Literacy training yields big payoff at Air New Zealand

In this case study we talk to Air New Zealand Payroll Manager, Sue Travaglia, who spearheaded the organisation’s literacy training and who has seen the results firsthand.

"I'd guess there’s huge untapped and hidden potential within many New Zealand businesses. That’s why I think it’s so important that workplace literacy programmes are available. They help people to communicate and, as a result, do and achieve so much more."

Read on for more on why Sue’s developed a long-standing belief in workplace literacy programmes for people who speak English as a second language.

• Overview
• Assessing our needs
• Implementing a response
• Measuring the outcome
• Improving for the future
• Top tips
• Hear from Air New Zealand
• Any questions?

Overview

A small yet determined team within Air New Zealand is proving its worth thanks to a business communication course developed by workplace literacy specialists.

Who is Air New Zealand?

Air New Zealand, an international and domestic airline company with more than 11,000 employees, has been running training to give its culturally-diverse payroll team the reading, writing and oral communication skills they need to deliver top-quality services.

What did they expect to gain?

Feedback from internal customers showed the 30-person team sometimes struggled to communicate complex payroll information in plain language.

The first step was to assess everyone’s communication skills to see who needed training on what topics.

Results found some people needed to learn to write emails better. Others, who spoke English as a second language, needed help understanding New Zealand culture, idioms and use of language.

Weekly training (up to a total of 20 hours per learner) was held on site in company time. Lessons were tailored to individual needs and drew on real-life examples in the workplace.

What were their key outcomes?

Assessment results taken after the training finished showed improvement in speaking and writing. Meanwhile, the team’s manager had noted improvement in people’s ability to communicate and be understood. Customer feedback, collected through formal surveys, is steadily improving.

Assessing our needs

Starting out

We are a team of 30 who look after the payroll of Air New Zealand’s more than 11,000-person workforce. We’re also an educated and diverse group, representing more than a dozen different nationalities and cultures.

It’s my role to manage the payroll team and our solutions centre, a small contact centre that handles any questions about human resources (HR) or payroll enquiries.

Air New Zealand (through our capability team) runs a lot of training and development from crew, pilot and engineer training through to customer service training for people who check you in at the front desk. But it doesn’t offer literacy training.

So, we decided to strike out on our own and set up our own course using an external training provider – albeit with our capability team’s initial help and guidance.

There’s definitely scope for the literacy work we’re doing to influence or complement Air New Zealand training across the board. But it’s early days. We need time to tell our story and to see how and if it fits with what’s currently on offer.

Improving the bottom line

We decided to run literacy training after getting feedback from our customers (within Air New Zealand) saying they found it hard to understand some of our communication.

Literacy training was one of several key ways we wanted to improve our customer service rating within the organisation. The communication demands on my team are high. They deal with complex subject matter. For example, our payroll team works with 27 different collective employment agreements and more than 1,500 individual employment agreements.

Their challenge is to communicate technical information in ways that can be easily understood. Yes, we want to be accurate and professional. But, at the end of the day, we simply want to respond to our people in a way that works best for them. Mostly they want to know why their pay isn’t what they expected it to be.

Implementing a response

Getting help

We’ve run two workplace literacy courses. Our capability team was fundamental in helping us set up both by putting us in touch with an excellent training provider.

They knew the training industry well and they were keen we got value for money and found people who could work well with us.

Eventually we signed up with Workbase and successfully applied for Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) funding to start training.

Spreading the word

We decided to make training mandatory to avoid singling people out. We developed it as a business communication course. Everyone was assessed and each individual was given their results. If the results showed an individual did not need training they were no longer required to attend.

This made the selection independent from the company. When the data came back, we looked at where we were at as a group and as individuals. We looked at what we’re good at, as well as where we were lacking.

Course participants were, of course, a little nervous about the early questionnaires and assessment. But any nervousness soon disappeared once the course got underway.

We introduced our people to the training at meetings, in daily discussions, in routine one-to-one meetings and so on. We are a reasonably small team, so we took every opportunity to talk about what the training involved and why we were doing it.

Making it work

We introduced workplace literacy training at the same time we were improving our business communication more generally.

To me, this was fundamental in making it work. It was integrated into our day-to-day business and tied to an organisational goal (of an improved customer service rating and improved communication). Doing it made sense to our people.

Many in the team needed to learn to write emails better and become better at explaining complex subject matter. That initial assessment was really important because it gave our providers the information they needed to develop the training programmes and it clarified the goals we wanted to achieve from the training itself.

Our Workbase tutors were excellent. They had the right skills for teaching people with second language needs. They introduced a lot of course content looking at New Zealand culture, New Zealand idioms and what Kiwis actually mean when they say certain things.

These are exactly the kinds of things that trip up second-language learners. Overall, my team has quite high levels of literacy in their own language and culture. In New Zealand, however, communicating can be a challenge.

Developing a training model

Our course was fantastic. Workbase developed a programme of 20 hours per learner carried out for an hour each week on site in company time. It was adapted and tailored to the specific needs of every individual and drew on real-life examples in the workplace.

Everyone received an individualised learning programme, based on his or her assessment results. In some cases, where participants had a similar skill level, Workbase provided small group tutoring, giving employees the opportunity to learn from one another. I think the one-on-one tutoring, combined with the small group work, was just brilliant.

Measuring the outcome

Reflecting on the data

Our assessment results, taken before and after the programme, showed overall improvement across our team in the key areas of speaking and writing. Over time we saw improvement in people’s ability to communicate and be understood and to understand what was being said and communicated to them.

It’s important to remember that this kind of learning takes time and practice, it can’t be rushed. People who’ve learned a second language will understand this.

We’ve no requirement to continue with training. But, thanks to the past couple of years, we now enjoy a team culture that makes communicating something we talk about, discuss and try to improve. It’s common for our people to think about and discuss how they might approach an email or a conversation and seek feedback and ideas about what will be most effective.

Listening to our people

Evidence is important. Especially if it’s used to make decisions with what is usually a limited training dollar. Collecting people’s stories, observing change first hand - these things are evidence in my view.

One of our course participants from China found training helped him enjoy work more. That’s been one of the best spinoffs for him.

His manager noticed that, after the training, he was bringing more of his personality to work, could express his sense of humour better, joke with his colleagues, that sort of thing. It’s helped him feel more at home in New Zealand. He’s also become more confident communicating orally, saying he’s keener to pick up the telephone and talk through a work issue. In the past he relied more on email.

For him, it provided a new lease of life. As soon as he’d finished the first course, he signed up for the next. He wanted to keep going and do more. He told me he now considers New Zealand his home. This is where he wants to live. And he can see how improving his communication will help him to better integrate into life here.

In many ways, it’s about getting the most out of people and helping them reach their potential.

Years ago I worked with a former high court judge from Sri Lanka. She was working in my filing room, having fled Sri Lanka and threat of death. When I spoke to her – and her command of the English language was far greater than mine – I could see this intelligent, talented woman was limited by her extremely heavy accent. It was just so difficult to understand her with a New Zealand ear.

I thought it was a crime, because, with a course like the one we’ve implemented here, she could’ve made a much bigger contribution to our country. Undoubtedly, we would’ve been richer for it.

It’s my view, that this story, my experience, isn’t an isolated case. I’d guess there’s huge untapped and hidden potential within many New Zealand businesses. That’s why I think it’s so important that workplace literacy programmes are available. They help people to communicate and, as a result, do and achieve so much more.

Improving for the future

Embedding change

I can see huge benefits in this type of training for a lot of businesses. I can see how it could add to the efficiency and performance of others as it has for my team.

I think communication is a challenge for a lot of businesses. It’s also a challenge to immediately see how training like this can make a difference. But you’ll be convinced once you’ve seen it and experienced it.

To me it’s ideal for any workforce that struggles to understand what they have been told to do or who find it difficult to communicate. It’s also vital for business owners who want their employees to do their jobs well and whose livelihood relies on providing excellent customer service.

Many Kiwi businesses will have these needs and yet, somehow, somewhere the link between improving people’s ability to read, write and communicate well and improved productivity and workplace safety isn’t being made.

Making it sustainable

We are not planning any more training of this sort in our department, however, we continue to focus on communication in our performance goals. Having done the training, it is now easy to have conversations with our people where we identify gaps in their written and verbal communication.

Our leadership team also better understand that we need to be vigilant in continuing to grow our competence in this area because they’ve seen the positive feedback we now get from our customers.

We’ve also gone back to the capability team to report back on our experience and share our insights, so that what we’ve learned might have a wider impact on Air New Zealand as a business.

That’s been an important step for me, personally and professionally. I’m really passionate about workplace literacy training and this experience has strengthened that passion.

Taking stock

I have lived in Auckland all my life and I love that it is such a multi-cultural city. I think programmes like this have the potential to really enhance our country’s diversity. By that I mean there’s more than simply a business benefit to these things.

So, when I’m asked: ‘Has our workplace literacy training been worth it?’ I quickly reply with: ‘Absolutely. If I was in another company or department with needs similar to those in my team, then, yes, I would do it again.’

Top tips

1. Don’t be afraid to strike out on your own. There’s plenty to gain from a modest start.
2. Use workplace literacy training to unlock the hidden, untapped potential of your employees, in particular those who speak English as a second language.
3. Seek help to find an external training provider – preferably someone who knows the industry well and can measure value for money.
4. Look at using training to improve your customer service through better email, face-to-face and telephone communication.
5. Share what you learn across your organisation to make sure it doesn’t start and finish with you.

Hear from Air New Zealand

Alan Ni, Business Delivery Analyst at Air New Zealand explains how training has improved his oral communication skills.

Watch a video of Alan Ni

Any questions?

If you have a question about this case study, please send us an email.