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Clear, straightforward communication is essential for good business.
Take a badly designed form. If a customer doesn't understand exactly what they're being asked and why, they probably won't provide enough information. So staff will need to ask for more detail -- wasting both their time and the customer's. Or the customer may need to ask for help. Either way, the organisation is wasting staff time -- which costs money. And the customer will feel frustrated and get a poor impression of the organisation.
On the other hand, if the form is easy to understand and fill out, the organisation is far more likely to get the right information the first time round. This will save staff time in processing the form, asking for more information, explaining policies and handling complaints. This in turn, saves money.
Management often sees only the printing costs of forms. But the clerical costs of dealing with poorly designed forms can add up to a lot more.
The Communications Research Institute of Australia reports that after they redesigned an insurance application form, the error rate dropped by 97.2 per cent. This saved over $500,000 of staff time in one year.
After the Family Court of Australia simplified its divorce application form, the number of forms which were rejected because of errors dropped from 30 per cent to seven per cent. (Which shows that even lawyers had trouble filling in the old forms!) Another bonus was that far less people rang the court to ask for help in filling in the form.
Clear, straightforward documents create the right image. They show that you're on top of your business, you know what you're doing, and that you're trying to help your clients rather than confuse them -- which makes any organisation look better.
All Australians have the right to information which they can understand easily.
This is particularly important when you consider that one in four Australians comes from a non-English speaking background.
A 1996 nationwide survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that 14 per cent of people -- including those who speak English as a first language -- need help with reading information from government agencies, businesses and other institutions. Ten per cent say they need help with filling out forms.
And remember that if your organisation is going to publish documents in community languages, they will be much easier to translate if they are written in plain English in the first place.
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