Executive Summary

Pivotal Research partnered with the Centre for Family Literacy to research family literacy in the workplace. The purposes of the research were to identify current family literacy practices and the implications for Alberta’s next generation and to understand the human stories behind literacy statistical data. Required literacy levels at work and at home as well as family literacy experiences, achievements and expectations were the focus of this study. In-person interviews were conducted with employees in five occupation categories. Interviewees represented a variety of industries including construction, education and business services. The criterion for participation was having a child under the age of 18. While the small sample size prevents generalizing results to the overall population, several key findings were identified.

• Although Level 3 literacy skills are considered necessary to function in today’s knowledge based and high technology society, increasingly it seems those in the workforce require higher levels of prose and document literacy, numeracy and problem solving with most occupations in this study requiring literacy at Levels 4 and 5.
• Recreation and non-work activities are demanding a higher level of prose literacy to function effectively than levels required in the past.
• High levels of problem solving ability are required at both work and home which may reflect the changing nature of society and the challenges people face on a day-to-day basis.
• The previous generation tended to emphasize the work ethic rather than literacy requirements. Despite this focus, respondents’ parents did engage in family literacy practices such as reading to their children and other positive reading, writing and numeracy modeling behavior.
• Employees appear to recognize they require greater levels of skills for their work and engage in professional development activities to fill knowledge and skill gaps.
• Respondents have high expectations for their children regardless of their own achievements, occupation or literacy levels.
• Most respondents read daily to their children regardless of the parents’ occupation level. However, there appears to be less importance placed on modeling behavior, suggesting that parents may be unaware of the effects their active and passive modeling have on their children.
• The demand for high literacy skills across all domains emphasizes the importance of investing in literacy initiatives that build and maintain proficiency levels to keep our workforce competent and competitive.