The benefits
Improving numeracy can contribute to reducing the percentage of councils reporting critical gaps in the skills they need for future success. Many councils have recognised that improving the literacy and numeracy skills of frontline workers has a positive impact on the quality of service delivery.1
There are many associated benefits with confident numeracy, supporting staff with numeracy can:
• improve their confidence in tackling numeracy-related tasks at home and at work;
• improve overall confidence in their ability to learn; • improve their view of the organisation; • support them to take an active part in the workplace;
• increase applications for internal promotion opportunities and job progression;
• improve staff retention; • reduce staff absenteeism; • support progression to further education and training; and • develop a learning culture.
Workplaces have always been sites of learning and every workplace creates its own unique version of a learning environment. In these environments, learning takes place in a range of different ways along a continuum that stretches from formalised activity at one end (e.g. a supervisor showing an apprentice how to change the settings on a machine on the factory floor) through to a group of employees discovering the answer to a problem by informal discussion round the water cooler.
Lorna Unwin, Alan Felstead and Alison Fuller (Institute of Education, University of London; Cardiff University; University of Southampton) (2007) Learning at work: Towards more ‘expansive’ opportunities.
1 LGE (2010) The Local Government Workforce Strategy: Delivering through people. 6
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