Adult literacy can be described as the ability to read, understand and apply written material in the workplace, at school, home, social life, and for daily survival. Unfortunately many South Africans lack the most basic adult literacy levels. As such employers are also affected as their employees can in many instances, not understand any written material. Safety aspects come into place since pictures cannot always describe dangers sufficiently. Accidents happen at work because the employee doesn’t understand written notices or instructions. Apart from the costs involved when such incidents occur there are also the loss of man hours, lives, employees, equipment, and more to consider. The solution lies in ABET based adult literacy programs which meet the employee at his or her level of education and help to improve their skills through well-structured adult literacy programs.