Integrating Essential Skills into Training - National Adult Literacy ...

WW Report & Resource Guide Integrating Essential Skills into Training Materials
Workshop 3: Integrating Essential Skills into Aboriginal preapprenticeship
training
Hildy Hanson
Hildy began by providing a brief overview of the essential skills programs Keyano
College has developed in partnership with Syncrude Canada Ltd. after which she
described the successful integration of these essential skills programs into aboriginal
pre-apprenticeship programs.
Keyano has developed three essential skills programs for Syncrude Canada. The reading
program, Effective Reading in Context (ERIC), was the first workplace reading program
in Canada. Syncrude initially identified a need for a workplace reading program when it
was putting a group of employees through some testing to identify leadership abilities.
After the curriculum was developed and received the advisory group’s approval, it was
piloted and the rest is history. The core curriculum remains the same, but the program
has gone through many adaptations since 1988. The program name “Reading in
Context” directs the program. The program is always delivered in context of each
participant’s need and in context of each particular delivery worksite. The readings are
constantly changing.
The most radical change to the program occurred two years ago when an adaptation
was completed for the Northern Lights Health Region. This is when the program shifted
its focus to Safety and Workplace Reading.
What reading has to be managed in the workplace? How many reading tasks influence
or are influenced by safety?
Without fail, when these questions are asked of people employed in the oil sands
industry, the answer is all. Every reading task required on the worksite has some
impact on workplace safety. Incidents cause injury, loss of lives and loss of production.
Safety performance and reading are human activities controlled by the choices made by
the individual. Workplace Failure is classified as human failure when procedures are not
followed. When reading a hazard sign on a construction site, it doesn’t matter whether
an employee reads at a Grade 7 level or whether the employee has a college degree,
he/she must be ‘in the moment’ at the time and must read with 100% accuracy.
Reading is a safety issue; the score you got on your last reading test is not recorded in
the incident report. BUT your attention level can be recorded on the safety report!
Hildy used a photo of a very large piece of equipment called a coker to illustrate one
reason that Safety and Workplace Reading is so important in the oil sands industry. As
she explained, it is normal for millions of dollars worth of new equipment to move north
through the city every week. The installation of a coker is probably worth over 150
million dollars and it is just one piece of equipment that is going into a project worth
over 2 billion dollars. Furthermore, this project is just one of the 80 billion dollars worth
of projects over the next 15 years in the Wood Buffalo region. Each one of these
projects has thousands of procedures and instructions. Each procedure has to be