Workplace Literacy: Its Role in High Performance Organizations :: Workforce Work Jobs Essays

Workplace Literacy: Its Role in High Performance Organizations During the past decade a number of issues have been raised about the goals and purposes of workplace literacy; chief among these has been the debate surrounding the conceptualization of workplace literacy as a functional context program with its focus on analyzing the gaps between a workplace's literacy requirements and the abilities of its work force. Critics have felt that, too often, the job context approach was interpreted too narrowly and failed to involve workers. Frequently, the result was a curriculum designed to "fill in the gaps," usually through a top-down process with decisions made primarily by company management, human resources development specialists, and higher-level educational experts (Pritz and Imel 1993). At the same time, workplace educators were discussing how workplace literacy programs should be created, the concept of high performance organizations was emerging. Conversations began about how workplace literacy could be conceived of as a means of changing not just "the behavior of individual employees but of the larger work organization as well" (Imel and Kerka 1992, p. 4) by reinforcing critical thinking and teamwork required to transform workplaces into high performance, continuous improvement organizations. Sometimes referred to as the "collaborative" approach, the perspective that links workplace literacy to collaborative ways of organizing work-and that broadens the functional context approach-is gaining support (Jurmo 1994b). This ERIC Digestdescribes the relationship between collaborative approaches to workplace literacy and high performance work organizations, reviews some principles underlying the collaborative approach, and presents results of research on literacy development in high performance work organizations. High Performance Work Organizations and the Collaborative Approach In a high performance work organization (HPWO), employee basic skills are just one of many components (Jurmo et al. 1994). HPWOs feature flatter organizational structures, work done by teams of highly skilled workers, and a focus on quality, customer service, and continuous improvement (Kerka 1995). In addition to producing high-quality products and services, an HPWO also "provides a high quality of work life for all employees" (Jurmo et al. 1994, p. 4). HPWOs need workers who can take initiative, identify and solve problems, make decisions, and engage in a wide range of tasks. Traditional basic skills such as reading, writing, math, and communication are important primarily within the context of these higher-level skills (ibid.). Although many organizations have not achieved high performance status, they are moving in that direction and are seeking to develop a work force with a broader range of skills (Kerka 1995).