Reading difficulties less challenging with INOSA
Over one million Norwegians struggle with general reading difficulties after finishing school. With the management tool INOSA, they get the opportunity to understand important work procedures – without having to read.
Society’s requirements for reading and writing skills are becoming increasingly stringent, and adults with reading difficulties have a real fear of forms that must be read, understood and completed at work.
– The industry must facilitate
The industry needs competence and manpower, and the CEO of Norsk Industri, Stein Lier-Hansen, is therefore concerned that the industry must facilitate that even those with reading and writing difficulties can contribute.
– We need employees who are competent and who can function, even if they have some challenges. We also need to be able to recruit new employees, and then we must facilitate an inclusive working life, Lier-Hansen told NRK Dagsrevyen on 21 May this year.
With INOSA, industry and other industries could open up working life in a way that provides more opportunities, both for employers and employees.
Understandable through visualization
With INOSA, many of the challenges they experience in everyday work disappear. INOSA makes it easy to prepare documents such as work instructions, one-point lessons and procedures by cutting down on text usage, and instead using images, symbols, video, and flow models. By describing work instructions visually, the company can ensure that the employees both learn and perform the work tasks correctly in a more efficient way.
– There are many who have challenges with reading, but who can still be driving skilled people and resources that it is possible to utilize in a much better way, says Bente Baugstø, CEO. and INOSA.
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The challenges of document understanding were in many ways the starting point for the establishment of INOSA 15 years ago.
– We saw that many experienced challenges with so much that had to be read. While some had reading difficulties, others had a refusal to read long documents. We have people with experience from Brazil, where illiteracy has been great, and where they have been good at using color codes and images to make things easier and more understandable, says Baugstø.
Visualization with images, symbols and video is based on the LEAN mindset, and has, among other things, been a successful recipe for IKEA. Their instructions do not contain a single word, and the symbols are understood by everyone – no matter what mother tongue you may have.
– The latest generation is also used to using “How to” and “DIY” videos on YouTube. With INOSA, you can easily build this idea into the procedure tool and quality systems, says Baugstø.