Maths, the Workplace Learning Advocates way!
At work people use maths all the time and sometimes don’t even realise it. Making sure you get to work on time, planning your journey and working out your payslip and e-banking requires maths. But for some it is not always easy and poor maths skills can become a real barrier to employees’ performance and career development. So how can Workplace Learning Advocates help? In a non-unionised workplace of any size (even a small or micro business) Workplace Learning Advocates (WLAs) can provide inspiration and support. WLAs help their peers overcome barriers and encourage, inform and develop people to learn at work and significantly improve staff productivity and confidence.
WLAs and their employers know that better maths skills will help to boost economic performance and help staff to improve their confidence and take on new tasks or different ways of working. They know what works best in their workplaces – how to fit into busy schedules, how to approach colleagues without embarrassment and how to align with company business priorities.
Employers who are already engaged welcome the opportunity for their staff to gain confidence and even greater skills. Small employers and micro businesses love the opportunity to learn Excel for budgets, invoicing and the mathematical principles to make business easier. From Excel for making comparisons or Excel for estimating there is something for everyone.
WLAs are being trained as Maths Champions to encourage their peers to embrace maths and to give it a go and even have some fun. WLAs have a very flexible approach and will work at the pace of their peers, knowing about learning opportunities, including free options. We have a Maths Champion toolkit to help WLAs and others get started and help and support is at hand.
By working and sharing ideas and resources with Maths4us partners, maths is becoming easier to access and embrace.
Here are just some of the things that recently trained Maths Champions are doing:
The Gelder Group, a construction company in the Midlands used a peer approach to teach Excel to their staff.
Alex Smiles Ltd in Sunderland is running a series of workshops for staff called Making ends meet – a series of 4 workshops helping staff manage their money.
Maths Champions from Moving Forward in the North East are designing some simple assessments for staff and service users to find out the confidence levels and interests of both groups.
Barking Enterprise Centre is holding workshops in Excel for their business network to help with Excel for business planning, accounting and invoicing.
Maths Champions who attended a workshop in Wigan in February plan a range of new activities in their workplaces including supporting staff to understand rounding up and down of numbers, percentages, quantity calculations, using Excel and how to convert currency for holidays. People who attended the workshop agreed that some of the small maths mistakes that can be made could be costing their companies a significant amount in income.
This is Maths the WLAs way!
Written by Frances Graham of Workbase Training and Liz Johnston of The Johnston Partnership.
Workbase Training and The Johnston Partnership are behind Workplace Learning Advocates (WLAs), an approach that has been successfully improving workplace learning and business performance since 2004. Both Liz and Frances have spent most of their working lives prioritising learning for all and giving people a real chance through learning.
The WLAs approach is all about helping individual organisations or groups of businesses to develop a learning culture either through information and advice, learning circles/clubs, social clubs or other innovative means. WLAs are for employees, led by employees, offering learning opportunities in a way and at times decided by and to suit employees.
Workplace Learning Advocates work with unionlearn (the TUC’s learning and skills organisation) ULRs and Community Learning Champions (CLCs) to help develop skills that meet the needs of employers in non-unionised settings.
Workplace Learning Advocates (WLAs) have been working successfully nationally since 2011.
