Paula Oliver, NZ Herald
Employers are increasingly stumping up with cash for staff literacy programmes that teach skills they argue should have been mastered at school.
And while employer groups agree that businesses have a role to play in improving employee skills, they say that having to go back to square one and teach staff to read and write is unfair.
"It really rankles with employers when they can't start with skills training that relates to the job," said Alasdair Thompson of the Northern Employers and Manufacturers' Association. "Instead they have to go back and teach people to read and write. That's really dreadful."
Thompson said that problems were being discovered as jobs evolved and technology increased, and workers could no longer hide what was an embarrassing problem.
The programmes that many companies are choosing to use to help their staff can cost $4000 to $5000 a head each year.
They can be heavily subsidised by the Government - up to 80 per cent - but the employer still bears the rest of the cost as well as giving staff the time to learn.
The reason many are turning to the programmes is clearly shown in a series of international and local surveys.
The largest, a 1996 International Adult Literacy Survey of OECD countries, showed that 40 per cent of people employed in New Zealand businesses were below the minimum level of literacy competence required for everyday life and work.
About 20 per cent were at the very lowest level of literacy skills and could not read simple written materials such as medicine dosage instructions.
Earlier this year an Employers and Manufacturers Association survey found that 30 per cent of employees did not understand warning and hazard notices in their workplaces.
Many did not follow instructions, and only 60 per cent of employees said they felt that they always understood what was being asked of them.
Anecdotal evidence also exists of employers receiving unreadable CVs or finding that potential workers cannot complete an application form.
Strong concerns centre on the issue of health and safety. Laws that came into effect last month put stringent requirements on employers to ensure their workplace is safe.
If an employee was injured after not understanding a hazard sign or a safety brochure, Thompson said, it would probably be the employer's problem.
"It will be said that the employer should have identified the problem and taken special steps to explain to the employee," he said.
The biggest provider of literacy programmes, Workbase, has worked with 50 companies around the country.
A not-for-profit, Government-funded organisation, Workbase's clients are predominantly manufacturers, and they have included fishing company Sanford, Henderson firm Jenkin Timber, Tasman mill owner Norske Skog, and Auckland plastics manufacturer Rotaform.
A literacy and learning programme has been operating at the Tasman mill for eight years and it was considered valuable enough to continue when Norske Skog bought the mill.
The programme has expanded to include wood-processing qualifications and other learning.
The companies that have worked with Workbase have all reported significant benefits from the programmes, especially in the areas of staff confidence, error rates, staff retention and communication.
Workbase chief executive Katherine Percy said that companies with a staff literacy problem could either choose to complain about the schooling system or do something about their own people.
"You can talk about the schools all you like but it won't make your workforce any different," she said. "In our experience that argument is articulated by companies who are frustrated and trying to avoid engaging with the problem."
Percy said that statistics showed that 80 per cent of the workforce of 2010 were already out of school and working, and 60 per cent of the workforce of 2020.
"You either confront the reality of your existing workforce or wait a long time for things to change," she said.
Workbase's programmes define literacy as more than reading and writing. Speaking, listening, problem solving, creative thinking and numeracy are also included.
Workbase staff go into businesses and use the internal documentation as teaching aids in regular hour-long sessions.
Percy said it was important to note that many of the staff literacy problems came when a job changed but a person didn't.
Work had become more technology-based, and some people struggled with change.
"All of us, even those with PhDs, come into situations where we do not have the right literacy. It's about context. There are lots of things we've been taught but we haven't used for a long time."
It was not uncommon for companies to try to recruit new people to get around the problem.
But they tended to find that applicants had the same capability profile as the existing staff.
Companies weighing up the benefits of a literacy programme were often concerned that their newly trained staff might take their skills elsewhere, Percy said, but in fact the opposite happened.
"We've found that workers really appreciate the opportunity to learn at work, and highly regard the employers who give those opportunities."
Workbase is in the early stages of a project to quantify the return on investment that employers get from literacy programmes.
While international evidence exists, locally there are no concrete figures measuring what employers get back.
Alasdair Thompson agreed that improving schools was a long solution to the literacy problem.
But it was important, he said, at least to put a peg into the ground and get started.
"Quite frankly this is a failing in the school system," Thompson said. "We want to see a standard where children do not move up to another level of schooling until they have a certain level of literacy. If they don't have it, give them remedial work until they do."
National Party finance spokesman Dr Don Brash said that throwing money at the education system was not the answer.
He said that proportionately, New Zealand was one of the highest spenders on education per head in the world.
Structural change in the education system was needed, he said.
"It seems beyond doubt that we have a serious problem. It's to me very sad, because if people cannot read they are basically condemned to almost certainly a very narrow range of occupations. Or to unemployment."
Brash said that employers should not have to pay for literacy programmes when as taxpayers they had funded up to 13 years of education.
The problem is far from unnoticed in the Beehive.
The latest Budget included spending targeted at improving literacy and Associate Minister of Education Steve Maharey yesterday told a conference that those "foundation skills" were crucial to competing on the world stage.
At the Association for Training and Development conference in Wellington, Maharey said literacy, numeracy and presentation skills underpinned a sense of self-worth.
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