Workplace Classes

"Thank you very much for all the work you put towards our staff education. It has made a very positive difference in our staff and has given them the skills that they can apply and use outside of work as well." - Juan Escalante, Director of Environmental Services at Northwest Hospital and Medical Center

In our rapidly changing economy, many entry-level jobs require workers to develop and demonstrate increasingly higher levels of English proficiency and workplace competencies. Once hired, many workers struggle to advance because they lack the English language, basic math, and/or digital literacy skills, and job security for entry-level work is more vulnerable than ever before.

Literacy Source partners with employers and unions to provide on-site contextualized classes that focus on helping employees with English language and/or digital literacy skills needed to succeed and advance in the workplace.

Recent workplace partners include:

SEIU NW 1199 Multi-Employer Training Fund: We currently partner with the Training Fund to provide ongoing ESOL and basic digital literacy classes for janitorial and dietary staff at local hospitals, including Swedish (Ballard, First Hill, and Edmonds), Highline Medical Center and Group Health. These classes help incumbent workers enhance language and computer skills needed to advance in the workplace.

Northwest Hospital: Literacy Source developed a customized training curriculum for all incumbent Environmental Service (EVS) workers as they converted to a computer based patient/room management system. Northwest wanted to ensure that all employees, regardless of language, literacy and computer skill levels, were able to understand and implement the new information. Working in partnership with the hospital staffing needs, a curriculum was developed to scaffold information building up to implementation. Upon “going live,” 100% of employees were able to utilize the new software on day one!

Valley Medical Center: As part of their yearly wellness campaign to lower insurance premiums for employees, Literacy Source worked with VMC staff to develop and facilitate a series of workshops for low skilled employees aimed at helping them to complete and understand their online (StayWell) wellness assessments, while improving digital skills at the same time. As a result of the collaborative partnership, Literacy Source was able to help the hospital more than double their participation rate from previous years, while providing a supportive environment for workers to access the platform and improve digital literacy.

For more information on customized workplace classes, contact Janet Arbogast