EasiYo Products to fulfil growth ambitions with workplace literacy training

In this case study EasiYo Products Chief Executive, Paul O’Brien (appointed in 2009), talks about why he decided to set up the company’s first-ever literacy training course and how training links to his overall vision for the company.

"It’s more important than ever to differentiate yourselves from your competitors. [Literacy] training gives you that crucial point of difference, that competitive edge."

• Overview
• Assessing our needs
• Implementing a response
• Measuring the outcome
• Improving for the future
• Top tips
• Case study snapshot available
• Any questions?

Overview

EasiYo Products (EasiYo) has a new leader at the helm using workplace literacy training to boost the foundation skills of his mostly Tongan workforce.

Who is EasiYo?

EasiYo is a food production company based on Auckland’s North Shore with 60 employees – most of whom were born in Tonga and speak English as a second language.

The 19-year-old company, founded by entrepreneurs Len and Kathy Light, exports to more than 20 countries.

The last 2 years have proved significant ones for the former family-owned and operated company. Dairy cooperative Westland Milk Products acquired 100% of EasiYo, sales topped $30 million and the company appointed its first-ever Chief Executive, Paul O’Brien.

How did they run their training?

EasiYo worked with Industry Training Organisation, Competenz, and literacy provider, Skills4Work, to run a 16-week workplace literacy training course for factory staff on site, in work time.

What do they expect to gain?

EasiYo intends to boost growth by giving factory staff the reading, writing, maths and oral communication skills they need to do their jobs well and go on to further training.

What are their key outcomes?

It’s early days. The company’s first training course is nearly complete and assessment results are still pending.

Yet Chief Executive Paul O’Brien is already convinced workplace literacy training is right for his factory-based team and for his company as a whole.

Assessing our needs

Starting out

I began to think about workplace literacy training for EasiYo’s team of 20 factory workers after a few months in my role as Chief Executive.

We have a hardworking team of Tongan workers who manually haul around 25-kilogram bags of milk powder for a lot of the day. They lift milk powder on and off pallets and physically take it to our blending room.

Everyone speaks English as a second language and very few are qualified or skilled on paper.

Pretty much everyone in our factory was employed through knowing another factory worker here at EasiYo. There had been no application process. No one needed to have any skills.

Until I came along in 2009, EasiYo was a family-owned firm. There wasn’t a company strategy, formal executive team or company values. There wasn’t any staff training either.

One of the first things I did was ask my production manager to research the skills on the factory floor.

I found there were very few first aiders, very few people qualified to drive a fork hoist, little or no first-line supervision, absolutely no quality assurance – although the team did have quality control skills.

Talking to them I found a strong desire for a pay rise. Some had been with EasiYo for a couple of years and were still on the same salary.

I told them I was more inclined to pay on skills than length of service. So, when I saw how low our skill levels were, I contacted the Industry Training Organisation for our industry – Competenz – and that’s when we started talking about workplace literacy training.

I showed the local Competenz representative around. He met the workforce and pretty soon we’d settled on basic literacy and numeracy training. Our first course, provided through Skills4Work, started mid-way through 2010.

Improving the bottom line

Training and upskilling the factory team is about giving something valuable to our people. It’s about sound business practice and it’s about helping EasiYo improve its bottom line through a period of considerable development and growth.

We’re a company with serious ambitions. We have a new strategic direction with three key goals: operational excellence (we are crying out for that), increasing exports and market research.

I see the literacy training linking to the first goal, particularly. I’ve said to my executive team that anything we do on a monthly basis needs to contribute to one of these goals, if not all three. If it doesn’t, then, maybe, don’t do it.

I believe it will give us the competitive edge. If you look around, you’ll see a proliferation of similar services in the market place.

It’s difficult to innovate these days and it’s more important than ever to differentiate yourselves from your competitors. Training your staff gives you that crucial point of difference, that competitive edge.

Also, there’s a risk – particularly in our industry – in having a team that’s unskilled. People overseas trust New Zealand’s food, our dairy food in particular. They want a healthy, nutritious product and they know our food is the best in the world.

Can you imagine what would happen to our brand if we got the wrong bacteria in our yoghurt and it made people in one of our export markets seriously ill? Can you imagine the coverage in the British press, for example?

Our brand would be dead and millions of dollars worth of sales wiped out. A disaster like that would make us wish we’d invested in training.

Training is about looking after your bottom line. It’s about improving the quality of what you offer, it’s about mitigating risk – it’s about all of these things.

Many business owners think nothing of spending $30,000 plus to get an MBA. With literacy training, you can get an entire workforce trained for a third of that price.

If you’re a business like us – ambitious and committed – and you don’t see this kind of training as a core part of your business, you’re kidding yourself.

Implementing a response

Getting help

We decided to work with Competenz and Skills4Work and they’ve been excellent.

They’ve run 2 hours of basic literacy and numeracy training every week for 16 weeks in company time. We’ve had a great Skills4Work tutor who’s got on well with our people. And she’s picked up some important issues we were not aware of that needed addressing.

You know what we found on our very first course? One of our guys – who could not speak English, read or write – was signing off forms. I had no idea, but our tutor picked him up fairly quickly.

The tutor has been brilliant at making sure everyone has completed training. Some have needed extra help above and beyond the 16-week course. For the most part, no-one found it easy.

With training, they’ve been able to understand and work with my broader vision for training. I wanted to start with the basics. But I want my factory team to go as far as they can.

I’d like to see them achieve national industry qualifications in health and safety, driving and warehousing.

Spreading the word

I didn’t need convincing about doing this work and I didn’t feel I needed to convince anyone else either.

I simply said to the guys: ‘Listen this is not a trap (some thought it was). I’m giving you an asset that’s with you for the rest of your life. Education is portable, you can take it with you. You can be proud of it.’

I simply repeated the same messages over and over. I talked about training being an investment in someone’s career. I said a certificate is something they would own themselves and could take with them into another job or add to if they wanted to.

Making it work

Making it work, to me, means letting my guys know that by completing workplace literacy training, they have run the first kilometre of a marathon. This course is a start in their journey. It is certainly not the destination.

That’s why having me involved driving things, getting a local MP or someone of standing in the Tongan community to attend the graduation at the end of training is so important. I want to motivate and inspire this team to learn.

Developing a training model

The training model we’re looking at with Competenz is one that starts with basic workplace literacy training and progresses on to industry-based training and qualifications.

The guys in the factory are unlikely to succeed at industry-based training without the basics sorted. They need to be able to read, write and speak in English and they need their maths.

Because we’re a food plant, everything is measured, calculated, assessed and documented on paper – so all three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic) are crucial in the factory. They underpin everything we do here.

Measuring the outcome

Reflecting on the data

The assessment results of our first workplace literacy training programme are due to come through shortly.

I’m interested in data that shows people’s reading, writing, maths and oral communication has improved. It’ll tell me if our people are ready for the next step.

But I’m also looking for feedback from the tutor about basic capability, so I can get a better sense of who is able to do what well.

I’m interested in finding out about people’s attitude and their aptitude. To me, having high scores in the academic areas is one thing. But I’m also really keen on knowing if my people are loyal, genuine, hardworking and positive in their approach to work.

A good attitude means a lot when it comes to workplace training and overall success at work. You can teach skills to people with a great attitude.

Improving for the future

Embedding change

I’m committed to workplace literacy training because I have to be. There’s no other option for me as a business leader.

If I want to improve EasiYo, if I want to deliver on our three-pronged strategy, then I have to stick with continued training.

Also, these people are my people and I’m committed to their development and their wellbeing.

It is my responsibility to help them develop their skills and to turn things around. My predecessors employed these people and I’m not going to just throw them out. They haven’t done anything wrong. It is management’s fault we haven’t invested in these people until now.

Besides, they are doing a reasonable job with low-level skills. Imagine what will be possible with good training and significantly improved knowledge and skills.

Making it sustainable

I believe we’re on a journey and workplace literacy training represents the start of that journey.

We’ve also introduced lean manufacturing, an organisational change programme of continuous improvement and best practice. So lean manufacturing is very much a part of the journey too.

In 2 years’ time, I’d like my people to have sufficient knowledge and skills to fully embed a quality assurance process within the factory.

I’d like to see some of the guys in the factory move up the company ladder to the role of supervisor by getting qualified in first-line supervision. I’d like to see team leadership roles in place.

And I’d like to see career progression related back to a performance pay framework – so that people are inspired and motivated to work smarter.

Taking stock

Put it this way, if we had to do the whole course from scratch again, we would. If no one passed, or if three quarters failed, I’d say to Competenz and Skills4Work we’d need to do it again. That’s because I’d know, by the end of it, they’d be much better off than when I found them.

It’s true that some people baulk about the expense of training and say: ‘What if we train them and they leave?’.

In response, I say: ‘What if we don’t train them and they stay?’. My answer is: ‘Don’t worry about the cost, the cost is the input. The value they’ll provide after training is what you should really focus on.’

My mantra is don’t measure the input, measure the output instead. That’s what counts.

Top tips

1. See foundation skills training as a must for anyone in the food industry.
2. Keep focused on the outcomes of training – that’s where the real value is.
3. Talk to your Industry Training Organisation about linking workplace literacy training to other qualifications such as health and safety qualifications.
4. Use the opportunity to train and upskill, to motivate and reward your people.
5. Combine literacy training with organisational change programmes such as lean manufacturing to improve the outcomes of both programmes.

Case study snapshot available

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Download or request copies of EasiYo's case study snapshot. This 2-page snapshot summarises their training programme, the benefits for their business and the return on their investment.

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