Improving workplace writing: A collaborative project with Michigan Works!

This project was part of a campaign developed for the Oakland Literacy Project, a non-profit literacy organization in Metro Detroit. Our objective was to help local businesses and organizations address some of the literacy and writing issues that were affecting productivity in the workplace.

Category: consulting; professional writing

Attributes: primary research; workshop design; assessment and evaluation

Target Audiences: staff and employees

Client: Michigan Works!

Year: 2019-2020

I began by holding a one-hour meeting with three managing staff members to get a clearer picture of Michigan Works!'s writing and communicative needs. After this initial meeting, we realized that one area of focus was the writing and categorization of case notes (CN), the brief summary report that career advisors used to document interactions with Michigan Works! clientele and other job seekers.

After the initial meeting, I held a focus group with more staff members in the Michigan Works! organization that wrote and read CNs, in order to better understand the contexts in which they were typically used. After the focus group, I created a summary report (seen here) that articulated what I had learned and my suggestions for subsequent workshops. The summary report was sent to the original three managing staff members for review.

One of the major issues identified during the focus group was the incorrect labeling and organization of CNs via their subject titles. Staff members complained that there was not a system in place that ensured writers were categorizing their CNs with the most appropriate and accurate subject titles, which made searching for and archiving past CNs difficult. Therefore, the development of a comprehensive list of CN subject titles was the focus of the first workshop.

The workshop was held on December 6, 2019. Overall, there were about 24 participants from six Michigan Works! branches: Troy, Novi, Waterford, Pontiac, Oak Park, and Southfield.

To begin the workshop, I asked the participants to organize themselves into four groups. Specifically, I asked them to work with members of other branches in order to encourage more cross-pollination of ideas.

First, we began with individual reflective writing. Participants were asked to spend 5 minutes thinking about the most common subject titles they used to label and categorize CNs.

Afterward, participants were asked to share their answers with just their groupmates. The goal was to determine what were some similar subject titles used, and whether or not they were used to describe the same type of CNs.