Nine Essential Skills Every Employee Requires via AWES

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Nine Essential Skills Every Employee Requires

Alberta Workforce Essential Skills

Workplace essential skills are the nine foundational skills required for learning all other skills at work. They are:

Reading

Writing

Document use

Numeracy

Oral communication

Digital technology

Thinking

Working with others

Continuous learning

Essential skills are used in every task a worker performs. Workers use essential skills to complete simple tasks, such as filling out a form or giving a verbal update at a meeting, to more complex tasks, such as writing an operational plan with sophisticated computer software. Employees need essential skills in order to perform their current jobs competently and to learn new skills to advance in their careers.

Descriptions of the nine essential skills

> ESSENTIAL SKILL

> DEFINITION

> EXAMPLES OF THE SKILL IN USE

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WHY ARE ESSENTIAL SKILLS IMPORTANT?

The nine essential skills enable Canadians to evolve with their jobs and adapt to workplace change. Today’s work world demands a broader range of skills with increasing degrees of complexity, even for the most basic employment. Employees who have completed grade school may find that the work world demands they use their skills far differently from what they did in school.

For example, reading in school and reading at work are not necessarily the same thing. Employees who were fluent readers at school may not be able to pick up a workplace document, quickly interpret the structure, find the needed information and then use that information properly.

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The Return on Investment (ROI) of essential skills

Research into literacy skills – reading, document use, numeracy and problem solving – reveals the ROI of increasing the essential skills of Canadians. The 2005 report, Public Investment in Skills: Are Canadian Governments Doing Enough?, by the C.D. Howe Institute, explains this:

➤ For every 1% increase in literacy skills in a nation, economic productivity increases 2.5%, which results in a 1.5% permanent increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

➤ For employees, it means more choices in the labour market.

ESSENTIAL SKILLS LEVELS

Each essential skill has levels of complexity on a scale from 1 (most basic) to 5 (most advanced). Employment and Social Development Canada’s Essential Skills Profiles provide details on the specific essential skills and complexity levels in over 350 occupations. The complexity levels explain the skill needs in each occupation.

The following chart gives examples of what complexity levels look like in a broad range of occupations.  READ MORE >>