Literacy the workplace accident ‘elephant in the room’

21 September 2012

Literacy the workplace accident ‘elephant in the room’

Business leaders and literacy experts say more needs to be done to improve adult literacy if New Zealand is to achieve workplace accident reduction targets.

Every year more than 200,000 New Zealanders are seriously harmed and more than 100 killed in workplace accidents.

Paul Jarvie, Manager of Occupational Health and Safety for the Employers and Manufacturers Association, and National Manager for the NZ Institute of Safety Management (NZISM), says Department’s Workplace Health and Safety Strategy is a step in the right direction but literacy and numeracy are “the elephants in the room”.

Research has found that most New Zealand adults can read and write straight forward, familiar information but around half have significant literacy and/or numeracy gaps that affect their ability to manage the more complex demands of their jobs.

Mr Jarvie says literacy issues make it difficult to reduce workplace accidents because people don’t understand written information about hazards. It also means that many people are unable to correctly fill in the health and safety incident forms that provide valuable information to employers and the authorities.

“It’s widely agreed that more research is needed to understand where and why workplace accidents are happening and in what kinds of businesses, but getting good data requires workplaces to supply accurate information about incidents.

“Achieving this requires people to fully and accurately complete workplace accident reports and return them to the Department of Labour. This is not happening at the moment.”

Katherine Percy - Chief Executive of adult literacy, numeracy and communication support provider, Workbase – agrees.

“Little meaningful headway is being made to reduce workplace accidents in New Zealand and our experience working with hundreds of businesses shows that literacy issues play a big part.”

Mr Jarvie and Ms Percy believe that New Zealand’s workplace safety statistics are unlikely to improve significantly unless employers take steps to address literacy issues amongst their employees.

“Employers need to understand the health and safety risks and impacts arising from low literacy and provide training that builds employees’ knowledge and skills. This will also have positive flow on effects to their general job performance,” she says. “It’s also vital that employers take time to check that people have actually understood the messages they are given.”

Mr Jarvie says that, in addition to training, employers need to strongly signal to employees that health and safety matters.

“All too often employees pick up the implicit message that their priority is to get the job done quickly. This can make them reluctant to take time to follow safety procedures and instructions.”

Mr Jarvie and Ms Percy warn that quick fixes such as putting up warning signs will achieve little because health and safety involves understanding concepts around risk identification and mitigation: “there’s no quick fix”.

They comment that employers worry about the training and downtime costs involved in improving employees’ literacy skills but those who address the issue experience many benefits, including improved health and safety in their workplace. They find that trainees also gain skills that enable them to become better at their jobs and participate more fully in the workplace activities such as meetings.

Ms Percy adds that many businesses don’t realise that they could access government-subsidised workplace literacy training programmes.

Case study: Transpacific Industries

Workplace literacy training has made a big difference to Transpacific Industries’ endeavours to develop a health and safety culture throughout its business.

A large part of the recycling, waste management and industrial services company’s operations involve working in high risk environments such as confined spaces, heights and around heavy machinery and energy systems.

Managing Director Tom Nickels says the company places employee safety above all other objectives yet it struggled to get some of its team members to comply with some of the more complex documentation requirements.

“Reading and writing issues hindered our progress towards developing a safety culture and we knew that literacy and numeracy were an important part of the cultural change jigsaw.”

The company put 25 employees at one of its sites through a literacy training programme, including operators, general duties staff, managers and employees with English as a second language.

Participants became far more confident as a result of their improved literacy, numeracy and language skills. Now they actively participate in the company’s toolbox meetings and monthly health and safety meetings.

“Before the literacy and numeracy course it was difficult to get them interested in these vital employee communication avenues,” says Mr Nickels.

“Now we have people volunteering to deliver tool box talks to their peers and they are more confident to let managers know if they have safety questions or concerns.”

Mr Nickels says the literacy and numeracy programme did more than reduce accidents and incidents; it resulted in the workforce regarding health and safety as part of life by resolving their fears of paperwork.

“Employees who would once run a mile from a booklet or printed page now carry safety tool-kit pads with them and plan the task’s safety aspects before they begin.”

He notes that employees with literacy and numeracy problems expend a lot of energy on working out how to hide the problem and try to justify why they should not have to ‘fill in all this stupid paperwork’.

“These same people now pro-actively ask management for the correct documents such as permits before they start a job. We have found literacy and numeracy training to be a powerful tool for changing the health and safety culture at this site.”

As a result, Transpacific Industries has introduced the workplace literacy training programme to other sites.

For more information visit www.workbase.org.nz

ENDS

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