Workplace Literacy

Whatever industry you’re in and whatever work you do, basic literacy skills and learning new skills will help you and your staff do things better.

Literacy problems…

If people can’t read, write, understand, or get their message across there will be problems.

…in NZ

It has been estimated that about a million New Zealanders have literacy skills below the level needed in today’s world, with a large number of these at the lowest end of the adult literacy scale.

People may be able to read and write a little but may lack the skills needed for a modern job.

Keeping up to date

Literacy skills have to be kept up-to-date to work with new ways of communicating, new terms, definitions and practices.

Literacy skills include: feeling comfortable about

• Reading and writing to an acceptable standard
• Understanding what someone is telling you
• Getting your message or point of view across
• Maths, adding, multiplying subtracting and dividing
• Problem solving
• Creative and critical thinking—coming up with ideas and analysing and assessing those of others.
• Being able to use computers and voice mail.

The results

This can affect things as simple as being able to correctly record the day’s production, or checking whether the temperature on a production line is right.

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