If you have only a few employees who need specific language help, consider arranging one-on-one tuition. Tuition may be available from community organisations such as Literacy Aotearoa or English Language Partners. In some cases, the tuition may be available to individual employees free of charge. Your input may be needed in arranging the tutoring and making time available for your employees to attend.

Other businesses – in the local vicinity or in the same industry – will likely also be facing this challenge. Talk to them to see if it’s possible to team up and share the costs of working with a training provider. Training could alternate across different sites, and use a mix of non-sensitive material from all employers. Or talk to your Industry Training Organisation (ITO) or local Chamber of Commerce to see if they can help facilitate a shared approach.

Learning Reps are employees who are trained by the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) to advocate for learning in their workplaces, support company training initiatives, promote industry training, identify literacy and numeracy needs and help employees into appropriate training programmes. If you already have Learning Reps on site, they could assist with identifying employees who could benefit from a literacy programme or other activities and support them during their training. The Learning Reps Programme is funded by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) and managed by the CTU. Find out more about the Learning Reps programme.

You may already have an in-house programme that can be adapted. For example, ongoing training that currently helps induct your new employees could be enhanced to help your existing employees learn a new task. This could also apply where employees haven’t needed specific skills such as report writing or computer processing in their current role. But their ability to contribute to your business – and their potential for promotion – could be improved by futher training.

You’ll find literacy training can be effectively incorporated with other workplace training. It could be training across your whole organisation or just for target groups where there is greater need for help with reading, maths and communication.

An audit by a training provider or your own trainer can show how existing training can be modified. It can also identify where existing training might be missing the mark for employees with literacy needs. With this knowledge you can take steps to improve your existing training or consider alternatives such as extra coaching for some employees.

A National Certificate in Adult Literacy Education Vocational Training is offered by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC). Completing the certificate can equip your in-house trainers to develop and run your workplace literacy programmes, possibly alongside your existing training programmes. The certificate gives good grounding in preparation to implementing a workplace literacy programme. It will also be beneficial when you want to build literacy training into your ongoing business processes.

Get your in-house trainer or a training provider to run a few sessions or a mini programme for supervisors, managers or team leaders. Use the sessions to provide practical advice on how to communicate effectively where there might be literacy needs. For example, to give oral instructions on health and safety matters to your employees who have reading difficulties.

Take a closer look at the information used by your employees who have difficulty with reading, maths and communication. Typical examples include safety notices, process instructions and basic forms. Consider how they can be made easier to understand with plain English or pictures. A training, communications or marketing advisor can be helpful in identifying areas that need simplification and recommending alternatives.

Assign a buddy to employees who have particular needs. An English-speaking buddy, for an employee who has English as a second language, can help ensure instructions are followed. It’s not a training solution. But the buddy system can help employees know what they are supposed to be doing. Gathering feedback from the buddies can help identify areas where more help is needed. An in-house trainer or training provider would be able to help train buddies so they understand what they need to do. Learning Reps or employee representatives may be able to help with this too.

Certain organisations and government departments may have other resources you can use:

• check with your Industry Training Organisation
• check out the 'Developing a training plan' page of the New Zealand Government business site
• there may be funding assistance from Work and Income if you are training employees who were previously on an unemployment benefit
• check out online resources for your employees.