National and international research shows that every year, small and large businesses needlessly lose customers, orders and profits as a result of mistakes which otherwise diligent employees make in applying basic skills at work.
Basic skills are often known as literacy and numeracy. We use these skills a great deal in everyday life, including our working life. We also make use of basic skills when we learn something new. It would be difficult to learn how to use new technology or certain new tools and equipment, without being comfortable with reading, writing, verbal communication or with different aspects of numeracy.
In Ireland, one in six – that is, about half a million – Irish adults ‘have problems with even the simplest literacy task such as reading instructions. One in four have difficulty doing basic maths calculations.
It is worth noting as well that the problem is not evenly distributed across the workforce: instead, particular occupations have a very high proportion of employees with low levels of education. Another important group of workers who may have good basic skills are people whose first language is not English. It is important to know that having gaps in basic skills does not mean that the individual has problems with all of the basics of reading, writing, verbal communication and number work. We all have things we are good at and other things we struggle with, and it works in much the same way with basic skills. People can be very good at one thing but have a real difficulty with another, which can interfere with their overall performance.
For this reason, the basic skills question is about identifying the extent of specific gaps and weaknesses, especially when these are in areas of work which are crucial to the success and productivity of your business and the safety of your employees. You should be able to identify most of these important areas yourself and get a general impression of where there might be skills gaps amongst your workforce.