Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) has defined a set of nine Essential Skills. Recent efforts by HRSDC have focused on a wider acceptance of this list of skills and a broader usage of the concept of Essential Skills including Essential Skills Profiles1 by those involved in basic skills and industry training. A focus has beenon the apprenticeable trades as an area for increased Essential Skills activities.
HRSDC contracted with the Canadian Labour and Business Centre (CLBC) to undertake this project. Established in 1984, CLBC is a leading national organization for research and dialogue on skills and human resources issues. An independent national bipartite labour/management organization, the Centre also includes on its Board senior representatives from federal and provincial/territorial governments and education. In carrying out its unique mandate, the Centre has earned the trust and support of its constituency groups and has been successful in bringing the major labour market partners together to address key issues of mutual concern.
The objectives of the project were to:
Brigid Hayes, Interim Director, Labour, led the research team and was supported by Elena Simonova, Research Analyst, and Aaron Chapman, Office and Communications Technician.
In the early 1990s, the Essential Skills Research Project (ESRP) proposed to define a set of competencies related to non-technical skills that were observable and present in all jobs. These non-technical skills had been called employability or basic skills. What distinguished the ESRP from some of the previous typologies was the focus on measuring the skills required in each job through interviews and observation. Previous lists of desired skills were just that - a wish list created by asking employers what they wanted in employees. The ESRP brought a rigour to the process and observed each of the skills as actual workers were using them. Not only were the skills defined but they also were measured along a continuum of increasing complexity. Moreover, for some of the complexity scales (reading text, document use, and numeracy), the ESRP borrowed the scales from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and for the oral communication scale made a direct link to the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB). These moves and others made by the HRSDC research team ensured those scales were valid and could be replicated.
1 Essential Skills Profiles document the uses and level of complexity of each of the nine Essential Skills according to the National Occupation Classification (NOC). The nine Essential Skills are: Reading Text, Continuous Learning, Document Use, Working with Others, Writing, Numeracy (Math), Thinking Skills, Oral Communication, Computer Use. Return