Skills for Life: useful tips

Here are some useful tips for approaching Skills for Life in the workplace or designing Skills for Life sessions. These are drawn from other organisations' experiences, many of which have worked with the Campaign for Learning over a number of years.

Identify your organisation’s needs. What skills do your workforce currently have and what do they need? Are these going to remain the same or are they changing – for example, do you envisage needing employees to be more flexible in their work, or more confident in using technology, in future? Can you start to plan this for now?
Think about how you can help employees to overcome potential barriers such as time and costs. Most Skills for Life provision is free, and many providers are delighted to have the opportunity to run courses in local workplaces. Your local Learning and Skills Council's Skills for Life manager can put you in touch with providers in your area.
Get buy-in from senior management. Show examples of how Skills for Life issues affect businesses. If one area of the business has piloted Skills for Life activities, show the impact these have had to gain support for running them in other areas. To find out more about the business case for learning click here. You can get tips on management buy-in for LAW Day here.
Look at how to promote buy-in at all levels of the workforce: senior management support may not be enough if, for example, it’s the team supervisor who will need to reschedule work to release team members to attend sessions. Think about the positive impact improved skills in the team will have on that person’s job, or how they achieve their targets, and use this to canvass their support. The supervisor may also have Skills for Life needs - most of us do! - and might like the chance to attend as well. And when people see their manager on the same course, it usually makes Skills for Life less of a stigma and more of a 'brushing up' of skills.

Base activities around real life situations and tasks. Learning is always more successful when you can see the relevance of it, and this is especially true for people with Skills for Life needs. You might run workshops on job-related subjects such as health and safety, first aid or customer service. As well as helping people develop new job-related skills, it will also provide an opportunity to identify any Skills for Life needs that they may have. Activities relating to personal situations such as financial literacy may also be popular. Consider holding sessions on how to read your pay slip,or how to organise a party, which appeal to staff at all levels. Download these sessions from the resource section of the LAW Day website.

Build on the skills people already have rather than focussing on what they can't do. Building confidence is important in Skills for Life learning, so when people succeed in one thing, they are likely to want to do more. Although the first steps that people take may not be in work-related subjects, many people do progress to these in future.
Avoid promoting training sessions using words such as literacy and numeracy, which may put people off. Use standard business terminology such as customer service, using the telephone system, handling cash, understanding your payslip, and consider how to build in opportunities for staff to develop and practise skills through this. Take advice from local Skills for Life providers about the best way to do this.
Work with Union Learning Reps (ULRs) or Learning Champions if your organisation has them. This can help as staff often feel more comfortable talking to peers rather than their manager. If you don’t yet have ULRs (in a unionised workplace), contact your Union or local unionlearn to find out how to train yourself or recruit others! If your organisation is not unionised consider asking successful learners to act as ambassadors to encourage peers to get involved.
Initial sessions shouldn't be made compulsory. Employees don’t want to feel pressured into attending. If your initial sessions are successful, you are likely to find you recruit more people through word of mouth.
Try to make sessions fun and accessible to staff. Bear in mind that some staff with Skills for Life support needs may have very negative memories of school, so make sure your sessions are adult, informal and as little like school as possible!
Provide sessions for all staff including those on different shifts, freelancers, or people working at different locations. Staff at all levels may need to improve skills: don’t assume that only ‘front line’ staff may have Skills for Life needs, for example. Offer sessions such as writing reports, presentation skills or using spreadsheets to manage budgets which may appeal to staff at various levels of the organisation.
Consider carefully how you promote your sessions. If you are aiming to attract people who aren’t confident with written information or don’t have good reading skills in English, don’t rely on sending round e-mails or putting up posters. Use lots of different methods such as newsletters, posters, team briefings, e-mails and word of mouth. Involve as many people as possible, at as many levels of the organisation as possible, in spreading the word.