“the Illiterate Of The 21st Century Will Not Be Those Who Cannot Read Or Write, But Those Who Cannot

By Author: Elspeth Mowatt
Total Articles: 17
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Any employer can tell you about the competitive advantage of an appropriately skilled and flexible workforce. The dilemma that many employers face (especially in Auckland) is that there is a pool of migrant labour available to staff their shop floor, but the literacy skills that those workers bring to the workplace are often low level. It’s hard to be ‘flexible’ in your learning when your foundation skills are less than solid.

‘Literacy’ means more than saying a person can read. We mean the complex mix of skills that an individual can use at work, in the home or in their community. It is a sort of skills that have to be maintained and upgraded over the course of a lifetime.

Statistics show that we have a skill shortage in New Zealand, so the likelihood of an employer finding employees with a perfect skill set is improbable. Instead employers hire from who is available. These are often migrants who do not have English as a first language or low skilled workers and are selected on the basis of attitude or experience.

As New Zealand’s workforce grows over the next 10 years, NZ Treasury predicts ...
... that numbers of European and Maori workers will level and growth will come from Pacific and Asian workers. The challenge for employers will be to find (or develop) employees who have relevant literacy and numeracy skills and who can communicate effectively. People, who can listen, understand and give instructions clearly and unambiguously.

Deane Apparel is an Auckland based company which undertook literacy training for its employees. What Deane Apparel found, like many employers who have undertaken up-skilling programmes, is that employee retention and employee loyalty increased. By up-skilling existing employees, many with English as a second language, the company saved on the cost of recruitment and retraining as it maximized the potential of its experienced employees.

Katherine Percy, CEO of Workbase, a not for profit organisation that specialises in improving workplace literacy, emphasizes why literacy training, employee training and funding for that training is so important.

Companies want and need to up-skill their workers. But you can’t expect people to be able to understand how to operate new systems or software if they can’t read the technical vocabulary of the instruction manual or if they can’t make themselves understood with their colleagues.

New Zealand has a poor track record of integrating new migrants into its workforce. If we consider that 35% of Auckland’s population (and 16% of NZ’s) was born overseas, this means we are missing a significant opportunity to improve our productivity.

We need to up-skill our workers. Literacy and numeracy training lays the foundation for that up-skilling to be successful.

Deane Apparel pic

“The down side of losing a skilled person is the cost of recruiting and it’s the cost of mistakes new people make as they learn with customers. Those costs just go on and on much more than people realise. We don’t always get the perfect fit with new staff so for us it’s better to invest in-house.”

About The Author:

Workbase is New Zealand's most experienced service provider of adult literacy, numeracy and communication support. Find out more at www.workbase.org.nz