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Getting Your Bearings:

Workplace Essential
Skills Familiarization

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Defining Workplace Essential Skills

  • the kind of skills that people use to carry out a wide variety of everyday occupational tasks

  • the foundation upon which more occupation-specific skills are built (the Velcro to which other training sticks)

  • enabling skills that help people perform tasks required by their jobs

  • skills which allow workers to learn new skills

  • skills which enhance a worker’s ability to adapt to workplace change

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  • skills necessary to use printed and written information to perform competently in a workplace and to develop one’s knowledge and potential

  • basic skills that help workers to fulfill their individual and collective potential at work, at home, in the union, and in the community

  • generic skills required by most workplaces in the country

  • the skills that help you keep a job

  • the “academic”skills that individuals require on a daily basis

  • called basic, foundation, enabling, essential skills

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WES Examples

  • reading and responding to an email

  • writing in a logbook

  • costing a product

  • reading instructions in a manual

  • interpreting a blueprint

  • making a call to a supplier

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  • reading a collective agreement

  • estimating the amount of time a task

  • scheduling daily activities

  • taking notes at a meeting

  • interpreting WHMIS symbols

  • completing an expense claim

  • calculating GST on an invoice

  • providing a cost estimate and budget

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Essential Skills
HRDC Classifications

  • reading text
  • using documents
  • writing
  • numeracy
  • oral communication
  • working with others
  • computer use
  • thinking skills
  • problem solving
  • decision making
  • critical thinking
  • job task planning and organizing
  • significant use of memory
  • finding information
  • continuous learning


www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca