These columns aim to help people write well — for example, to satisfy the needs and standards of their employer.
How many employers communicate in ways that satisfy workers?
Enter the lobby of almost any company and you’re likely to see a plaque honoring the Employee of the Month.
Nice touch.
A grander idea comes from Studs Terkel’s 1974 book “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do.”
A 37-year-old steel mill laborer — a self-described “dying breed” doing “strictly muscle work” — told Terkel this:
“I would like to see a building, say, the Empire State. I would like to see on one side of it a foot-wide strip from top to bottom with the name of every bricklayer, the name of every electrician, with all the names. So, when a guy walked by, he could take his son and say, ‘See, that’s me over there on the forty-fifth floor. I put the steel beam in.’ Picasso can point to a painting … a writer can point to a book. Everybody should have something to point to.”
In preparing recently to write about successful new construction projects in Minnesota, I mentioned that steelworker’s vision to the manager of a project that employed 1,000 workers.
