Gen Z Literacy Rates Raise Concerns About Reading Skills

Image Credit: Skynet

Curated by Paul Helmick

Rising concerns about literacy signal a future workforce with weaker comprehension and communication.

Audit how your teams read, write, and document work, then simplify critical information into clear standards, templates, and short training loops.

Paul’s Perspective:

Literacy isn’t an abstract education issue; it’s an execution issue. If employees struggle to parse written instructions, the organization pays through errors, customer miscommunications, and managers becoming human “interpreters” for basic process steps.

Leaders face a tradeoff: keep relying on long, text-heavy documentation and accept friction, or redesign how information flows so work is easier to understand and harder to do wrong. The opportunity is to turn this into a competitive advantage by making your processes clearer, faster to learn, and more resilient as teams scale.

This also changes how you assess talent. Strong communication is increasingly a differentiator, and companies that measure it and train it deliberately will outperform those that assume it.

Key Points in Article:

  • Lower reading stamina and comprehension can show up operationally as more rework, slower onboarding, and increased safety or compliance mistakes when instructions are text-heavy.
  • “Digital-first” consumption favors short-form content, which can reduce exposure to long-form reading needed for contracts, policies, SOPs, and technical documentation.
  • Organizations can shift from dense manuals to layered documentation: one-page summaries, checklists, visuals, and role-based SOPs linked to deeper detail.
  • Hiring and training may need more skills-based evaluation of comprehension and written communication, not just credentials or years of experience.

Strategic Actions:

  1. Identify roles where reading comprehension directly impacts quality, safety, customer outcomes, or compliance.
  2. Review your core SOPs, policies, and onboarding materials for length, clarity, and usability on mobile.
  3. Rewrite critical procedures using plain language, active voice, and step-by-step checklists.
  4. Create layered documentation: quick-start guides first, deeper references second.
  5. Add visuals (screenshots, flowcharts) and examples of “good vs. bad” outputs.
  6. Standardize templates for emails, customer responses, proposals, and internal requests.
  7. Build short training loops with micro-quizzes or task demonstrations to confirm comprehension.
  8. Update hiring to include a simple reading-and-writing exercise aligned to the job.

Dive deeper > Full Story:

The Bottom Line:

  • Rising concerns about literacy signal a future workforce with weaker comprehension and communication.
  • Audit how your teams read, write, and document work, then simplify critical information into clear standards, templates, and short training loops.

Ready to Explore More?

If you want to reduce rework and onboarding time, we can help you simplify SOPs and internal documentation and automate the handoffs that depend on clear instructions. Reply if you want to talk through where comprehension gaps are slowing execution in your business.