10 Ways to Identify Literacy & Numeracy Gaps At Work

Move the dial on your greatest asset: your team

Identify literacy and numeracy gaps – they can show up in the New Zealand manufacturing workforce in many ways. Statistics tell us approximately 40% of New Zealand’s working population has literacy and numeracy skills below the minimum level required to participate effectively in a modern economy.

What to look out for

Here are some of the signs you might see at mahi:

‘Crickets’ at your team meeting or health and safety briefing. When asked for verbal feedback, there’s a hush rather than a buzz of ideas.
Paperwork doesn’t always get fully completed or there might be some errors. That means chasing up people to find out the extra details.
Despite many graphs about throughput, operational efficiency and complaints per million units all over the lunchroom walls, no one seems motivated to move the numbers in the right direction.
There’s a bunch of acronyms related to your business and when you talk about them at a staff meeting, you’re not confident everyone knows what they mean. Do your staff know their TRIFR from their OEE?
You’ve recently tried to move some processes to a digital platform, but many of your staff are still using paper and there’s a bit of resistance to using apps and kiosks. Two-factor authentication, password controls and logins baffle people and act as a barrier to engaging with digital.
Staff might appear stuck when it comes to problem-solving around their area or machine. They might not come up with lots of ideas when it comes to project groups and innovation.
You receive a lot of requests for pay advances. Staff might not have enough annual leave to take over a planned shutdown. Understanding how Kiwisaver works is variable and maybe your Payroll team get lots of questions about this.
You’ve tried to roll some online self-paced learning but you’re not seeing the uptake you would like on the learning modules.
Critical thinking around on-job numeracy is tripping people up – think errors around recipe weigh-ups, pallet calculation, stocktake and best-before dates. Are these numeracy-related errors?
Staff may not retain or understand key messages from training sessions, for instance, food safety, or health and safety. At assessment, you might see some resistance to dealing with written material which could impact achievement rates.

Help is at hand

Once you have managed to identify literacy and numeracy gaps, there are many ways to tackle them with a learning and development solution. The government, via the Tertiary Education Commission, supports businesses to raise the foundation skills of their employees. The results? Improved health and safety, greater productivity, a talent pipeline to promote from within, and more engagement and workplace culture.

Talk to us today about putting together a workplace programme that takes your people and your business to the next level.

Literacy and Numeracy Statistics in New Zealand

40% of working adults have difficulty reading and understanding work instructions.
46% of the workforce have difficulty working with weights and quantities.
40% of working adults have difficulty making sense of graphs or charts.
50% of adult workers have low problem-solving skills in a technology-rich workplace.

Source: 2014 Survey of Adult Skills (PIACC Study, OECD, 2014).