I work in the pharmaceutical industry where we manufacture generic drugs. I have an employee whose writing is not legible. He must record a great deal of data on the manufacturing batch records. I have spoken to him and if he stands and writes in small blocks on the form, his writing is difficult to read; however, if he sits and writes in larger blocks his writing is readable. I was wondering is there any game or technique out there I could teach to the employee to improve his writing. Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi GT -- have you researched any courses (perhaps at the local community college or library) that address adult handwriting skills? Another thing to consider is that if his handwriting is legible when he sits down and writes in larger blocks, as you describe, that should be the only way he completes his work. His manager should be responsible for this type of coaching and feedback.

On a slightly related note, for anyone being hired into this type of position in the future, since handwriting neatly is a required skill for this position, there should be some sort of assessment of that skill in the recruiting process.

Having done the majority of my work in manufacturing companies (including pharmaceuticals) in the areas of training, human factors, and quality, I would STRONGLY urge you find this employee another job immediately - or let him go. I can't even begin to tell you how many SERIOIS accidents and incidents have occurred in your industry among others just because someone's handwriting is read incorrectly. The documents might as well have incorrect information on them.

My guess is that this employee has other problems besides his handwriting. I would question his ability to perform even the simplest of tasks such as copying correctly. Normally there is also difficulty with reading comprehension. There's also the possibility that the employee writes so poorly to cover up these other weaknesses. I mean, if you can't read someone's writing, how can you evaluate their work? Something is not right here. Again, get this employee OUT of any environment or work situation that requires accuracy and attention to detail. Poor handwriting, poor spelling, poor mathematical ability - all those signal an employee who should be kept out of these kinds of jobs.

I can appreciate your desire to help this employee, but please just find him another job.

Hi GTaylor,

Being in the pharmaceutical industry myself, I completely understand the need for clarity in hand-writing for documenting raw data.

However, I tend to disagree with FF and Kaliko: if this person is to be fired or relocated based on hand-writing, the same should be true for the vast majority of medical doctors whose hand-writing is far from legible most of the time. Following this advice would lead to a huge vacuum of otherwise perfectly capable and knowledgeable MDs in the health care system! But I do think that this is not a training issue but a performance issue and best dealt by the supervisor.

That being said, perhaps this situation would be ideal for an electronic data capture initiative? It would save process time, enhance the information clarity and speed up of few steps down the line: a win-win-win situation. What about using a different kind of pen? Maybe a finer point could help.

quote:

Originally posted by Vireo:
if this person is to be fired or relocated based on hand-writing, the same should be true for the vast majority of medical doctors whose hand-writing is far from legible most of the time. Following this advice would lead to a huge vacuum of otherwise perfectly capable and knowledgeable MDs in the health care system!

Vireo, that's a good idea about the electronic data capture initiative. However, I have to disagree at least somewhat with you analogy of medical doctors and their bad handwriting. Are you aware of how many medical fatalities occur every year because some pharmacist could not read the doc's handwriting and issued the wrong medication? or the number of times nurses mis-read the writing on patients' chaarts and delivered fatal doses of something or even the wrong medication? People end up dead or with permanent injuries many times. You might pick up the book, "Human Error in Medicine" edited by Marilyn Sue Bogner. It will shock you.

I would like more info from GTaylor on this one because it is an interesting case. Just reading between the lines though, this doesn't sound like the brightest employee on earth. If that is the case, I wouldn't trust him with entering data electronically either without knowing the extent of his capabilities. It certainly bears checking out.