Peggy Revell
A pilot project between the Valley Adult Learning Association and the Super 8 Motel to improve employee skills in nearing the end of its first year—and comes with hopes other local employers will join in.
“It’s been very successful,” VALA executive director Barb Duguay enthused about the pilot project, which started last summer and connected 18 Super 8 staff with weekly workshops and training.
The pilot project is one of 13 across the province which aims to provide essential skills training in computers, document use, writing, math, and oral communication.
Known as the Collaborative Development Approach to Workplace and Community Workforce Literacy and Essential Skills Project, or a CODA project, it’s being funded by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and administered through the Ontario Literacy Coalition.
“Working with the OLC was just a wonderful experience,” said Duguay, citing the expertise, resources, and support it provided since the beginning of the project.
Even though the project is wrapping up over the next few months, Duguay said they will stay connected with the Super 8 staff in hopes they continue to take classes at VALA.
As well, they’re aiming to have the program expand to more local employers.
“We will be working with other employers in the future in much the same way as the CODA project,” Duguay explained.
“So any employers wanting to build skills in their employees can contact us.”
Workshops that participating Super 8 employees have attended over the past 10 weeks have covered a variety of topics, explained VALA instructor Beth Caldwell, with the very first one being on oral communications.
“I think we’ve all pretty much agreed that it was kind of the blossoming workshop for everyone,” Caldwell explained, noting that while many of the Super 8 employees had worked together for a long time, they didn’t really know each other well.
“And that [workshop] really opened the door to learning more about their teammates and how they work, and how they can work better together,” she remarked.
They’ve also held “vocabulary building workshops,” Caldwell noted, as well as document use workshops in how to read and take information from documents and apply it to questions that have been asked.
Participants wrote the TOWES test, which Caldwell said evaluates where a person stands in terms of their document use, literacy, and numeracy.
“It was a fairly difficult test, but then we tried to address some of the issues that they had with document use,” she explained.
They’ll be re-writing the test again in June just to see how far they’ve come and how their skills have changed.
Most recently, the Super 8 staff has been taking a course on computer basics.
“In the beginning it was, ‘What is a mouse?’” Caldwell recalled, with the program progressing from there to computer hardware, the Internet, search engines, e-mail, and working in word processing programs.
It’s been nice to be able to work together as a group through the pilot projects, said Linda Moen, one of the participating Super 8 employees.
“Our teacher, Beth, is an awesome teacher,” she added.
The computer course has been especially helpful, said Moen, noting her sister had given and set up a computer for her but she needed to learn how to use it.
“I really enjoy [the course],” she enthused. “I’m learning a lot more—how to type, get in and out of it, [and] how to get from place to place on the computer.”
“I’ve liked all the workshops, and I liked the computer courses,” echoed fellow Super 8 worker Patsy Cross, with learning how to use a computer being one of her favourite parts about the program.
“I didn’t really know all about computers, what they could do,” she admitted.
“Patsy really shines in the computer class,” chimed in Caldwell, referring to the progress that has been achieved.
While some of the employees may not need to use a computer in their jobs, there has been a change when it comes to communication, she added.
“It has made a difference in terms of communications among her teammates and with customers, and that kind of thing,” Caldwell noted.
“And if we have to answer the phone, we’ll be able to,” chuckled Moen.
