North Carolina

Online

Office of North Carolina Basic Skills

NC Community College System

200 West Jones St,

Raleigh, North Carolina 27603

Workplace Education

 Research and Evaluation / Noteworthy Practices / Additional Links

Workforce Education
maintained by Southern LINCS at the Center for Literacy Studies

Ten Easy Things You Can Do to Integrate Workplace Skills into Your Classroom

This resource, developed by CAL PRO, suggests practical strategies for integrating workplace (SCANS) skills into daily instruction.

Developing and Evaluating Workplace Literacy Programs: A Handbook for Practitioners and trainers
This resource is a handbook for starting a workplace literacy program. Methods for developing a program are outlined including establishing a planning group, analyzing the need for education, locating funding sources, and gaining the support of management and employees. Aspects of program development covered include conducting a literacy task analysis, designing relevant curriculum using materials from learners’ jobs, recruiting learners to a program, and both formative and summative evaluation.

Adult Education at Work
This 148 page handbook provides a step-by-step model for Adult Basic Education program administrators to use in developing an effective workplace education program. It includes information on surveying ABE programs and communities and marketing these programs to employers and communities.

Two articles found on the Workforce Online commercial site are instructive. You must register in order to access articles but registration is free. Workplace Literacy Best Practices lists and develops seven characteristics of an effective workplace literacy program as reported by the National Alliance of Business and the National Workforce Assistance Collaborative. Basic Skills Training 101 discusses how a company would develop a successful workplace literacy program to help employees improve the skills needed to retain their jobs, advance their careers and increase company productivity.

Importance of Culture: Four Models for Workplace Basic Skills
Four models that provide a starting point for planning workplace basic skills programs are described and discussed. This paper emphasizes the importance of respecting the unique culture and characteristics reflected in each workplace when providing workplace training and services.

Work-related Learning Guide for Family Literacy and Adult Education Organizations
This guide includes lessons, program planning support, and suggestions for bringing in employers as partners in learning. It was created to provide assistance to family literacy and adult education organizations in incorporating work-related activities into their programs.

Marketing a Workplace Education Program

Profiting from Learning: Do Firms’ Investments in Education and Training Pay Off?
Training data collected by ASTD from one year compared to publicly-reported financial performance the following year for 575 U. S.-based firms showed a significant positive relationship between training investments and total stockholder return.

Return On Investment in Training
This ERIC publication examines myths and misconceptions about who pays and who reaps the return on investment (ROI) in training.

Turning Skills Into Profit: Economic Benefits of Workplace Education Programs
Workplace education programs (WEPs) have consistently been shown to improve the bottom line for companies. This research report, based on interviews of over 100 employers, employees, and union representatives, enumerates and explores the skills gained by employees and the benefits gained by companies through workplace education programs. Publication is free from this site but you must register to obtain a copy.

Two articles found on the Workforce Online commercial site are instructive. You must register in order to access articles but registration is free. Behavioral Training: The ABCs of Workplace Literacy discusses the benefits of a workplace training program, illustrating that the program raises employee self-esteem and ultimately helps make them better, more productive workers. Training Proves Its Worth is a discussion of companies’ needs for ongoing training and how to continue that training in the wake of budget shortfalls. It aims to prove that the benefits to business of training are well worth the costs.

Does Training Pay? Evidence from Australian Enterprises
An in-depth case study of three firms shows that the enterprise returns to training can be exceptionally high, especially for training that is highly specific, rapidly accomplished, and related to the introduction of new technology or working patterns. Such training pays a good return on investment for a firm, even if labor turnover is high.

The Economic Benefits of Improving Literacy Skills in the Workplace
Reports findings from a Conference Board of Canada study that shows employers enhance their businesses' performance when employee literacy skills improve.

ScorecardforSkills.com is a new Web site and tool, developed by The Conference Board with funding from OVAE. This site can help your adult education programs and their employer partners measure--and demonstrate--the relationship between workplace education investments and measures of organizational performance. ScorecardforSkills.com includes analytical tools that provide action-oriented information to owners and employers about workplace education programs. Included are information and advice to:

Testing and Accountability in Adult Literacy Education
This 1999 Thomas G. Sticht report provides information on the design and evaluation of workplace literacy programs to improve workforce readiness, and an overview of concepts about the nature, uses and abuses of standardized tests in program evaluation and accountability. It discusses concepts and issues and provides bibliographic resources for those who want to learn more about how to design, develop, and evaluate literacy programs in the workplace and other contexts.

Literacy Skills Analysis for Job Training
This paper provides a summary of large-scale U.S. studies relating to skills and literacy as an introduction to the discussion of literacy skills analysis for job training. Policy implications and recommendations regarding literacy skills analysis are made.

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Sample Curricula/Lesson Plans

Getting There: A Curriculum for People Moving into Employment
This curriculum is intended to assist educators in preparing adult students trying to transition from welfare to work or to further education. Most of the activities are designed to be used with groups and emphasize personal reflection as well as research into job and training opportunities and the practice of job-related skills. Getting There not only incorporates basic academic skills, but it is also designed to help students discover their own needs, skills, and values. The Facilitator's Guide is also available online.

Self-Esteem and Employment
This workshop is available full-text complete with worksheets and instructions for facilitators. The content deals specifically with women in the workplace and how a positive self-esteem can affect job performance.

Steps to Employment
This resource from Ontario is a series of workshop manuals, each of which includes materials for twenty-five hours of orientation, and twenty-five hours of occupation-specific language training, for a complete ten days of full-time instruction. All materials can be downloaded and printed from the site. Manuals are included for eighteen different sectors of occupations, and each manual includes a workbook for participants, notes for instructors, and an implementation guide. Examples of the eighteen sectors are automotive service trades, construction, entrepreneurs, sales occupations, and telecommunications trades and occupations.

Workplace skills for the adult learner: An integrated curriculum
This curriculum, targeted for unemployed or under-employed adults, teaches job readiness, office technology, and academic skills integrated with self-confidence and interpersonal skills.

Vocational English as a Second Language
This 115 page curriculum guide aims to prepare intermediate speakers of English to improve their English language skills while strengthening job, computer, and basic math skills. To find out more about the project for which this curriculum was developed, go to Bridge to Advanced Technological Education and Employment

Job Interviews
This lesson plan demonstrates how basic skills can be taught using almost any topic or theme of interest to the learner. Adaptations for learners at various levels are suggested throughout.
 

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Facts and Statistics

2001 AMA survey on workplace testing: Basic skills, job skills, psychological measurement. American Management Association annually mails questionnaires to human resources managers in member and client companies. This resource provides year to year comparisons for 1999, 2000, and 2001 of data supplied by firms testing job applicants in basic literacy and/or math skills.

Listening and reading processes of adults: a report of survey findings and references from a workshop presented in the United States and Canada in 1999. Presents results of a survey of participants in 1999 workshops on the listening and reading processes of adults in the context of workplace literacy.

NIFL Workforce Education Fact sheet The NIFL Literacy Fact Sheet is a compendium of statistics about corporate concerns, workplace skill requirements, benefits of workplace education programs, and employer participation in training activities. Links are provided to original sources.

National Assessments of Adult Literacy 2002. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has conducted periodic national assessments of the English-language literacy skills of the nation's adults since 1985. In 1992, it conducted the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), which at the time was the largest and most inclusive survey of English-language skills ever conducted in the United States. NCES will conduct the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) in 2002. The NAAL 2002 will be a valuable asset for policymakers and researchers concerned about the status of English-language literacy among adults in the United States providing an independent external benchmark of adult literacy attainment against which state and local progress may be monitored.

The National Center for Education Statistics NCES is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data that are related to education in the United States and other nations.

U.S. Census Bureau is the official web site within the U.S. Department of Commerce. You can find a wealth of data about the people and economy of the United States, including a population clock for the United States and the world. Other links from this page of special interest are American Fact Finder, Census Bureau Economic Programs, Census Economic Briefing Room, and State and County Quick Facts.

The U.S. Department of Education: Research and Statistics houses and supports organizations that provide research, evaluation, and statistics, including the Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress, Policy and Program Studies Service, Fund for the Improvement of Post secondary Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Organizations sponsored by the Office of Special Education Programs, and National Research and Dissemination Centers for Career and Technical Education. Links to the above organizations are provided on this page. Additionally, "Statistics" in the left navigation bar expands to "General Resources," "Surveys & Program Areas," and "Statistical Tools," each of which provides resources about statistics rather than the statistics themselves.

The US Department of Labor Statistics includes links to major economic indicators and other statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics;FEDSTATS, statistics and information from more than 70 federal government agencies; and unemployment insurance statistics.

US Workforce This site is a gateway to information on the Workforce Investment Act and is designed to provide answers to current and emerging questions about the implementation of the Workforce Investment Act and to provide access to workforce information and resources.

Voices from Main Street: Assessing the State of Small Business Workforce Skills
This document reports the findings of a survey of 800 small business owners who feel that fundamental communication and interpersonal skills are their major concerns for their employees.

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