What you need to know and do first

It's increasingly apparent that difficulties with reading, maths and communication have a significant effect on business performance. This website is designed to help you understand the issue and find effective ways of improving these core skills for your employees and lifting your organisation's performance.

To begin, it's important to understand what this is about and put it in context.

Reading, maths and communication skills are the starting point for all other skills in any business. And they are necessary for every typical workplace task.

Most people are not aware that New Zealand, like many other countries, has significant issues with these skills.

People with gaps in these core skills are often valued employees. Although they have difficulties with core skills, this doesn't mean they are unintelligent or unmotivated.  They may be capable, hardworking and loyal.  But their difficulties will make it hard for them to get ahead and hard for your business to achieve best performance.

The situation is known as workplace literacy and numeracy. This term describes the core skills employees need to be effective in speaking, listening, reading, writing, processing mathematical information, using technology and solving problems at work. To review other key terms, download our glossary (PDF, 116 KB). 

Impacts for business

The core skills of reading, maths and communication are fundamental to almost every task across any business.

View a text description of the image above.

For even more examples of how your business may be affected, read about the bottom line.

Get the facts

This is a significant issue facing New Zealand business and you need to know more about how it affects your business and what you can do about it.

• See how business is affected
• See the process for addressing the issue
• Read the top 20 questions other employers are asking.