Workplace Literacy — A National Update

BRIGID HAYES

ADULT LEARNERS LEARN BEST when the learning makes sense for their own realities. Adult literacy practitioners have understood that motivations for adult learners are key to understanding how best to respond to learners’ needs. For the most part, literacy programs are able to assess and respond to their learners’ contexts based on their direct relationship with the learner.

But what about those learners who do not have an exclusive relationship to the literacy practitioner? What happens when literacy issues come to the fore as a result of other, non-learning issues? This very question is one that has preoccupied the National Literacy Secretariat (NLS) of Human Resources Development Canada since its inception. In 1988, the federal government established the NLS as a focal point for literacy activities, understanding that literacy was everyone’s concern. It was clear that there is a relationship between literacy and many other social and economic issues. For this reason, the NLS has worked with voluntary organizations whose mandate is not literacy but whose clients or issues touch on literacy. For example, ex-offenders or social service clients may have literacy challenges but their main relationship is with a non-literacy voluntary agency. Working to assist these agencies and organizations to understand literacy issues and to be positioned to respond to their clients’ needs has been a critical aspect of the NLS’ work. In the same vein, efforts around plain language and design, and integrating literacy into training of professionals in the medical and justice systems have also contributed to this effort.

Factoring Literacy into Workplace Operations

Another key target group of the NLS has been business associations and labour groups. Again, the model is similar to that of the work with non-literacy organizations. The goal of the NLS’ efforts has been to enable these groups to factor literacy into their operations, whether from the point of view of employee/worker training, client service, or communications. We have learned over the past 13 years that responding to literacy needs in the workplace and of workers is not a direct application of traditional adult literacy practice.

First, there are several more players involved, including management and the union, in addition to the learner. The workplace literacy practitioner must manage these relationships in a balanced and unbiased fashion. This is not as easy as it seems. Often, practitioners feel that their ‘client’ is the learner and so will ignore or overlook the issues raised by the other stakeholders. Occasionally, practitioners will see their primary responsibility to the employer, who is paying the bill, and not deal with other stakeholders with the same level of engagement. Other practitioners come to the workplace with little or no experience with unions or a negative attitude towards unions, not understanding that this will cause issues in the implementation of workplace literacy programs.