Did you know, a recent OECD adult skills survey found that around half of New Zealand’s workforce have below average literacy and numeracy?

This may be a barrier to the productivity, safety and performance of your business. It’s a basic skills deficit that’s costing New Zealand incorporated millions of dollars each week in lost productivity due to:

Increased absenteeism – being less engaged with a job reduces diligence and loyalty.

Paperwork issues – incorrect or missing paperwork has efficiency implications.

Quality issues and rework – production line errors can cost thousands of dollars.

Health & safety implications – not following company culture and policy increases risk.

 

Understanding the meaning of literacy and numeracy

It’s not as simple as blaming poor English and maths for these ongoing problems.

At The Learning Wave, we see workplace literacy and numeracy as requiring combination of 6 core skills: reading, writing, basic number work, critical thinking, speaking, and listening.

Added to which, we’ve also observed other factors that affect performance. These include having English as a second language, and cultural differences, for example, where a worker believes it’s disrespectful to speak up about an issue.

 

Supporting staff helps build businesses

To tackle these problems, an organisation needs to implement training which develops the skills their workers need to perform better today, as well as gives them the confidence to respond to changes in tomorrow’s workplace.

Training such as this can be a ‘win win’ for businesses. Not only can they see significant improvements in productivity, performance, safety and quality, but it’s beneficial on a human level too, as supporting your workers can empower them to lead more engaged and happier lives.

 

We’ve seen that the benefits can be wide ranging:

Staff independence: workplace tasks become easier to perform, such as communication, paperwork, simple calculations, and applying for leave.

Improved culture: staff are more able to follow company policy, including health and safety, and pass on information to new starters.

Increased productivity: better understanding of instructions means that tasks can be performed more quickly, with more accuracy – so there’s less wastage and fewer mistakes.

Happier workforce: a more able workforce makes it easier to promote from within, so you avoid the disruption and costs of continual staff churn.

 

We can grow literacy in your business

If you’d like a workforce skills with embedded literacy and numeracy programme to improve your workers’ basic skills, The Learning Wave can help.

From doing an assessment to delivering tailored training – we’ll identify your organisation’s skill gaps and implement a programme which upskills staff and aligns with your business goals. Here are some of the incredible results our clients have enjoyed:

  • 30% drop in absenteeism
  • 82-97% improvement in quality
  • $50K saving in rework
  • $120K saving in better stock management
  • 70% increase in near-miss reporting

 

Better still, as an accredited provider of the Workplace Literacy Fund, The Learning Wave can help you get up to 100% of your training costs covered.

Places are limited, so take the next step by contacting us today.