implementing a plain English policy for Campbelltown City Council. This project involved presenting training courses, preparing a style manual, and working with council staff to write and revise a range of documents including management plans, policies, occupational health and safety manuals, tenders, forms, standard letters, newsletters and information leaflets.
- Writing plain English versions of various clauses of the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals legislation for an APVMA compliance guide, preparing plain English guidelines for interpreting privacy legislation for Privacy NSW, and developing a series of plain English brochures for Aristocrat Technologies to explain human resources policies and procedures to their diverse workforce.
- Preparing a range of plain English documents for the Department of Local Government including a social and community planning and reporting manual, brochures and fact sheets on local government, information for Aboriginal communities and forms for the Companion Animals register. I also substantively edited a series of reports about the amalgamation of councils in regional areas.
Annual reports
- Editing annual reports for the NSW Ombudsman each year from 1999 to 2007, the Department of Local Government from 2000 to 2006, Centennial Parklands, the Ageing and Disability Department, the Independent Commission Against Corruption and ParaQuad NSW. These projects involved organising contributions from business units, preparing a structure and theme for the report based on the agency’s strategic plan, rewriting and editing the material submitted, checking the report met statutory requirements, providing advice on layout, and meeting all the necessary deadlines.
Websites
- Editing material and providing feedback on content for the NSW Ombudsman’s updated website.
- Providing advice on the proposed structure, and drafting and editing the content, for a new website for Defire Pty Ltd – a fire safety engineering company.
- Editing a probity assessment technique for the RTA website.
Policies and procedures
- Preparing apologies guidelines for the NSW Ombudsman, editing policy and procedure manuals for NSW Health and the Department of Community Services, and researching and writing business rules for a new electronic operational glossary for the Department of Defence.
- Writing and editing customer focused policies and procedures for Vodafone customer care and connections staff at call centres throughout Australia. My work with Vodafone included liaising with staff from a range of departments, developing a format for the policies and strategies for communicating them to all levels of the organisation, and providing feedback on documents such as call centre scripts, console procedures, training manuals and business processes.
- Assisting ParaQuad NSW to set up a documented quality policy framework and editing a resource kit for training personal carers working with people with a spinal cord injury.
Business development and texts
- Editing ‘Trusts & Estates: Taxation and Practice’ – a 2000 page book on the taxation of trusts in Australia – for the Taxation Institute of Australia. This project involved extensive liaison with the author, publisher and indexer, developing a style guide, and writing very complex legal text in a clearer and more accessible style.
- Preparing marketing proposals, tender documents, staff profiles and business development training sessions for PricewaterhouseCoopers Legal and business documents for PricewaterhouseCoopers, including a series of letters for middle market clients and a brochure on compliance risk management.
- Editing a series of strategic planning documents for the Asthma Foundation of NSW.
Submissions, reports, manuals and forms
- Preparing the 2007 CityRail fare review submission to the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART). This project involved working cooperatively with RailCorp management to identify the key arguments supporting the submission, collecting relevant information from a range of sources, and writing and editing several drafts of the final document.
- Editing reports for the National Health Workforce Secretariat – including providing advice on the language, structure, layout and referencing of a 700 page AMWAC report on the general practice workforce in Australia, and editing a report on medical specialist training for submission to the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council and COAG.
- Working on a plain English forms project for the NSW Department of Fair Trading. This project involved revising key forms and developing guidelines for reviewing forms, including a forms review checklist.
- Substantively editing and proofreading a major investigation report for the Health Care Complaints Commission and providing advice on the structure and layout of the final document.
- Working as a contract writer for the Independent Commission Against Corruption preparing modules for a practical guide to corruption prevention that has been distributed to all NSW government agencies and councils, writing a procedural manual on conducting internal investigations, revising standard letters to complainants, and editing a model code of conduct for NSW government employees.
- Working as a writer and editor on projects such as the first ‘Tax Pack’, a skills audit for the NSW Parliament, a complaints management manual for NSW Police, area assistance guidelines for PlanningNSW, a booklet on housing choices, a guide to enterprise agreements, and a set of accounting and administrative standards for the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong.
Educational projects
- Working on a range of projects for Australian Rail Training including developing and facilitating an incident investigation course, and implementing a program to recognise the job competencies of station services staff and explain future training options.
- Writing an external studies package of three modules for vocational teachers and trainers enrolled in the Bachelor of Teaching course at Charles Sturt University. The modules included notes, study tasks and readings to give students unfamiliar with language, literacy and numeracy issues the theoretical knowledge and practical skills needed to deal effectively with these issues in the workplace or vocational classroom.
- Developing a curriculum for a TAFE certificate course for operator level workers in local government. This project included working with industry training committees to develop competency standards, researching current training provision and pathways, integrating language, literacy and numeracy skills into vocational curricula, and developing teaching materials.
Conferences, TV and videos
- Participating in educational television and video projects such as ‘Plain English – not a simple matter’ and the ABC series the ‘Reading and Writing Roadshow’.
- Presenting papers at a variety of conferences including the Public Interest Law Conference at Sydney University in 1993 and the International Plain Language in Progress conference in Canada in 1995.
My special interests and skills
One of my special interests is helping public and private sector staff to communicate complex concepts, technical information and the content of legislation in an effective way to a diverse audience, including both external and internal customers.
I am approached by many organisations because they have ‘problems’ with written communication. My role is to work with all staff members to identify what these ‘problems’ really are and to develop and implement innovative, flexible and workable solutions. These solutions may include providing training sessions for staff, reviewing and revising documents to ensure that they communicate effectively with their target audience, helping managers to manage the writing process within their section in a more positive and efficient way, preparing a corporate communications policy and style manual, and/or providing editorial help and feedback to individual staff.
As a consultant, I have worked effectively and cooperatively with people from diverse backgrounds and with different areas of expertise. I am equally ‘at home’ talking to senior managers about implementing the objectives of their corporate plan as I am working with local council operators and union officials to prepare competency standards for road maintenance crews.
