WE UNDERSTAND
WORKPLACE
LEARNING
INSIDE
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 Health and
Safety literacy
links.
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 Leading your
teams to safety.
 Your operations 3
wishlist.
 Securing your
place in 2014.
 Your help desk. 4
OUR VISION
A SKILLED
AND LITERATE
WORKFORCE
OUR MISSION
TO WORK
WITH
INDIVIDUALS
TO ADVANCE
WORKPLACE
SKILLS AND
PERSONAL
LEARNING
GOALS
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The Health and Safety edition
 Health and
Safety resources.
 Staffing news.
Edvance@Work
Each year in New Zealand around 1 in 10 workers is
harmed, with about 200,000 claims being made by
people to ACC for costs associated with work related
injuries and illnesses. In the Report of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety 2013
—He Korowai Whakaruruhau (A Protective Cloak) it
states ‘As a family member of one of the men killed at
work that week put it “when your day starts with
laughter and ends up in tears”, it’s as tough as it gets’.
The Government has a target to achieve a 25% reduction in workplace injuries and fatalities by 2020.
This edition explores how Edvance can work with you
to increase the power of your Health and Safety programme.
Health and Safety NZQA
resources
Edvance can now offer your workplace
specially designed training resources and
assessment for unit standard 497:
Demonstrate knowledge of workplace health
and safety requirements.
The resources looks in-depth at:
 The legal rights and responsibilities of
employees and employers according to
the Health and Safety Act 1992.
 The different systems employers
should have in place to ensure health
and safety in their workplace.
 How to recognise, explain and deal
with different hazards in the workplace.
Talk to Wendy Stewart today about ensuring
your workplace complies with your safety
programmes by building in the very real and
applied learning from this Health and Safety
unit standard.
Unit 497 teaches your staff
the reason why you need
them to be safe. It is a useful
tool in any workplace
compliance programme.
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Health and Safety literacy links
Edvance works with companies and learners across
multiple industries including dairy, horticulture, manufacturing, and also the public sector.
Directly and indirectly we have conversations with
your staff around health and safety. This is a trend
that all literacy providers have experienced in New
Zealand, according to Workbase Research paper
‘Complex health and safety paperwork and literacy
skill gaps put employees at risk’ (August 2013).
In this research paper they stated that two-thirds of
the employees in the study did not fully understand
written information about their employer’s health and
safety policies and rules, hazard information, and
safety procedures.
80% of employees were not able to accurately complete hazard report forms.
Other common problems experienced by companies
were when staff did not follow memos, guidelines and
instructions. Below is an interesting case study from
the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
(MOBIE):
"We were moving to more of a food quality standard the guys had to wear hairnets. We had a meeting and
told the team leaders the new rules and sent a memo.
But on the Monday there was no change. A team
leader told us no one could read the memo."
Reading the Health and Safety induction
manual
Normally new staff members are asked to read the
Health and Safety induction booklet and sign to say
they understand it. But can you really be sure they
do?
The Workbase Research paper found that 63% of
staff had limited knowledge and understanding of
their company’s health and safety documents.
The words the people in the study who had literacy
needs misinterpreted were:
Rough handling: People thought this meant
something to do with fingerprints.
Litter: People thought this meant letter.
Forbidden: People thought this meant forgive.
Spillages: People thought this meant ‘don’t
spray’.
Personal protective equipment: People thought
this was the idea of protecting yourself.
Leading your teams to safety
Edvance has gained NZQA Programme Approval to
deliver the National Certificate in Business (First Line
Management) (Level 3).
We guide our learners through this qualification in the
workplace. Over 20—40 weeks we work with your up
and coming supervisors and team leaders in small
groups of no more than 10 people to have professional conversations that target people and task related
issues they need help with in the workplace.
We cover topics such as:
 Communication skills for team leaders.
 Workplace quality and leadership.
 Workplace training and development.
 Workplace writing and computing skills.
Edvance also offers standalone training that targets
leadership development for your staff. This is great
for those people who have been identified as having
potential but need to be seen in a leadership light by
their workmates.
Here is a taster of just one of the new training solutions we offer:
Unit 7123: Apply a problem solving method to a problem. This is a level 2 unit and so tackles at a foundation level how to define a problem (including who is
involved, and the effect of the problem), choose a
problem solving method (like brainstorming) and apply this method to the problem. When we think about
workplace safety it’s interesting to think how this resource could help your workplace to solve potential
problem areas.
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Your workplace’s operational ‘wishlist’
If you had a magic wand to wave over your workplace, what skills and behaviours would you magically improve?
Wendy Stewart, Edvance’s Business Development
Manager has been talking with companies in the Bay
of Plenty region over the last few months, with common themes of workplace improvement coming up
time and time again.
These include:
 Communication, communication, communication.
 Self esteem building.
 Displaying a confidence to ‘speak up’ at work.
 Being able to complete all areas of the job.
 Time management.
 Supporting a culture of celebrating success.
 Showing job satisfaction in the company, with the
behaviour this promotes.
 The desire of staff to seek advancement.
 Reporting outcomes.




Health & Safety outcomes.
How staff follow procedures.
The level of technical skills shown by staff.
The level of life skills.
This discussion becomes the first step in your training
needs analysis, linking to your strategic plan.
What would your list look like?
Some comments from our clients:
The supervisor "has a much improved communication style which is impacting positively on his
leadership and consequently on the whole team
efficiency"
Another employee "is a changed person - he has
a much more positive attitude, is happy to be at
work, and is more outgoing and confident to
come up with suggestions"
Claymark Katikati
Secure your fully funded training programmes for 2014
Now is the time to book your
staff into training programmes
that will start in 2014. This connects with your training strategy
and the strategic goals your
company has set for 2014.
How do you think you will
achieve these goals?
The table to the right sets out
pragmatically how these objectives can be achieved.
Contact Wendy Stewart in the
office on 571 3172 ext 6 by mobile 027 544 4743 or
[email protected].
Your company wants to:
How Edvance can help you achieve this:
Reduce re-works based on
poor communication between staff.
Train staff in real ways to communicate with each
other, giving and receiving feedback, and dealing
with workplace conflict.
Lower our accident rates.
Teach staff to communicate with each other better, have the confidence to speak up, and also
alert people to hazards in the workplace. Train
staff in their health and safety rights and responsibilities.
Increase of compliance
around form filling and documentation.
Reduce wastage.
Teach staff how to fill out forms and complete
documentation, using plain English.
Promote skilled staff to lead
others.
Teach new leaders about leadership styles –
they don’t have to adopt the style they are used
to seeing. Now is the time to change the company culture and foster new leadership behaviours.
Acknowledge staff who
have been with the company but not received training.
Understand quality management systems and how
they relates to the company.
Work with each staff member to create a plan
that fits them, the workplace, and their life alongside Edvance’s recommendations.
Teach staff about good Quality Management
Systems and how this leads to all the goals
above.
Teach staff about working smarter, goal setting,
communication, and also concepts of quality
(Quality Control, Assurance etc.). An example is
training staff in understanding decimals to cut
and measure correctly, reducing waste.
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Call our free help desk anytime
Need advice or support around:
 The interpretation of NZQA records of learning?
 Mapping training and qualifications pathways for staff?
 Embedding literacy and numeracy into everyday workplace practic-
es?
 Tertiary Education Commission funding streams, criteria and eligibility?
Staffing news
 Sue Hawkins, who has been of great value to Edvance since 2010, initially as a
Programme Manager and then most recently as a Business Development Manager has moved on from Edvance to pursue other opportunities. We wish Sue all
the best.
 Wendy Stewart will be stepping into the Business Development role. Wendy is
returning after being one of the founding staff members at Edvance. Wendy
helped to build the company in the early days and has a wealth of knowledge on
how Edvance can assist your company. You can contact Wendy in the office, by
mobile 027 544 4743 or [email protected].
 We now have 20 highly experienced workplace tutors available throughout New
Zealand to work with you and your staff. We offer such a wide range of customised training solutions that may just give you the competitive edge in 2014. Make
sure you talk with us about how Edvance solutions can fit with your company’s
training strategy for 2014.
 Lynda Rewita has been appointed as our new General Manager. Lynda has
been the Administration and LLN Manager at Edvance since 2007. Her move to
managing the team coincides with Peter Robieson’s move to a more strategic
approach as the Director of Edvance.
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