Table 1: Hard returns on Essential Skills investments

Organization Hard Returns
Syncrude Canada Ltd.
  • By delivering Effective Reading in Context (ERIC) and Syncrude Applied Math (SAM) in pre-employment programs at Keyano College, Syncrude has enhanced students’ ability to pass the Test of Workplace Essential Skills (TOWES), which it uses as a pre-employment screening tool.
  • Syncrude employees who failed apprenticeship exams passed their tests after taking ERIC and SAM.
  • ERIC participants have moved up to team leader and supervisor positions within Syncrude.
BHP Billiton Diamonds Inc.
  • The workplace is safer and more productive.
  • Turnover rates are lower.
National Silicates
  • There is a zero voluntary turnover rate; employees do not leave when they get training.
  • The company has reduced overtime hours, outside contractor hours and plant down time.
Minas Basin Pulp & Power Company Limited
  • Efficiencies on the paper machine exceeded 80 percent every month during 2004, something the company had never achieved before (average past efficiency rates only reached the high 70s).
  • Absenteeism reached an all-time low at 6.9 days absent per employee in 2003 (the previous average was 10.91 days).
  • A decline in lost time accidents lowered the company’s safety performance index from 19.88 in August 2003 to 1.5 in August 2004 (383.5 days were lost in 2003 due to accidents, compared to 62.5 days lost in 2004).
  • Employee retention is up.
Durabelt Inc.
  • Duraschool students developed a dictionary of workplace terminology for new workers.
  • Employees rewrote the employee handbook to make it easier for them to use.
  • Employees put annual performance appraisal forms into plain language.