Business Numeracy

Rapidly growing technological advances are making the need for numeracy skills more critical within the workplace. With greater numbers of workers engaging in more sophisticated tasks, numeracy is recognised as an essential employability skill. Also, it has been acknowledged as a potential employment equity issue, as adults with poor numeracy skills are more likely to have relatively low work positions with fewer promotion prospects and lower wages.

Numeracy is the knowledge and skills required to effectively manage and respond to the mathematical demands of diverse situations.[1] It involves developing confidence and competence with logic and reasoning, and requires an understanding of how data are gathered and presented in diagrams, graphs, tables and charts.[2]

While numeracy involves all dimensions of mathematics and is the type of skill needed to function in everyday life, it is more than just numbers. Innumeracy is considered the mathematical counterpart of illiteracy and is a socially based activity, as it requires the ability to integrate math and communication skills. It is intricately linked to language, as words are the tools for translating numerical code and giving it meaning.[3]

In the workplace, it is the ability of the individual to manage a situation or solve a problem in a real-life context using mathematics. The consequences of innumeracy are not as visible or obvious as those of illiteracy, and appear more socially acceptable and tolerated. Innumeracy tends to affect people who are both intelligent and well-educated unlike illiteracy which mostly affects the uneducated.

The cost of innumeracy to society in terms of bad decisions made on the basis of misunderstood math and misinterpreted risk is great. A 2005 study found that 42% of adult Canadians have literacy and numeracy skills below the level necessary to succeed in society and economy, exerting a negative influence on the overall GDP per capita. Higher levels of literacy and numeracy, on the other hand, can increase employment while cutting debt and dependence on welfare and public health services.[4] Statistics Canada estimates that a 1% increase in average literacy and numeracy skills would raise GDP per capita by 1.5%, and labour productivity by 2.5%.[5] A lack of employee literacy and numeracy skills is also of particular concern for businesses, costing employers $4 Bn per year and $10 Bn for the nation as a whole.[6]

As a society, we inherently reward higher literacy. The assumption that better educated people have superior literacy and numeracy skills garners little disagreement. In fact, there is an expectation by employers that higher education graduates will possess high literacy and numeracy skills along with a high level of academic achievement. Those who are marginal to the labour market, however, such as the longer term unemployed, tend to have more significant problems in these areas.

At each level of competency an average employee can expect to earn more than someone the next step down the ladder.[7] On the other hand, poor numeracy can reduce employment opportunities, affect career progress and equity and cause overdependence on experts and professionals.[8] Productivity is also affected when employees are unwilling or slow to take on new tasks or to get involved in training either because of a lack of understanding or fear of math-related skills required. These related inequalities do not only affect earnings but can heavily influence work related and personal spending and investment decisions.

Workplace numeracy, literacy and employability skills are often used in conjunction with one another. The required skills often overlap and are necessary for any task, for example, completing a job might entail gathering and analysing information; using number or mathematical skills; reporting; using computers; working within a team setting; and possibly demonstrating some initiative.[9]