Workplace Literacy A Key To Lancaster County's Future

By James T. Morton, President
J. Marion Sims Foundation

The demands of the workplace are ever changing. The southern economy has evolved from being based on textiles and agriculture to relying increasingly on services and technology. And as the workplace changes, the skills needed to keep pace change as well. Unfortunately, many workers in Lancaster and Chester counties struggle to acquire or maintain the skills they need to adapt to change.

For these individuals this struggle translates into difficulty on the job, lost opportunities for advancement, few, if any, chances for increasing their income to help support their families, and mounting frustration. For employers, they translate into increased costs through lost productivity, accidents and mistakes on the job, and remedial education.

Further, the skills deficit has broader implications for the community as a whole. Problems such as illiteracy do not exist in isolation; they exist in relation to a host of other aspects of life and when one aspect is out of balance it affects the whole. Communities without a well-skilled workforce have difficulty attracting new businesses. Without new business and investment the community stagnates. Government services cost more per capita in the absence of an expanding tax base.

Workers who struggle to be literate themselves also struggle to meet the needs of their families and to help other members of their families to become literate. “In every state of our country, a significant number of working families cannot earn enough income to meet basic needs for housing, food, clothing, transportation, health care, and child care,” said Laura Beach of the Pennsylvania Workforce Improvement Network and Pennsylvania State University. “In fact, many working families earn less than the federal poverty threshold.” Beach recently spoke to a literacy awareness luncheon in Lancaster sponsored by the J. Marion Sims Foundation.

In speaking of workplace literacy we mean more than the ability to read. A literate worker is able to read, write, and speak English proficiently on the job, is able to compute and solve problems, is able to use technology to perform job tasks, and is able to learn new things continually to stay current and competitive in the workplace. A literate worker has proficient communication skills, decision-making skills, interpersonal skills and life long learning skills to do his or her job effectively and productively.

“Our modern society is becoming more and more dependent upon the jobs that call for the majority of all employees to exercise their brains rather than their brawn,” Beach said. “The continued explosion of raw data in our culture means that people need to better understand and judge the value of all this information.”

What can be done? In addition to the efforts of those local organizations engaged in providing literacy services, the J. Marion Sims Foundation has embarked on a grant making initiative aimed at providing opportunities in Lancaster County, Great Falls and Fort Lawn for adults to participate in comprehensive programs and services that will increase literacy in several areas, including the workplace.

Many models exist of effective workplace literacy programs. Research demonstrates that worker retention and loyalty increase when those workers participate in basic skills training and understand its connection to their career path. Workplace literacy programs help employees gain the skills they need to perform effectively in the workplace. Basic reading, writing, computation and communication skills are essential in nearly every work setting. Workplace programs often are delivered on site with ample opportunities for practice and application.

Programs that best retain learners and help them realize gains in learning do so by acknowledging and drawing upon the learners’ prior experiences and strengths and by incorporating content that is relevant and immediately usable to them in their roles not only as workers, but also as parents, citizens and health care consumers, among others.

“Adults are whole individuals, interested in the welfare of their families, seeking good health and prosperity through their work,” said Beach, whose program has incorporated foundation skills such as understanding finances, using technology and solving problems into its adult learning strategies. “A quality of life is holistic for us as humans and research shows us time and again that increasing literacy levels simultaneously increases the quality of life.”

The road to becoming a more literate community is long, and the journey is slow, requiring determination, perseverance and patience. “Literacy is not something external that can be applied to people like bandages or tattoos,” Beach said. “Literacy education is an internal developmental process that occurs slowly over a lifetime. Adults need experience in overcoming failure and eventually achieving success through a sustained effort and instruction.”

Beach challenged community leaders “to see the untapped human potential in your community and realize how connected it is to the very tangible, visible aspects of the society in which you live.

“Every time you engage an adult in their own learning process, you are impacting society in a multitude of ways.”

(For more information about workplace literacy and the J. Marion Sims Foundation’s Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Initiative, contact Dr. Mary Henderson, Program Officer, J. Marion Sims Foundation, 104 N. Catawba Street, Lancaster, SC 29721 (803) 286-8772.)