Double the benefit for Canterbury Spinners

In this case study Canterbury Spinners Human Resources Manager, Karen Treloar, reflects on implementing a literacy programme for shift workers alongside a safety programme called BSafe. She also discusses the long-term changes the company is making to the way Canterbury Spinners does business.

The LEAP programme's fitted in well with our overall commitment to improving teamwork. Teams are starting to gel. People are getting that sense that we’re all in this together, that we’re all heading in the same direction.

• Overview
• Assessing our needs
• Implementing a response
• Measuring the outcome
• Improving for the future
• Top tips
• 2010 Skills Highway Award success
• Any questions?

Overview

Canterbury Spinners has seen promising results from running reading, writing and maths training alongside a safety programme called BSafe.

Who is Canterbury Spinners?

The Christchurch-based yarn production firm employs up to 260 shift workers. The company dyes, cards, spins and finishes raw wool for export-quality carpets.

What did they expect to gain?

Managers expected reading, writing and maths skills to improve, which they did. Assessment results showed big increases in reading and even better results in writing.

They also expected health and safety practices to climb, which they did. One department recently scored a company best, going 22 months without a lost-time injury.

But they didn’t expect running the two programmes together would multiply the effects of both – and then some.

What were their key outcomes?

Not only do employees have improved reading, writing, maths and safety skills, they are better team players and they’re more confident all round. Company morale has improved across the board.

Managers say they’ve come to realise that people were unsafe or becoming injured because they couldn’t read safety signs properly, understand safety instructions or communicate effectively with their teammates.

They’ve also found staff are much keener to rehabilitate and return to work from injury when they feel good about themselves and the company they work for.

Assessing our needs

Starting out

It wasn’t difficult to see we needed to do something about the reading, writing and maths skills of our workforce.

A couple of years ago we identified we had a real recruitment issue - we weren’t recruiting the type of people we could develop into managers.

We also had a lot of people nearing retirement age who knew a lot about our business (textiles), prompting us to look hard at how to replace them.

So, we had to look at the way we were recruiting people. That’s when we started to understand the importance of good literacy, numeracy and comprehension skills.

Also, around 30% of our employees speak English as a second language. These workers are intelligent, educated people who tend to have qualifications from their country of origin.

However, they’re often limited in their career progression because they lack the language skills or a depth of understanding about Kiwi culture.

Improving the bottom line

I’ve long seen the need to upskill employees in the area of reading, writing and maths. I’d say I’ve been aware of that general need within the New Zealand workforce for at least 20 years. Certainly in my last three companies there have been issues with literacy and numeracy.

However, until now, there’s been little recognition of these issues or the level of support businesses need to turn things around. Companies need a lot of support in my view. You need external specialists in adult literacy, resources and information.

Implementing a response

Getting help

Assessment and research results found our workforce was one of the worst our assessor had tested. We had an inkling of where we were at, but the extent of the problem came as a big surprise.

It’s been great working with a skilled training provider. Ours was Wilkinson’s Workplace Literacy Services. They carried out the initial literacy needs assessment of 20 employees and helped apply for Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) funding.

Their assessment included a series of interview questions about the skills related to employees’ jobs, their confidence levels and their aspirations within the company. Employees also completed reading, writing and maths tests (provided their role involved a fair amount of all three).

From the assessment results, we went on to develop the Learn, Experience and Progress (LEAP) programme.

Overall, Wilkinson’s contributed specialist knowledge about the basics of teaching reading, writing and maths and linked those ideas to our workplace material. That’s essentially how our programme was developed. We used a partnership approach.

Mathematical calculations covered in our LEAP programme included working out the number of packages of yarn needed for a particular product, logging accurate orders into a computerised system and calculating percentages. We’ve also made sure our employees involved in the programme are completing unit standards relevant to the National Certificate in Textiles Manufacture.

LEAP participants have lessons on New Zealand English (pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar exercises). They do role plays related to speaking and communication. They learn reading, writing, maths and computer skills. Wilkinson’s has since updated our LEAP programme in response to evaluation data. Its structure looks a bit different these days. We have moved to group sessions rather than one-on-one teaching. This change came about firstly because it was less expensive to run, but also because people are now at the stage where they benefit from working in small groups and learning from one another.

Spreading the word

We sold the LEAP programme by being upfront and open. In our mind it was always a workplace literacy programme.

It was never couched in other terms. We never offered incentives. It was what it was. We took this approach because we wanted to build, not erode, goodwill.

There’s been no stigma involved in LEAP. And that’s one of the things that we were concerned about. We thought people would be embarrassed about attending. But that’s not happened.

Making it work

I am pleased with the effort we put into finding a training provider. In fact, that’s my advice for companies looking into setting up a programme like ours.

We were very fortunate to have the tutors that we got through the programme. Without fail we’ve had excellent tutors. We settled on Wilkinson’s after carrying out reference checks, talking to other companies whose employees they’d taught.

They’ve been very receptive to working with us and to developing a programme and resources tailored to our workplace. We’d no prior experience coming into this work, so their input and leadership has been vital. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without them.

One of the challenges of LEAP was juggling the time involved. Our programme asked employees to do half in work time and half in their own time.

Logistically it was quite difficult trying to get people in on their days off. It was also difficult to organise training around our hours of operation. We run our business all day, every day.

Employees do 12-hour shifts – so to ask our people to stay on for another hour didn’t work for us.

Initially our programme involved 2 hours tutoring a week per learner. We asked each learner to give up an hour of their own time (on one of their rostered days off) and the other hour they did in company time.

We also found notifying tutors of absenteeism an issue at times – mostly because we operate around the clock. Working round the clock means we find out about absenteeism at odd times of the day or night. In turn, it meant we weren’t able to give tutors enough time to reschedule or change their plans, so they would sometimes turn up to teach an empty or near empty class.

Last year, we secured funding from the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) to cover a full-time coordinator role for 12 months, which has helped us iron out a lot of these practical issues.

Measuring the outcome

Reflecting on the data

When you improve an employee’s ability to read, write and do maths you also improve the ability of the teams they work in. By that I mean you influence the team dynamic and the team behaviour.

In that sense, the LEAP programme’s fitted in well with our overall commitment to improving teamwork. Teams are starting to gel. People are getting that sense that we’re all in this together, that we’re all heading in the same direction.

Undoubtedly this work has helped our employees become safer in the workplace too. We started a programme called BSafe about the same time as we started the LEAP programme. The two complemented each other really well.

BSafe aimed to reduce the number of injuries employees incur, rehabilitate people and get them back to work quicker after an injury. LEAP, meanwhile, emphasised clear communication of hazards (to teams and individuals) through team briefings. It also emphasised improving signage to make it easier for people to read and understand.

We realised that some incidents that led to an injury or a near miss were due to people being unclear about the instructions they were given. Or they were caused because employees couldn’t read the safety instructions or signage around hazards.

As the LEAP programme started to deliver benefits, these were the things we began to notice. We could see a correlation between the programme and the reduction of incidents and injuries we experienced.

BSafe also involved putting in a rewards system that recognised people’s growing understanding of health and safety and improved practices within the workplace.

The system tracks lost-time injuries, as well as positive things such as health and safety compliance and departmental tidiness. We’ve had one department and shift go 22 months without a lost-time injury – that’s a definite record.

We see this kind of achievement and the BSafe programme going hand-in-hand with LEAP. People know more, they’re doing things differently, they feel more like they’re part of a team. But also they feel the company is doing something for them, which means morale improves.

If we looked at the combined cost effectiveness of LEAP and BSafe, we would certainly be on the black side of the ledger. We’ve seen a considerable decrease in costs relating to medical treatment, rehabilitation and downtime.

Meanwhile, when we read through the findings of the programme, we see huge improvements in reading. The improvement in writing was also incredible.

Perhaps the biggest change has been the improvement of morale among our supervisors and their teams. Everyone works closely together here. And we see improved teamwork as one of the best things. It does have an impact on our bottom line.

We have a lower turnover, less requirement to retrain employees and disciplinary issues have reduced. We have fewer people off work on ACC and, on the odd occasion that someone does injure themselves at work, staff are very keen to get back to work as soon as they can.

In the past, we would have three to four people who were away on ACC at any one time. I’d check their progress, make sure they’d been treated medically and get them on our Return to Work programme. We are not having to do these things anymore. It means we can put our energy into much more productive things.

Listening to our people

We’ve been really impressed with how our trainees have improved on a personal level. It’s been really great to hear people’s good stories. At the graduation we held in December last year, we heard from employees who felt the training had really changed their lives. Their confidence had improved. They were able to stand in front of their teams every morning and give them clear, concise directions.

Others talked about the impact at home. Others just thanked the company for what we had done for them by providing them with the opportunity to improve their reading, writing and maths.

Another example relates to one of our night shift workers who struggled with English (it wasn’t his first language). Typically, he’d get his partner to do all the talking for him.

One night a supervisor got a phone call from this employee ringing in sick. He could hardly believe it was the same person. The employee’s speaking skills had improved so quickly, which had enabled him to pick up the phone and call his supervisor. That employee no longer had to rely on his partner to make these calls.

Improving for the future

Embedding change

We’ve changed the way we do things. We recruit people differently for starters. We ask recruitment agencies to test candidates on basic skills such as reading, writing and maths as a standard part of the recruitment process.

Making it sustainable

We’re very interested in maintaining a focus on workplace literacy training. We’d like to do that in ways that don’t involve spending a lot of money.

For example, we’re aware Industry Training Organisations are increasingly embedding literacy and numeracy learning into unit standards – so we’ll tap into that. That’s another tool we’ll look at.

We’re also keen to find external providers to update our internal documentation (manuals and training information) on a regular basis. We want to make sure they’re accessible and easy to read.

Taking stock

Looking back, there is something I’d do differently if we were starting LEAP from scratch.

I think there could be real value in involving the tutors a bit more in the life of the company itself. I’d perhaps look at a model of in-house training and that would mean the external tutor would become part of our company team.

That said, I do feel we just can’t fault our tutors or our providers. Wilkinson’s have been brilliant.

But they come, they teach, they go. They’re not part of our team per se. I think bringing the role in-house would mean you could more easily tweak and develop the course and the way it’s provided as you go. I think it would give you more flexibility and you could tailor it to your company needs better.

I’ve also learned that people are not what they seem. I’ve seen that in our workforce over the life of this programme. And I mean that in the most positive way.

Typically it takes 30 seconds to form an impression when you first meet someone. It can be a real challenge to come across well if you’re somebody who life hasn’t been kind to or you carry around the stigma of not having the ability to read, write and do maths.

I’ve been so impressed with our people who’ve taken the opportunities presented to them through the programme.

Top tips

1. Find out about the support available to help you lift the foundation level skills of your workforce.
2. Learn as much as you can about workplace literacy to make some lasting changes to your business.
3. Choose external providers carefully. Take the time to do your research.
4. Look at improving the way you recruit employees and your workplace documentation.
5. Don’t underestimate the positive impact of foundation skills training on morale, teamwork and health and safety.

2010 Skills Highway Award success

Canterbury Spinners received 'Highly commended' at the 2010 Skills Highway Award. 2010 Skills Highway Award Expand this image

Any questions?

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