Durabelt is a seasonal business and employees typically joined the firm without specifically preparing themselves academically for employment with the company. Durabelt now expects new recruits to have completed Grade 12. When the company started Essential Skills training, most employees were experienced but did not have that academic background and lacked certain Essential Skills.
Since Durabelt is a small organization, a concerted effort to refresh Essential Skills involved everyone, and the learning culture was apparent to all employees.
Durabelt tracked many impacts and benefits of Essential Skills training. Many related to positive changes in attitudes and behaviours that support performance in the workplace, success in the classroom and positive relationships at home. For Durabelt, enhanced employee self-confidence helps to ensure better working relationships and stronger productivity.
A challenge of making this model work in a larger organization might be engaging the entire work force—for example, getting input from everyone when rewriting work descriptions.
At Durabelt, organizational skill needs and gaps were identified by an independent third party, and skill development plans and activities were established for individual employees to ensure that the organization addressed its collective skill gaps at the individual level.