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By Author: Elspeth Mowatt
Total Articles: 17
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If this is what your employees understand when they read your health and safety notices, how likely are you to be meeting health and safety requirements?

Thousands of working New Zealanders have low literacy and numeracy skill levels that show up in our workplace accident rates, our levels of absenteeism due to injury and our low productivity. There are more than 300,000 employees in our workforce with very low literacy skills and another 800,000 employees that don’t have the all necessary skills they need to do their job properly.

Companies have a legal requirement to involve staff in identifying hazards and reporting incidents but if the majority of your workforce cannot speak English confidently, this creates a problem. In our experience, many employees don’t understand the terminology around health and safety procedures, and can’t describe hazards or what to do in emergency situations. Some employees never read notices or newsletters and avoid using email altogether.

Selecon Production Manager Mike Pak recognised that low literacy levels were hindering the successful implementation of a lean ...
... manufacturing programme and the company’s ability to comply with health and safety requirements. Selecon, part of the Philips’s Lighting Entertainment Division, export over 90% of their products globally. To be competitive Selecon has to deliver and exceed the quality, performance and cost standards expected by their market. A good health and safety record is an integral part of this.

Pre-training analysis revealed low literacy levels across the workforce but Mike thought that greatest benefit could be gained from starting with team leaders as their role in lean manufacturing and health and safety was pivotal.

Employee training was based on the literacy skills needed to meet business objectives and the literacy, numeracy and language skills of the employees involved. Through improved supervisory skills Mike has seen improvements in quality assurance, the completion of production tasks and the ability to function as a team.

“Three years after the training programme started, lost time due to injury has dropped 41%.” says Mike. “As a result of Workbase’s literacy training programme, we know our staff now understand safe job practices and can comply with the company’s health and safety procedures.”

“Low literacy levels are endemic across most industries” says Katherine Percy, the CE of Workbase. “New Zealand is not alone. Similar literacy levels are found other OECD countries. Workplace demands and changes in technology are moving faster than we can keep up with. We also need to attract workers from overseas – many of whom are highly qualified, but have poor language skills. This means we need to address low literacy, language and numeracy skills in workplaces now. 60% of our workforce for the next 20 years is already working.

If we want to improve our health and safety in New Zealand, we must improve literacy and numeracy levels of our existing workforce.

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