Employers find literacy problems in 25% of staff: Business 'hit by poor skills'

EMPLOYERS estimate that a quarter of their workers suffer difficulties at work because of poor literacy and numeracy, it was reported yesterday.

A survey of 400 companies, commissioned by the Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit, found that one in seven regarded the impact of poor skills on their business as severe, or very severe.

The worst problems were with writing: employers thought that about one in four of their workers had difficulties in this area, compared with one in seven in reading, one in six in verbal communication, and one in five in numbers.

The government-funded unit calculated that the annual cost to industry, based on wasted time, and orders lost or incorrect because of errors and misunderstandings, could be pounds 4.8bn. Gallup, which undertook the survey, said the average cost of poor basic skills for a company with more than 51 employees was about pounds 166,000 a year.

Problems were not confined to unskilled and semi-skilled blue-collar workers: 14 per cent of companies believed that managerial and professional staff were also affected.

Most companies accepted that they would benefit from improving their workers' basic skills: they recognised that people who struggled to read, write and calculate were more afraid to adopt new working practices, more afraid of training, and more likely to give up their jobs because they could not cope.

However, two-thirds admitted that they had not considered basic skills training for their workforce, and many of them made no attempt to assess the ability of job applicants.

The Cost to Industry: Basic Skills and the UK Workforce; ALBSU, Kingsbourne House, 229/231 High Holborn, London WC1V 7DA; pounds 3.95.