ABET develops competent employees who are productive, efficient and accurate workers. They are also able to complete their respective tasks in a healthy and safe manner.
Employees who complete adult literacy training and adult numeracy training have basic, thinking and people skills. This is in addition to a host of personal traits that employers find very desirable.
Basic skills include the ability to read, write, speak and listen, as well as an understanding of rudimentary maths.
Your employees use these proficiencies together with their thinking skills to perform their respective tasks correctly and on time. These include an ability to think creatively, solve problems, make decisions and visualise.
The people skills that are honed by ABET include social, teamwork, negotiation and cultural diversity.
Certainly, with additional and targeted training intervention, employees can also acquire leadership skills. In fact, many employees are enrolled in ABET programmes because they have been identified by their managers or supervisors as potential leaders. ABET is the first step towards achieving this goal. It equips employees with the foundational skills that they need to continue learning in the workplace. This is so that they can gain the knowledge that they need to perform work that comes with more responsibility. Leadership skills, for example, include the ability to communicate thought and feeling to justify a position. Leaders also know how to encourage or convince others and make positive use of rules and values. They also have the ability to gain the trust of others because of their competence and honesty. These all rely on sound communication skills, as well as the ability to think logically and critically, skills that are developed by ABET.
ABET prepares your employees
By equipping your employees with foundational skills, ABET prepares your employees for a journey of lifelong learning. Foundational skills include basic literacy and numeracy, in addition to a host of other building blocks. Employees who have completed all four levels of adult literacy training and adult numeracy training are at a National Qualification NQF Level 1. Refer to NATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS FRAMEWORK ABET LEVELS AND THE NATIONAL SENIOR CERTIFICATE for more information on the various ABET levels.
Many employers also note a marked change in their employees’ attitude and demeanour as they progress through adult literacy training and adult numeracy training. They have self-esteem, an ability to self-manage and are responsible, which are also viewed as fundamental employability skills.
Quality ABET
Employees who have completed quality ABET will be able to use their reading skills to identify relevant details, facts and specifications. They will also be able to locate information in manuals and from graphs, as well as find meaning of unknown words.
By teaching your employees how to read, adult literacy training also hones your employees’ digital literacy skills. Digital Skills : Frameworks and Programs provides interesting reading on digital literacy and the role that it will play in Africa’s development. It is well known that South Africa needs to also undergo the Fourth Industrial Revolution to compete at a global level. In order to achieve this, South African workers need to be equipped with digital skills as a starting point. Meanwhile, in this digital era, it is important that all citizens of the country have an ability to work effectively with digital technology.
Employees who have completed adult literacy training use their writing skills to communicate effectively in the written word. They can write completely and accurately using the correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. Moreover, they are able to check, edit and revise their writing for accuracy and emphasis. Certainly, equipped with writing skills, your employees will also be able to acquire digital literacy skills. They also need to be able to communicate in the written word using a computer or other device inside and outside the workplace. This has become another important skill to function effectively in society at large in this digital era.
Adult numeracy training teaches your employees how to use numbers, fractions and percentages so that they can solve problems and produce accurate work. They also learn how to use tables, graphs, diagrams and charts. Once again, this training enables your employees to start using a computer to enter, retrieve, change and communicate numerical information.
ABET develops good communicators
In this way, ABET develops good communicators, which every company needs to be successful.
However, adult literacy training does not only teach your employees how to read and write. It also focuses on honing their speaking and active listening skills. This is considering the importance of verbal communication in the workplace.
Therefore, employees who have completed ABET are able to speak clearly. They can choose the correct language and voice tone, as well as gestures when communicating with different audiences. This includes with other colleagues, supervisors or managers, as well as representatives of suppliers or sub-contractors or consultants. If they are frontline workers, your employees may be expected to also engage effectively with customers.
Moreover, they have learnt how to listen carefully to what their higher-ups and colleagues say. They pay attention to tone of voice and other body language to respond in a way that shows understanding of what was communicated.
It is important to note that adult numeracy training also develops your employees’ communication skills. Employees who have good numeracy skills are able to use, interpret and communicate mathematical information. For this reason, literacy and numeracy skills are complementary and are usually used in tandem in the workplace. This is the reason that they are the primary focus of workplace ABET programmes. Literacy and numeracy from a lifelong learning perspective provides interesting reading on the potential of literacy and numeracy skills to transform our world if they are approached from a lifelong learning perspective.
Employees who complete ABET
Employees who complete ABET are able to use their imagination freely, combining ideas or information in new ways. They are also able to make connections between ideas that seem unrelated.
Adult literacy training and adult numeracy training also hones your employees’ problem-solving skills. They know how to recognise a problem and identify why it may impact on deadlines and overall quality before finding a solution. Moreover, employees will be able to assess whether their solution was effective and, if not, revise it as needed. This they are able to do individually, as part of teams or with the help of supervisors or managers.
Moreover, they are able to identify goals, generate alternatives and gather information about them. This is in addition to assessing the positives and negatives of each scenario, as well as choosing an alternative plan and then actioning it.
Equipped with strong visualisation skills, employees will be able to identify an object by interpreting a blueprint, drawing or sketch of it.
ABET creates productive workplaces
ABET creates productive and efficient workplaces by honing employees’ ability to work with other members of their teams. This is by honing their communication and thinking abilities.
Employees who have completed adult literacy training and adult numeracy training display understanding, friendliness and respect for feelings. They also take an interest in what people say and why they think and act as they do. However, they also know when it is appropriate to be assertive.
Employees are also able to identify common goals among conflicting parties and clearly present the fact and argument of their position. They listen to and understand other parties’ positions and devise possible ways of resolving conflict. Moreover, they are willing to make reasonable compromises.
Employees are also able to cooperate with other team members; contribute ideas and effort to a group; and complete their share of work. Furthermore, they are able to motivate and encourage other colleagues to give their best and resolve differences for the benefit of the team. They are also able to responsibly challenge existing procedures and policies and motivate change to improve processes. This is important feedback that managers value.
Notably, they are also able to work well with people of different ethnic, social or educational backgrounds. This is especially important in a diverse country such as South Africa. In the typical South African workplace, people of many different cultures and backgrounds collaborate to achieve a common goal. Employees need to be able to understand the concerns of members of other ethnic and gender groups. They also need to comprehend their own culture and those of others and how these differ to their own. This is in addition to having the ability to respectfully help people in these groups to make cultural adjustments when necessary.
ABET develops confident employees
ABET, including adult literacy training and adult numeracy training, develops confident employees. They know what to do and how to do it. Moreover, they understand why they need to complete the task and perform their duties in a certain way. They also know when the work needs to be finalised.
Employees are cognisant of how beliefs affect their feelings and how they act in the workplace. Therefore, employees know how to identify irrational and harmful thoughts and how to change these into positive perceptions so that they remain strong team players.
They are also able to assess their knowledge and skills accurately; establish specific and realistic personal goals; and monitor progress in achieving them.
Furthermore, they are willing to make the effort to achieve their goals, despite how unpleasant they find these tasks. They also want to perform quality work, as well as display a high standard of attendance, honesty and optimism.
A leading ABET provider
Triple E Training is a leading ABET provider to industry.
Our quality adult literacy training and adult numeracy training programmes are being harnessed to equip employees with fundamental skills. This is in addition to community training projects as part of companies’ corporate social investment commitments. Many thousands of individuals have already progressed through our programmes to acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills. Learn more about what makes us industry’s preferred training provider. www.eee.co.za
