Employer Skills Pledge proving unpopular

Nigel DuPree

29 Apr 2008

With 7 million functionally illiterate and 58% of those employed as DSE users reporting Screen Fatigue let alone MSD's we may have to address the risks associated with visual stress resulting in VD (Vigilance Decremation) before worrying about more than just basic skills in the workplace.

Digital literacy will need to be significantly improved first in order to support the studying of higher level skills in a text based environment even if reinforced with practical or experiencial training as few with a reading rate of less than 180 words per minute have the confidence to overcome a lifetime of approval deprivation when it comes to anything perceived as 'educational'.

The memory associated with underperformance at school tends to present as 'Performance Anxiety' on the scale of a relatively mild PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) that nevertheless has the affect of 'aversion therapy' when personally tasked to do anything involving reading and writing especially forms.

Reducing Screen Fatigue would improve digital literacy and thereby performance or productivity by 15 to 25 percentage points on it's own even before improving skills and will have a direct affect on productivity by reducing headaches etc. that result in so many, less than three day self-cert, sort of absenteeism.

If we are to avoid putting the cart before the horse yet again and then wondering why so little impact when spending so much time and money on tick-box driven delivery of training cources where only real outcome is down time while individual participating in the course......!.

"Access to Text" enables greater capacity and confidence to actively engage or participate in the learning experience as an alternative to just attending..

Eye Tests and glasses 'may' aid those with refractive problems but visual fatigue 'will' affect those with 20/20 vision and remains undetected in up to 48% of population in addition to the 10% charactorised as Dyslexic.

Not a 1 in 10 problem but a nearly 6 out of 10 problem in DSE users and that now means most of us who become a little frustrated at not being able to fulfil our potential when we know we could do better but can't quite figure out what is slowing us down -

SCREEN FATIGUE should no longer be dismissed as insignificant or temporary.