Editor's Focus

Can your workers all read and write effectively – enough to read a safety brochure or write a report on a problem or improvement? Are all your employees on the same page in terms of where your business is headed? Do your managers know how to keep up with the constantly changing recycling marketplace?

Sometimes it’s easy to overlook the importance of ongoing education and training for employees, since other things – like buying and trading scrap metal and running a day-to-day business – are so pressing. But it has clearly been shown that injuries can be avoided, processes improved, and operations generally conducted at a higher level when all workers have adequate training.

This month, we give an update on some of the efforts scrap processors are taking to educate and train employees. Sometimes very basic training is what’s needed. Believe it or not, 40 to 50 percent of adults in the United States struggle to some extent with reading and writing skills, according to Mike Mattia, director of risk management for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Washington. In other words, as a business owner you can make posters and brochures on operating safely and effectively available, but unless employees can read them, they won’t do much good.

To remedy this situation, a number of scrap processors offer basic literacy programs. Some have reported impressive gains in efficiency and safety once their workers improve their basic reading skills and English-speaking skills.

One company says that their literacy program has paid off in a number of ways – the employees are functioning more effectively both at work and at home. After six months, employees redesigned the company’s aluminum processing system to make it operate more efficiently, and then even wrote a report on what they had done using their improved writing skills.

Training top managers is also important, as today’s business environment is changing fast and managers need skills to stay on top of those changes.

A number of resources are available to scrap processors looking to get started with training programs. The Small Business Association has a number of programs available, and the Internet is a good way to locate a variety of skills improvement courses and materials offered by community colleges, vocational-technical schools or other public agencies, including county and state governments.

The bottom line is, don’t overlook employee education and training. Not only can it help you avoid a lot of problems, but it can also help improve your competitiveness as the next millenium approaches.