Workers need essential skills to lay the foundation for training and development
Late last year, employers in the construction sector started down a new training and development road that few have yet travelled, though many may soon have to follow.
The Construction Sector Council produced a comprehensive five-point strategy to improve reading, writing, math and other essential skills of the workforce.
Essential skills are the foundational skills that make all other training and development possible. According to Human Resources Skills and Development Canada there are nine essential skills that people need to succeed in the workplace: reading text, document use, writing, numeracy, oral communication, thinking skills, working with others, computer use, and continuous learning.
These are the building blocks of all learning and are different from technical skills because they can be transferred from one sector to the next.
But many workers, across all industries and sectors, have badly underdeveloped essential skills, manifest in increased accident rates, under-performance and lagging productivity. According to the benchmark International Adult Literacy Survey, more than 40 per cent of all Canadians are below the minimum desirable threshold for literacy.
For years the leadership at the Construction Sector Council was picking up little signs here and there from employers that workers were struggling to meet job expectations, explained Rosemary Sparks, manager of labour market and career information.
So, in late 2003, a special forum was called to investigate the problem. About 65 people from across the industry gathered to discuss skill levels. And one of the messages that emerged loud and clear was that many workers lacked the basic skills that made more advanced learning and development possible, she said. People were having problems reading basic health and safety policies and communicating with customers and co-workers, she said.
They didn’t use the term — because most people weren’t familiar with it and still aren’t — but basically they were saying their workers needed better essential skills, she said.
The strategy, released last November for implementation next month, should answer that call. “The ultimate objective is a more productive and safer workplace,” said Sparks. “From an employer’s perspective we are talking about productivity, quality workmanship and safety.”
The Construction Sector Council is the exception, not the rule, said Kurtis Kitagawa, senior research associate, education and learning for the Conference Board of Canada.
Very few organizations are investing in essential skills training, he said. Based on a 2002 survey, Canadian employers spend an average of $838 per employee on training and development, he said. But of that amount, just 1.9 per cent of all spending on training is going toward essential skills training. However, organizations that do invest in essential skills training spend substantial sums. In other words, on average, organizations aren’t even investing 1.9 per cent of budgets on essential skills training. The vast majority aren’t spending anything, he said.
Research completed for Statistics Canada (International Adult Literacy Study: Literacy Scores, Human Capital and Growth Across 14 OECD Countries) last year showed that investments in essential skill development will pay off in the long run. According to the study completed by three University of Ottawa economists, if a country were to raise its literacy scores by one per cent relative to the international average, it could expect to eventually see a 2.5-per-cent relative rise in labour productivity and a 1.5-per-cent rise in GDP per head. The overall effect would be three times greater than a similar improvement to physical capital.
Part of the problem is that employers don’t recognize essentials skills gaps as the a root cause of many workplace problems, said Kitagawa. If an employer is having problems with machine breakdowns due to human error, or lost time due to accidents or poor productivity, they come up with new rules or regulations to mitigate the problem.
“Few employers say, ‘I have a productivity issue therefore I have an essential skills problem.’ Instead they say, ‘Do we need to work harder? Do we need to change the way we work in teams? Do we need to cut more costs?’ But they don’t look at essential skills challenges as being at the heart of the issue,” said Kitagawa.
Recognition of the problem has been slow because people just assume most people have these skills and it’s difficult to suggest otherwise.
“It is one of those situations where workers don’t like to admit they have an essential skills challenge because it is degrading,” he said. And employers don’t want to admit it because they worry what customers and clients may think. But the reality is many workplaces have these problems and if an organization admits it has a challenge and takes steps to correct it, that is an indication it is serious about improving productivity.
Ron Saunders recently completed a study of a handful of Canadian organizations that are at the forefront of essential skills training for the Canadian Policy Research Networks and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. It is part of a project launched a couple of years ago to explore initiatives to improve the skills of low-skilled workers, he explained. (For the full report go to www.cprn.org.)
In recent years the focus in training has been on high-skilled workers or the long-term unemployed. “But there has not been much attention on how to improve the skills of those who are employed but at the low end of the skills spectrum,” he said.
There is not a great deal going on, but there are a few examples where progressive, forward-thinking initiatives have been launched, said Saunders. However, those initiatives mostly take place at large, well-financed companies. “They have resources to create customized assessment tools and training programs that smaller companies would have a harder time developing,” said Saunders.
The challenge is how to get these, or similar practices, adopted in more sectors, industries and workplaces.
One option would be for governments to play a more direct role, he said.
But another possible solution would be greater involvement with the sector councils. Canada’s more than 30 sector councils bring together representatives from business, labour, education and other professional groups within a sector to analyze and address sector-wide human resource issues. Aside from the construction sector council, only a few others have so far taken any action to help its members address essential skills deficiencies.
In 2002, the Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council became the first sector council in Canada to implement a training and development strategy with the stated objective of raising the essential skills levels of its workforce, said Andrea Webber Nelson, manager of programs and services for the council.
It adopted the strategy after conducting an assessment in 2001 and finding, among other things, that a “significant number” of drivers have poor reading skills, which make it difficult to adapt to change.
The first step in the strategy for employers is to assess workers and find out exactly who needs to improve their skills. The council also created a series of development tools so that once problems are identified, improvements can be made. Five different learning modules have been completed for improving reading levels, three more for document use. The council is close to completing a module for numeracy improvement.
To help employers assess their workforce, the council partnered with Bow Valley College in Calgary to customize the college’s widely respected Test of Workplace Essential Skills (TOWES) tool for three different groups in the industry. (For more on TOWES see sidebar.)
The council then worked with a number of employers and trucking groups to pilot the test. The Canadian Petroleum Products Institute asked to take part because it wanted to see if there are any links between essential skills and safety records, she said.
Using the TOWES tool they concluded that there is a correlation between essential skills proficiency and safety incidents. Researchers found that those who did not meet level three on the TOWES test (based on a score out of five) for reading text were 1.58 times more likely to have an accident. Those who did not achieve level four for document use were 1.69 times more likely to have an accident.
Numbers like these show pretty clearly the benefits for employers that can take the time and make the investment to improve the essential skills of workers, she said.
Assessing essential skills
Since 1997, Bow Valley College in Calgary has been working on its Test of Workplace Essential Skills (TOWES) tool to help organizations determine, with some precision, what essential skills gaps exist in workforces.
Most adult essential skills assessment tools are based on an academic model: a person reads a short story and is asked questions about the story, said Conrad Murphy, director of TOWES. “But people don’t read short stories at work. They read memos and bulletins and safety information and they work with documents a lot.”
Bow Valley has gathered a sizeable bank of test items which, collectively, form the assessment tool to measure essential skills in workplace settings on three levels:
•Reading text — the ability to understand and use information contained in prose passages.
•Document use — the skills and knowledge needed to understand and use information from documents such as tables, catalogs, maps and scale drawings.
•Numeracy — the ability to understand and use numerical information embedded in print.
The standard test costs about $55 per employee, though customization can push costs up to an additional $18,000 for an organization. The test has only been on the market for the past two years, but already Bow Valley has signed distribution agreements with 34 colleges to provide and administer the tests.
There are some employers that are very interested in this, but some don’t see why they need to be looking at essential skills, said Murphy.
“In some sectors there is this prevailing attitude in the business community that their employees should have come to them with these skills to begin with,” he said. But the reality is many employees do not come with those skills and employers that don’t take steps to give them to employees do so at their peril.
Essential skills are the “velcro skills” people need to make other learning and training stick, said Murphy. And if employers want to improve productivity and performance they need to make sure employees first have those velcro skills, he said.
The Construction Sector Council produced a comprehensive five-point strategy to improve reading, writing, math and other essential skills of the workforce.
Essential skills are the foundational skills that make all other training and development possible. According to Human Resources Skills and Development Canada there are nine essential skills that people need to succeed in the workplace: reading text, document use, writing, numeracy, oral communication, thinking skills, working with others, computer use, and continuous learning.
These are the building blocks of all learning and are different from technical skills because they can be transferred from one sector to the next.
But many workers, across all industries and sectors, have badly underdeveloped essential skills, manifest in increased accident rates, under-performance and lagging productivity. According to the benchmark International Adult Literacy Survey, more than 40 per cent of all Canadians are below the minimum desirable threshold for literacy.
For years the leadership at the Construction Sector Council was picking up little signs here and there from employers that workers were struggling to meet job expectations, explained Rosemary Sparks, manager of labour market and career information.
So, in late 2003, a special forum was called to investigate the problem. About 65 people from across the industry gathered to discuss skill levels. And one of the messages that emerged loud and clear was that many workers lacked the basic skills that made more advanced learning and development possible, she said. People were having problems reading basic health and safety policies and communicating with customers and co-workers, she said.
They didn’t use the term — because most people weren’t familiar with it and still aren’t — but basically they were saying their workers needed better essential skills, she said.
The strategy, released last November for implementation next month, should answer that call. “The ultimate objective is a more productive and safer workplace,” said Sparks. “From an employer’s perspective we are talking about productivity, quality workmanship and safety.”
The Construction Sector Council is the exception, not the rule, said Kurtis Kitagawa, senior research associate, education and learning for the Conference Board of Canada.
Very few organizations are investing in essential skills training, he said. Based on a 2002 survey, Canadian employers spend an average of $838 per employee on training and development, he said. But of that amount, just 1.9 per cent of all spending on training is going toward essential skills training. However, organizations that do invest in essential skills training spend substantial sums. In other words, on average, organizations aren’t even investing 1.9 per cent of budgets on essential skills training. The vast majority aren’t spending anything, he said.
Research completed for Statistics Canada (International Adult Literacy Study: Literacy Scores, Human Capital and Growth Across 14 OECD Countries) last year showed that investments in essential skill development will pay off in the long run. According to the study completed by three University of Ottawa economists, if a country were to raise its literacy scores by one per cent relative to the international average, it could expect to eventually see a 2.5-per-cent relative rise in labour productivity and a 1.5-per-cent rise in GDP per head. The overall effect would be three times greater than a similar improvement to physical capital.
Part of the problem is that employers don’t recognize essentials skills gaps as the a root cause of many workplace problems, said Kitagawa. If an employer is having problems with machine breakdowns due to human error, or lost time due to accidents or poor productivity, they come up with new rules or regulations to mitigate the problem.
“Few employers say, ‘I have a productivity issue therefore I have an essential skills problem.’ Instead they say, ‘Do we need to work harder? Do we need to change the way we work in teams? Do we need to cut more costs?’ But they don’t look at essential skills challenges as being at the heart of the issue,” said Kitagawa.
Recognition of the problem has been slow because people just assume most people have these skills and it’s difficult to suggest otherwise.
“It is one of those situations where workers don’t like to admit they have an essential skills challenge because it is degrading,” he said. And employers don’t want to admit it because they worry what customers and clients may think. But the reality is many workplaces have these problems and if an organization admits it has a challenge and takes steps to correct it, that is an indication it is serious about improving productivity.
Ron Saunders recently completed a study of a handful of Canadian organizations that are at the forefront of essential skills training for the Canadian Policy Research Networks and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. It is part of a project launched a couple of years ago to explore initiatives to improve the skills of low-skilled workers, he explained. (For the full report go to www.cprn.org.)
In recent years the focus in training has been on high-skilled workers or the long-term unemployed. “But there has not been much attention on how to improve the skills of those who are employed but at the low end of the skills spectrum,” he said.
There is not a great deal going on, but there are a few examples where progressive, forward-thinking initiatives have been launched, said Saunders. However, those initiatives mostly take place at large, well-financed companies. “They have resources to create customized assessment tools and training programs that smaller companies would have a harder time developing,” said Saunders.
The challenge is how to get these, or similar practices, adopted in more sectors, industries and workplaces.
One option would be for governments to play a more direct role, he said.
But another possible solution would be greater involvement with the sector councils. Canada’s more than 30 sector councils bring together representatives from business, labour, education and other professional groups within a sector to analyze and address sector-wide human resource issues. Aside from the construction sector council, only a few others have so far taken any action to help its members address essential skills deficiencies.
In 2002, the Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council became the first sector council in Canada to implement a training and development strategy with the stated objective of raising the essential skills levels of its workforce, said Andrea Webber Nelson, manager of programs and services for the council.
It adopted the strategy after conducting an assessment in 2001 and finding, among other things, that a “significant number” of drivers have poor reading skills, which make it difficult to adapt to change.
The first step in the strategy for employers is to assess workers and find out exactly who needs to improve their skills. The council also created a series of development tools so that once problems are identified, improvements can be made. Five different learning modules have been completed for improving reading levels, three more for document use. The council is close to completing a module for numeracy improvement.
To help employers assess their workforce, the council partnered with Bow Valley College in Calgary to customize the college’s widely respected Test of Workplace Essential Skills (TOWES) tool for three different groups in the industry. (For more on TOWES see sidebar.)
The council then worked with a number of employers and trucking groups to pilot the test. The Canadian Petroleum Products Institute asked to take part because it wanted to see if there are any links between essential skills and safety records, she said.
Using the TOWES tool they concluded that there is a correlation between essential skills proficiency and safety incidents. Researchers found that those who did not meet level three on the TOWES test (based on a score out of five) for reading text were 1.58 times more likely to have an accident. Those who did not achieve level four for document use were 1.69 times more likely to have an accident.
Numbers like these show pretty clearly the benefits for employers that can take the time and make the investment to improve the essential skills of workers, she said.
Assessing essential skills
Since 1997, Bow Valley College in Calgary has been working on its Test of Workplace Essential Skills (TOWES) tool to help organizations determine, with some precision, what essential skills gaps exist in workforces.
Most adult essential skills assessment tools are based on an academic model: a person reads a short story and is asked questions about the story, said Conrad Murphy, director of TOWES. “But people don’t read short stories at work. They read memos and bulletins and safety information and they work with documents a lot.”
Bow Valley has gathered a sizeable bank of test items which, collectively, form the assessment tool to measure essential skills in workplace settings on three levels:
•Reading text — the ability to understand and use information contained in prose passages.
•Document use — the skills and knowledge needed to understand and use information from documents such as tables, catalogs, maps and scale drawings.
•Numeracy — the ability to understand and use numerical information embedded in print.
The standard test costs about $55 per employee, though customization can push costs up to an additional $18,000 for an organization. The test has only been on the market for the past two years, but already Bow Valley has signed distribution agreements with 34 colleges to provide and administer the tests.
There are some employers that are very interested in this, but some don’t see why they need to be looking at essential skills, said Murphy.
“In some sectors there is this prevailing attitude in the business community that their employees should have come to them with these skills to begin with,” he said. But the reality is many employees do not come with those skills and employers that don’t take steps to give them to employees do so at their peril.
Essential skills are the “velcro skills” people need to make other learning and training stick, said Murphy. And if employers want to improve productivity and performance they need to make sure employees first have those velcro skills, he said.
