Companies increasingly aware of situations of illiteracy

More than 13,000 of them used the test developed by the National Agency to Combat Illiteracy. It makes it possible to identify risks and measure their economic and social impacts.

Do companies take sufficient account of illiteracy among their employees? This is the question that the ANLCI (National Agency for the Fight against Illiteracy) asks itself (and asks them) through a test, which Sarah Lemoine mentions here.

franceinfo: what is this agency’s approach like?

Sarah Lemoine: Do you have a written culture in your company? Are there employees who refuse to go to training? Others who say they forgot their glasses when they need to read a document? Or those who ask to work nights? Dissatisfied customers because instructions were not followed? These are some of the questions from Ev@gill, this free test developed at the end of 2020 to raise awareness among businesses about illiteracy. According to the latest official figures, 1.3 million workers in the private and public sector suffer in silence from this handicap which is not recognized as such. All professional sectors are concerned, even if agriculture, agri-food and construction are over-represented.

What does it mean to be illiterate?

It’s when you have been to school, in France, but you do not have sufficient mastery of reading, writing, arithmetic, reference points in space and time to be independent: not being able to writing a check, not being able to read a notice or a story to your children, not understanding an elaborate speech or professional jargon. Those who suffer from it implement avoidance and workaround strategies to cope. At work, it’s using color codes, photographing a word in your head, asking a colleague to fill out their vacation request.

Except that with the explosion of digital technology and the intranet, things are becoming more and more complicated. We are sick more often, more often victims of work accidents. And we hide all this very hard, because it is impossible to reveal. It’s so difficult to say that only 1% of people who are illiterate take the step of relearning, according to researcher Anne Vinérier.

Are companies taking action?

This is going in the right direction, according to the National Agency to Combat Illiteracy. An experiment carried out with eleven companies, including Disneyland and Sodexo, has already helped 500 employees with tailor-made training, which meets the needs of the worker and the company. “Around fifteen large groups are working on an action plan” indicates project manager Lamia Allal. This is also happening in the structures of integration through activity. And next year, a special effort will be made towards apprentices.