Adult reading skills are often at the level of a pre-school child or junior primary school learner. This can seriously affect a person’s ability to understand written instructions, learn for exams, pass a learner’s driver license test or even function on a day to day basis in a society that is information driven. Things taken for granted by others, such as the ability to locate and quickly read text on screen when performing an Internet search, are out of reach for adults with limited or totally non-existent reading skills. The most precious gift that an employer can give to an employee is education to improve or even lay the foundation for basic reading skills in the employee’s mother tongue or in English. Employers will not only invest in the employee’s future, but also their own as they empower the employee to understand the text on paper or computer and thus help them to be able to contribute more to the workplace because of improved reading skills.
