ABC Life Literacy Canada

Management and labour find common ground to argue that workplace education should be a key focus in the modern business environment

A Roundtable with:

How is work changing and what relationship does that have with literacy development?

Hon. Perrin Beatty: We’re moving to a workforce that has to be more highly skilled, and our surveying tells us that basic survival skills—numeracy, literacy, the ability to work in teams and so on—is of critical importance. Our members certainly identify it as an area where we should be doing much more.

Michael Bloom: The trend towards more complex work, and more rapid change in the nature of tasks within work, continues unabated. The demand for skills increases has implications not only for advanced skills, but also for basic skills and literacy. That reality is going to continue for some time in Canada and North America.

Simon Farbrother: And to build on that, there is certainly in the public sector a strong demand to speak to people at all levels of our organization in real time. There is the public demand for immediate information, so it’s very important that we support all of our employees to be skilled in that regard.

Bryan Neath: Even though this is not necessarily new, computer training is still progressing quite a bit. And we have this debate all the time in the labour movement—What is literacy? When you’re asking a question directly about literacy, it can mean a whole pile of things, or mainly just reading and writing.

Bloom: We tend to like the more sophisticated definitions of literacy encompassed within the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey [of Statistics Canada and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development], which shows literacy is a combination of skills related to language and numbers, but [used] within the context of the capacity of individuals to use language and numbers effectively in work. In this context, literacy can be measured along a continuum of capacity: it’s how literate you are against [various] requirements of work.

Beatty: I agree. The other point that needs to be underscored here is that literacy affects a range of other basic employability skills employers are looking for. Each year, CME does a survey of manufacturers and exporters across the country about the issues they see in the coming year. This year we surveyed them on, among other things, the whole issue of skills.

When we asked, What are the least satisfactory skill sets that you are finding among employees?, 46 per cent said problem solving; 25 per cent, technical skills; 19 per cent, teamwork; 16 per cent, basic employability skills; 16 per cent, verbal communication; 15 per cent, supervisory and management skills; 14 per cent, reading and writing, and so on. Literacy affects almost all of these skills in one way or another. As a consequence, it’s of great importance. We’re finding that the soft skills are of growing importance to employers.

Bloom: We produced in the ‘90s an Employability Skills Profile, which we updated in 2000 as Employability Skills 2000 Plus. Every year, for the past 15 years, that pamphlet is the most-popular and most-downloaded document from the Conference Board. I think that reflects the recognition by families and individuals, and by employers, that literacy is fundamental.

From communicatons materials, it appears that unions use quite a broad definition of literacy, emphasizing the empowerment of the employee not only at work, but also in the community and at home. Is there a basic difference between the unions and management on what “literacy” really means?

Farbrother: I would suggest that it is probably about capacity-building. It is one of a set of tools or skills. If we choose to hire somebody and they don’t have the skills, part of our responsibility is to help them develop those skills to be successful as they grow and as our organization continues to grow. If you keep things really narrow, someone can be very skilled in one area, but not be very transferable.

Bloom: I think employers are increasingly taking a broader view of literacy. It may partly come out of the fact that our workplaces are becoming more diverse through immigration and other factors. At one time, I think, people thought literacy was just about being able to read and write in a binary way. More and more, it’s about having not only the skills to work in the languages in which business is conducted, but also having the capacity to problem-solve and the flexibility to adapt to change. There is such a connection between that broader skill set of literacy and the actual outcomes of work that I think more employers are aware of its importance.

Neath: I think labour does have a broader view of literacy; it’s broader than the work itself. One thing we don’t like is the term “worker empowerment.” We prefer to use “worker contribution.” In the training centres we operate, we find that when you can bring in a family to learn together – especially those in which English is not the first language – the learning process is often much better for the individual. It involves more than just work. It is about family and it is definitely about lifelong learning, which is our model.

Is the need for English as a Second Language (ESL) training, as a component of literacy, of greater importance today?

Beatty: It is of critical importance. We’ve seen it grow dramatically in recent years as employers have increasingly looked to new Canadians and to recruiting from abroad to fill their skills needs.

Neath: We have programs in our training centres, one in Manitoba and one in Alberta, where, with the cooperation of the employer, we put on ESL training. That is definitely an area we are going to be growing more and more in the future.

Bloom: I think English as a Second Language or French, depending on where you are in the country, will become more important as the absolute number of immigrants entering annually grows. We’re seeing a steady increase – something over 250,000 this year.

It’s important to observe that the language skill required to function effectively at work is significantly higher than that required to get along within the community. That’s because the vocabulary around work is quite technical, and there is the need to communicate effectively in real time in order to function.

With Canada’s competitive position deteriorating, our work force shrinking and our population aging, some argue corporations should be investing more in literacy programs. Are corporations doing enough?

Neath: Do you want the guy from the union to go first? Because I’ll say we don’t think so!

Our union, working with employers, has been involved with training and education more than any other union with the exception of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the municipalities. But what we find is that still, whatever happens, it’s the bottom line [that counts]. It’s the shareholders. This often means eliminating training or eliminating various programs, like in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. When times get tough, corporations eliminate those programs. Then, later on, when times get good, they say we need all these people with all this training. I don’t want to say most employers, but a lot of employers are looking for someone else to either fund a program or find ways of training the people.

Beatty: Again looking at our Management Issues Survey, we’ve found that just over 30 per cent of companies report that they spend 3 per cent or more of payroll on training each year. Is it enough? No, it never is enough. In the competitive world of the 21st century, you have to have a work force with the skills to ensure that you’re truly world-class. The real question is, what can we do to provide greater incentives for all players – business, the educational sector, governments – to do more to upgrade the skills of our workforce? One of the things we’d like is to make some of the surplus from the Employment Insurance Fund available to employers to re-invest in upgrading the skills of their workers.

Bloom: One of the continuing challenges in the area of skills development, and literacy in particular, is that human capital is moveable. This is one of the concerns raised by employers. If they invest in job-specific training, they’re likely able to gain a benefit. If they develop people’s broader skills, there’s a concern that it makes the person more marketable, and, therefore, they might leave.

A second point is that the nature of training may well be changing in ways that have not come to the surface fully as yet. Starting in the early ’90s, we saw a reduction in formal training at the same time that we flagged the need to develop people more. But what is not being measured yet is the extent to which formal training, which involves developing curricula and typically puts people into classrooms, is being replaced by informal training or learning that comes in and through the work. No one yet has the statistics on that, but I think that warrants serious examination.

Farbrother: Probably a critical point [regarding the development of training programs] is that an employee of an organization, or a constituent within a community, has some basic rights. Some of the growth we have seen in the work that CAMA and CUPE have done over the last 10 or 12 years –going from eight programs to over 200 municipalities taking a significant look at this particular issue of literacy – has been around those basic rights individuals have to develop at their own pace, to have a say in the kind of program that’s being developed and to create a comfortable environment in which to learn.

Neath: One of the things we have found through our training centres when we do work with employers is that creating and working in a comfortable environment brings the best results and the best benchmarks. But getting employers in the private sector to take that avenue is a heck of lot harder than to get people in the public sector to do it. Even though it seems the right approach, employers want to run in the opposite direction.

Beatty: Going back to the concern some employers have about losing workers they have trained, I think it’s important to differentiate between large and small businesses. You hear that concern expressed most frequently among small businesses that often can’t afford the same pay scale as some of the larger companies can. Their concern is obviously that once they upgrade the skills of their workers, they’re apt to find one of the larger companies that can pay better.

What we’ve been saying to our members is: This investment is important to you for your business. You will have a better, happier worker as a result of the investment that you make. This is more likely to make them decide to stay with you because they’re feeling they can continue to grow and learn. This is an investment with bottom-line benefits for business.

Bloom: One of the challenges in literacy investment in the larger businesses is that they tend not to recognize that there are literacy problems. When you interview [employers] about it, which we do, and tell them that 42 per cent of the Canadian adult working-age population has literacy problems, they say: Yes, it’s terrible and we need to do something about it. But when we ask them if they have those problems, many of them don’t think they do.

I think that that is another piece of the puzzle. The actual need for literacy and basic-skills development in the employee population is a hidden problem partly because people themselves don’t want to reveal the extent of their need. If you use the word ‘literacy,’ there’s very often a sense of shame about it. Often, it’s better to use a different vocabulary when talking about these skills to get people to come forward.

What are the necessary elements for an effective literacy program?

Neath: When you have cooperation from both sides, that’s going to be the absolute best you can have. At UFCW, we run a lot of these programs, but we run them – for lack of a better term – “behind the employer’s back.” In other words, we run them, not the employers. It’s from our funding, and we know our people feel comfortable in those programs because we do them in a way that creates a relaxed learning experience. To Michael [Bloom’s] point, there is still that challenge to get people to say that they have a problem, and often they are afraid to do that in front of their employer.

I totally agree that the large employers don’t tackle the literacy issue as strongly as they should. But again, if everybody in the organization can say there is a problem and we’ve got to work on that problem, then it will work. If an employer simply says, ‘We’ve got to do this,’ and it’s being run unilaterally, often that program won’t work.

Farbrother: We use a [multiple-step] process [to develop programs] based around a partnership model. As you work through each step, you keep everyone on board.

Just to highlight five learnings we have observed: it’s a collaborative effort, but we really believe you’ve got to ground the initiative in sound values and principles; all stakeholder groups should be on the committee, whatever governance structure you use; there’s sound planning; the communications piece is important to keep everybody in the loop and informed as you work through the design; and, obviously, there is some measurement as you start to see the outcomes of the work that’s been done.

Probably the real key piece is collaboration – start small and build on the successes that you have had.

Bloom: I like what you’ve said. We emphasize the need for balanced, collaborative competition between labour and management. One other piece our research suggests is that you must have worker involvement in designing, implementing and evaluating the programs.

Neath: We also find it’s incredibly important that we have peer training, as well—workers training workers. It takes away a lot of the fear about the formal classroom setting that they feel they often failed in and would fail in again.

Have testing and assessment changed?

Neath: From a union perspective, we are often concerned with testing. There are going to be obvious places where testing is necessary and you can’t eliminate it. If you have individuals, however, who are already limited in terms of their literacy, testing becomes another big hurdle for them. [At UFCW], we’re not afraid of testing, we just want to make sure it’s done right and not in a way to simply get the answer that the tester or employer may want.

Farbrother: Certainly, with the programs that are done jointly by CUPE and CAMA, there is very little formal testing, but there is constant one-on-one evaluation.

Bloom: Our research shows that people who go through literacy and basic-skills programs definitely improve their performance in many measurable ways, and I think that’s of greater interest to an employer than how you perform on a literacy test.

Beatty: My perspective is similar. There’s a difference between certification that requires testing and the perspective of employers who are less focused on some sort of numerical score than they are on the capacity of the individual to do the job.

To what extent are development and implementation of workplace literacy programs being brought to the bargaining table?

Neath: At UFCW, I’d say it’s part of most of our negotiations, but it really depends on the employers. If there is interest, they will come aboard. In other cases, employers may be concerned about being involved with a union because of their proprietary programs, which they don’t want anyone else to see. In a case like ours, where we represent [through locals] different employers in the same industry, some [employers] may not relate as well as others to the programs.

Beatty: It’s less a case of whether negotiations bring you into doing these programs than of seeing that this as an investment that bears a return. Much of industry is not unionized today, but a wise employer, with or without pressure from a union, should be looking at where he or she should make an investment that is going to make the business more competitive. As we agreed earlier, with the nature of the global economy today, it’s essential that we have a workforce with the skills that allow us to compete. Our argument to industry is that this is an investment, not an expense. It bears bottom-line returns that are positive for the employer.

Neath: But does that message get out there? We don’t feel that message gets out to the employer.

Beatty: We need to do more. CME has done work, both with governments and with its own members, to make the point that an employer is going to want to see the business case [for investing in training]. Anybody who studies best practices will say that the most successful businesses are those that reinvest in their employees and, as a result, have a more competitive company.

Bloom: In an increasingly competitive job market, where the demand for people is rising, I think an increasingly common strategy among employers is to offer literacy and language training as a way of identifying themselves as a preferred employer, and as a way of creating that sense of connection and loyalty we spoke of earlier. In some regional labour markets, it’s difficult to raise wages to a level that would attract people, so you have a real difficulty in filling many jobs. But if you can offer people opportunities to develop themselves and provide skills that lead to careers, you can create a connection to people and draw them to your workplace. This may be a time when we see more employers taking up literacy and skills development as a means to attract employees.

Farbrother: I think the City of Winnipeg is a classic example in our area, with about $3 million set aside over two collective agreements that use some of the CAMA essential-skills programs as part of that investment. In terms of employee retention, I think it’s one of many elements that an employer has to think about. It’s really about developing that connection. If you can build that connection, you’re probably more likely to keep that individual.