Fletcher Building Roof Tile Group

The client

Fletcher Building Roof Tile Group manufactures the Gerard brand of roof tiles and accessories.  The high quality products, which lead the New Zealand market, are also manufactured and sold throughout the world.

The challenge

Many of the manufacturing line employees in the company's sole New Zealand plant were born overseas and some had limited education.   Low literacy and numeracy levels had not originally been an issue when the employees were hired into roles that were repetitive in nature and required little skill.  It increasingly became a problem, however, as the company began to increase its focus on health and safety, and production reporting.

Cultural and language barriers also prevented many staff from communicating directly with supervisors and managers.  As a result, problems were covered up and there were some significant production errors.  In one incident many faulty tiles were produced after staff noticed a production problem but were not confident to stop the line.

Practical, sustainable solutions

Workbase developed a training programme that assisted employees to: 

• understand oral instructions and information from managers and supervisors
• report equipment, material quality and quantity issues
• report hazards and maintenance requests clearly and accurately
• participate appropriately in team and other meetings
• accurately complete company documentation (e.g. change hand sheets and production orders)
• read and understand company documents, such as standard operating procedures.

Great results

Major improvements quickly became evident not long after 42 employees started the Workplace Training Programme.  For example: 

• Improvement in 'near miss' and other health and safety reporting
• Significant productivity gains per annum due to communication of key issues within production teams
• A reduction in incidents requiring rework
• Greatly improved accuracy in product-related record keeping
• Increased accuracy when using the scanning system.