The government now requires bidding companies to commit to developing workforce skills. Jan Halfpenny urges more attention for the industry’s dyslexics.
New knowledge about dyslexia is creating fresh challenges and opportunities for the construction industry. Studies have shown that practical roles, such as those in construction, attract a larger proportion of people with dyslexia than the 10% that the British Dyslexia Association identifies in the general population.
Cass Business School research suggests that 20% of entrepreneurs and small business owners are dyslexic, and the National Farmers Union estimates 25% of farmers are as well. Interestingly, a specialist dyslexia centre in Seattle, the Eide Neurolearning Clinic, found 28% of the dyslexic families it sees come from construction and related backgrounds.
Dyslexic adults are drawn to hands-on, practical occupations because the key skills require the practical and creative problem-solving abilities associated with dyslexic thinking styles. People with dyslexia regularly receive no formal recognition at school of their different learning style and often leave education early to enter trades, crafts or hands-on occupations. Although there is no conclusive research, it is possible that dyslexia is two or three times more prevalent in the construction industry than in the general population.
New school
In general, however, the industry has yet to adjust training programmes to reflect the multi-sensory ways in which dyslexic employees learn. But new contractually linked requirements on training from the government create an opportunity to challenge this inertia: April’s National Infrastructure Plan (NIP) for Skills asks bidders to demonstrate workforce skills development commitments when bidding for large UK government contracts.
For employers, obtaining insight into dyslexia in the workforce – by making sources of information available so that individuals can self-refer for further information or online tests – is significant because dyslexia can affect the acquisition and development of workplace skills. Although many dyslexic adults have skilfully nurtured the practical, social and team-building abilities that ultimately make them suitable for construction management roles, they are often presented with two key challenges: short-term memory issues, and processing new information quickly and effectively, particularly under stress.
"The industry has yet to adjust training programmes to reflect the multi-sensory ways in which dyslexic employees learn."
Fortunately, most reasonable adjustments to training for dyslexics are simple and cost-effective for employers. These include variations to the training environment, equipment and policies – for example, turning off background noise and equipment, and accepting verbal responses instead of written ones. These changes reduce stress and anxiety in learning, which can aggravate the effects of dyslexia, and also reflect the requirements of Equality Act 2010, which requires an organisation to anticipate and implement reasonable adjustments for employees on its own initiative. When this happens, benefits accrue across
the organisation.
But despite these motivators, there is low workplace awareness of learning differences, little knowledge about what to do or tools that can help, such as speech recognition software and PC screen overlays, and few aids at hand to do it with.
This situation impacts upon many dyslexic adults, who are not aware that their stress and anxiety at work may be caused by dealing with everything through the prism of a hidden learning difficulty for which no one is accounting. This invisible barrier can impact on long-term training effectiveness, participation and provision.
High-speed learning
Bucking this trend is High Speed 2, which has signed up to incorporate the NIP for Skills principles in its bidding processes. It is advancing awareness and action on skills development through the National College for High Speed Rail, opening in 2017, and has invited industry discussion on creating the curriculum to achieve this.
At Halfpenny Development we found that online access to dyslexia specialists for up to six months helps employers develop their strategies. We also helped Scottish Enterprise to identify the dyslexia element in business management and innovation, and incorporate that into its equality strategy.
Since then, the Welsh government’s Business and Enterprise department has raised dyslexia information with its private-sector contacts. A growing number of corporates, such as EY, also utilise expertise in this area.
Giving contractors more of the knowledge, skills and confidence to make their training programmes dyslexia-friendly can deliver the “meaningful investment in skills” minister Nick Boles declared to be “vitally important” at the spring launch of NIP for Skills.
Investing in learning how to train the dyslexic cohort – which represents up to a third of the creative and management talent in construction – is one of the solid foundations on which to build an inclusive, bid-winning organisation of tomorrow.
Jan Halfpenny MEd runs workplace training consultancy Halfpenny Development
