KEY POINTS:
About 20 per cent of the workforce has English as a second language - and that's causing problems not only for employers, it's also preventing people from progressing in their careers and reaching their full potential.
That's the view of Katherine Percy, chief executive of Workbase, a not-for-profit
organisation helping employers to help their staff by improving their literacy, numeracy, language and communication skills.
"Our services are tailored to the needs of each company that we help and what their employees need to know to do their jobs better," says Percy.
"We help fill the gaps in people's knowledge. But we are not teaching people to read Shakespeare. We look at the literacy requirements of a given job by analysing its needs and design one-on-one or group courses specific to the people and the job they do."
Percy says it frequently happens that people who are promoted to their careers discover they can't cope in the new role because their literacy skills are below what's required.
"A person who was fine in their old job suddenly discovers that they are required to read/write memos, complete accident reports, write estimates and understand instructions that require a bit of interpretation," says Percy.
She says many managers do not appreciate the literacy needs of jobs, such as the need to understand health and safety information, and they take for granted basic form-filling duties or a requirement to count stock in and out of a warehouse.
"Often people such as trainers and managers do not appreciate the literacy requirements of jobs that they consider 'low end' and low paid and they don't check that their staff have the skills to perform their jobs effectively."
Percy refutes that poor adult literacy is a reflection of New Zealand's education system.
"Our levels of workplace literacy are similar to Australia, Britain and Canada," she says.
"Many people who struggled to see the point of learning at school, where classes were not linked to anything practical, can succeed reasonably easily when [training is] relevant to their job."
She also says the greater demand on literacy is a reflection of the increased demands for language, numeracy, information technology and problem solving in today's "fast changing workplaces".
She believes the country's immigration policy has also contributed to the problem faced by employers and their staff.
"As New Zealand has become more diverse we have a population where 19 per cent have English as a second language," she says.
But Percy doesn't consider Workbase to be the complete answer to raising literacy standards across the country.
"Raising the level of literacy will occur through all forms of industry training and training for adults," she says.
"Workplace programs are one form of training. They are quite intensive and specialised and they do give much better results than some off-site, more generic training."
Percy says a whole range of workplace training should be made available to help companies compete on the world stage.
"The economies we as a country are in competition with, those with high export-led economies, do need a literate workforce.
"We are trying to encourage industry training organisations (ITOs) to include literacy in their work, because ITOs have traditionally focused on [teaching] technical skills and have assumed that literacy is in place.
"However, ITOs are coming across trainees who need some literacy development simultaneously with their industry training."
To help ITO managers understand the literacy requirements of particular trades Workbase has developed a range of job profiles that illustrate the basic skills needed so trainers can check for them before training starts.
"Because people do read the sports pages, or take an interest in certain things, employers think these people have full literacy skills, but they may only have a part of what's needed."
During the past 10 years Workbase has helped more than 100 businesses.
Most of these are larger companies who can afford to have members of staff away from their jobs to attend training.
And, says Percy, there is government money available to help with the cost of training through the Tertiary Education Commission's workplace literacy fund.
For those who do take part, the payback for employers is greater staff retention, increased productivity, greater teamwork - as staff can communicate more effectively with each other, and the ability to perform well at work rises.
"There is also less wastage, less supervision of staff is needed and there are often fewer accidents and errors.
"People can also transfer the skills learnt through literacy courses to home as well. They learn to use computers and then can help their children more. For people who have low levels of literacy it can transform them."
But can it be too late or some people?
"It's never too late to start learning," says Percy.
For more information on literacy training use the weblinks below.