Record orders. Prepare quotations. Write transfers. Read instructions. Anyone who works almost always comes into contact with language: whether in a flower shop or in customer service, whether you are a factory worker or an engineer.
And the Dutch are getting worse at language. The reading performance of secondary school students reached a new low, according to PISA research this week, an international comparison of school performance in OECD countries. A third of Dutch 15-year-olds are at risk of leaving secondary school with low literacy. In 2018, during the previous PISA study, this was still a quarter – and there were already loud alarms about this. Of all European OECD countries, only Greece scores worse in reading.
Also read
One in three 15-year-olds is insufficiently literate – behind these figures lies a bigger problem
Other skills in the field of language and arithmetic are also not doing well in the Netherlands, as various studies have shown for years. Students’ writing skills are below average, the clarity of handwriting is deteriorating, and performance in arithmetic is also declining. “This is certainly a concern,” says Gemma Groot Koerkamp, who, as a literacy driver at the VNO-NCW MKB Noord business association, focuses on Dutch-speaking employees. “These young people will soon end up in business or social organizations.”
Companies are already seeing it happen, according to a tour of NRC. “If you cannot read and write, you partly exclude yourself from society,” says Agnes van der Wel of the healthcare organization Oosterlength. “We recognize that the young people we are now hiring really have less sense of language and are less language proficient,” says a spokesperson for Vebego, which is active in cleaning and landscaping, among other things. Groot Koerkamp calls it a misconception that it only concerns people with a lower intellect. “So you can do a lot to improve those skills.”
Low literacy among employees, meaning they can barely read and write, was already a major problem for companies. In the Netherlands, 2.5 million people over the age of 16 have low literacy. Research by the Reading & Writing Foundation from 2019 shows that 34 to 44 percent of cleaners and auxiliary workers in construction, industry, agriculture and kitchens have low literacy. People with low literacy often cannot use a computer or smartphone well.
Construction companies have experience with this: research shows that people with low literacy work relatively most often in that sector. That is especially a problem, says a Heijmans spokesperson, when it comes to safety. “That people did not understand instructions. When should you wear a construction helmet? Where can you call? That’s not possible if you’re working at heights. Or in places where machines are installed. It’s all very basic.” Research by the Reading and Writing Foundation shows that about 10 percent of all serious industrial accidents are caused by communication problems.
Employees who give instructions cannot simply rely on them being understood. “Also because there are not only Dutch people present at such a construction site. So you have to check with everyone: is my message getting across? For one person it is because he does not have language skills from school, for the other because Dutch is not his mother tongue.”
Construction company VolkerWessels sees that employees sometimes find Dutch and arithmetic difficult. The subjects are part of the vocational training course for infrastructure groundworker. “Arithmetic often involves linguistic sums, ‘story sums’,” the spokesperson explains the difficulty of that subject. “We provide this vocational training internally, through our own vocational school. If necessary, the Dutch teacher provides individual attention to attract the participants to the required level.”
Digital literacy hinders people from moving on to other jobs, the spokesperson said. “Think of the aging carpenter who develops physical complaints and can also put his knowledge to good use as a doorman at a construction site. But part of that function is creating and registering a construction pass with the computer. Sometimes that doesn’t work.”
Visual language
Even at a large factory such as Tata Steel, it is vital that employees understand all safety rules. “We develop these instructions at such a level that they are understandable to everyone,” says a spokesperson. The company makes extensive use of visual language instead of text. Regulations are also explained in videos.
For example, next to all the stairs, including in the office, there are icons of someone holding the handrail. “From my workplace I see a meeting room with a stop sign with a knife and fork: I am not allowed to eat there.” Does this have to do with growing low literacy? The spokesperson does not dare to make that observation. “It is also: a picture says more than a thousand words.”
Such characters may serve as a replacement for text, but it does not make the importance of good language skills redundant, the spokesperson says. That is why the company organizes language classes so that employees can learn or brush up on the Dutch language. “We also have many people here from other backgrounds. Status holders of the shelter boat that is moored here in Velsen, for example.”
More companies are offering programs to improve employees’ language skills. For example, where the majority of employees are poorly educated or have a language deficiency, Vebego says it organizes language lessons and offers buddy projects. Heijmans also works with “buddies”, who help colleagues get started in the company. “That is a broad training program in which language can play a role,” says the spokesperson. VolkerWessels has an internal work-learning company, VolkerWessels Inclusief, which accommodates new employees who need extra guidance, sometimes focused on language.
Dakdekker Dakpanvervanging.nl tries to encourage people to work on language in yet another way. Those who complete assessment interview forms correctly or follow safety regulations correctly will receive an extra reward. The company from Stadskanaal developed a special ducat for this purpose, the ‘compliment coin’, which employees can exchange for a present.
Director Aart de Boer noticed that language was a problem within his company, because customers contacted us about assignments that had not been completed properly. “We work with an app on which our employees receive their work orders. It states what they have to do for a customer that day. It turned out that not all of those guys understand what it says. That started with comments like ‘I don’t have my reading glasses with me’ or ‘the print on the phone is too small’. But of course you can zoom in on a mobile phone. So we discovered that many people have difficulty with it.” The company now writes out the work order in two or three clear sentences.
More absenteeism due to illness
The lack of reading, writing and digital skills also leads to higher absenteeism due to illness, says Groot Koerkamp of VNO-NCW. “If a company uses a new system, that group of employees is more likely to become stressed or wait out of shame until other colleagues can share their experiences.”
CSU Total Care, one of the largest cleaning companies in the country, has even visualized the employment contract. “Because people, including highly educated people, often find that too difficult,” says a spokesperson. “While it is about one of the most important things in life: what will you do next and what will you earn? That is important to know.”
At the Oosterlength care institution in East Groningen, managers are trained to recognize problems encountered by low-literate employees among their employees. “You see it, for example, in not following instructions on paper,” says innovation program manager Agnes van der Wel. “During the corona crisis, the guidelines changed every week. Then you had to wear gloves again, then a face mask again. We saw that a number of people found it difficult to follow those instructions, both young and old.”
In the worst case, low literacy among healthcare workers can lead to health risks for patients. These will mainly be indirect consequences, Van der Wel thinks: “An example could be that domestic workers do not always use the right products. For example, a client’s kitchen counter is cleaned with the wrong cloth, leaving more bacteria behind.” Not being able to understand manuals has not yet led to truly dangerous situations, according to Van der Wel, “but it is a risk.”
Tight labor market
Oosterlength offers employees suspected of having low literacy a test and additional training, if this proves necessary. “All this in consultation with the employee. Not everyone will want to attend training. As an employer you cannot do more.”
Van der Wel is shocked by the poor PISA results. “In the future it will be increasingly important to think about this as an organization,” she says. “How are we going to ensure that employees can function at the level at which we want to deploy them? In the past you could still think: someone is not functioning, we are looking at something else. But especially given the labor shortage in healthcare, we will have to invest in our employees. Because at the end of the day, someone has to do this work.”
Also read
One in three 15-year-olds is insufficiently literate – behind these figures lies a bigger problem
Reading list