The experience of a number of specific local workplace programs indicates a definite connection between the provision of employee basic skills programs and increased worker productivity. One Tennessee company, for example, reports a 95 percent drop in costs resulting from worker mistakes and a doubling of worker productivity since the company…

Project ALERT, a 3-year Wayne State University workplace education program in partnership with 5 varied worksites in metropolitan Detroit, developed replicable workplace literacy models. A review of literature provided information on how and why adults learn. A needs assessment and on-site observations were conducted to determine which sets of…

Mass production, introduced into the factories of the United States in the early 1900s, required workers who were trained to be cooperative, loyal to the company, and possessed specific job skills to operate the machinery. To produce these workers, American corporations turned away from the educational programs of the public schools, and began to…

A collaborative project involved Collins and Aikman, Inc., Pitt Community College, and the U.S. Department of Education in an effort to improve the literacy level of the company's work force in order to increase productivity. A pretest of about 400 of the company's 513 workers in 1 division uncovered educational needs in reading and mathematics…

Literacy Foundation Memphis, Inc., Memphis City Schools Adult Education, and the Regional Medical Center at Memphis cooperatively implemented an intensive skills enhancement program for employees. The program used an industry immersion model, located on site, with 80 hours of instruction delivered 4 hours per day for 4 weeks on work-release time.…

Literacy Foundation Memphis, Memphis City Schools Adult Education, and Kimberly Clark engaged in a cooperative venture to implement an intensive industry skills enhancement program for employees of Kimberly Clark. The effort continued to develop, refine, and expand the industry immersion model located on site, with 80 hours of instruction…

The River East Alliance for Developmental Studies (READS) provided occupationally based literacy and numeracy instruction, over 18 months, for 451 entry-level workers, supervisors, and floor managers. The participants were employees from four diverse Connecticut manufacturing companies. During the project, 47 classes in reading, mathematics, and…

A teacher was hired to conduct onsite training and to document the process of training first-line supervisors in a food-processing plant to improve product output and control product shortage through computers. The method of instruction was the responsibility of both the teacher and the learners, as the teacher learned plant jargon and the…

The Success Skills for Textile Workers project was established in November 1994 by Alabama educational institutions and textile manufacturers to provide workplace literacy training for textile workers. This report details project objectives and outcomes through October 31, 1997. Introductory materials describe project components and list…

The Anchorage Workplace Literacy (AWL) program was designed to train adult workers who have inadequate basic skills. The "Skill Books Go to Work" model developed in a previous National Workplace Literacy Program was used and modified as needed for the job-specific environments of nine business partners. Job task analyses were done at the…

Training interventions can be evaluated by calculating return on investment (ROI) and cost-benefit analysis. The four-level model proposed by Kirkpatrick is the dominant evaluation model used. Calculating ROI has been a critical issue for trainers and executives, but only a few organizations have implemented the process that is considered as…

An evaluation of this Syracuse, New York workplace literacy skills improvement project had three purposes: to characterize changes in the baseline performance of adults' workplace literacy skills as a function of instructional treatment; to characterize changes in workers' and supervisors' perceptions of worker effectiveness as a function of…

A project developed through Wallace State Community College (Alabama) united three corporations, two adult basic education programs, a technical college, two support/education programs, a work program for older adults, and three service organizations in a partnership to develop a model for providing workplace literacy training. Project LEARN…

This curriculum guide resulted from a project conducted to: (1) improve the productivity and efficiency of 21 companies by providing workplace literacy instruction to workers lacking basic skills required for their jobs; and (2) to improve the capability of educational providers to meet the basic skill needs of the manufacturing and financial…

Recent Australian research provides a solid body of evidence that training investments can yield very high levels of returns for firms across a range of sectors. It highlights these important factors about returns on investment (ROI): ROI come in many forms; immediate ROI are highest when training is highly focused; measuring ROI is not always…