The first task of the ESRP was to document the Essential Skills requirements for each occupation considered an entry-level occupation. As Essential Skills profilers were trained and went into workplaces, they became increasingly aware of the value of using the methodology to evaluate existing jobs to understand the skill requirements of the workplace. This enabled practitioners to create curriculum and interventions to ensure that workers met the demands of the workplace. As time went on, the Essential Skills Profiles began to be part of the occupational standards development process and sectoral studies as undertaken by HRSDC.
The trades were early adopters of Essential Skills. Jobs are more standardized and codified in the trades. Union training centres saw the connection between Essential Skills and success in training and in apprenticeship completion. Over time, apprenticeship offices also began to make explicit efforts in the area of Essential Skills. However, it is interesting to note that the ESRP did not turn its attention to profiling the Red Seal trades until almost ten years after its conception.
The ESRP grew up alongside the efforts of the National Literacy Secretariat and some provinces to promote literacy in the workplace. When the 1994 IALS was released and the three IALS scales became part of the Essential Skills scales, many workplace literacy practitioners embraced the more rigorous definitions of the skills that the Essential Skills Profiles provided. “Essential Skills” was the term used to refer specifically to the profiles and research. More generic terms such as workplace literacy or workforce education were used for the range of activities supporting increased skills of individual workers in the workplace. With time there has been a move towards using the Essential Skills framework to measure the skills of individuals, with or without a relationship to a specific job. There are a few cases, such as the Alberta Workplace Essential Skills Committee (AWES) and the Western Workplace Essential Skills Network (WWESTNET), which used the term ‘essential skills’ as a means to avoid terms such as ‘literacy’ that were seen as having a negative connotation.
For the purpose of uncovering projects involving Essential Skills for this current research effort, we looked beyond projects that actually used the term ‘essential skills’. We looked at any project involving the trades that touched on any of the skills contained with the nine Essential Skills, as well as those that dealt with the more generic term ‘literacy.’