The Essential Skills Research Project (ESRP)

What is the Essential Skills Research Project (ESRP)?

In 1994, Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) launched a national research study, the Essential Skills Research Project (ESRP), to examine how essential skills are used in various jobs in Canada. Essential Skills are not technical skills but rather the skills people use to carry out a wide variety of everyday life and occupational tasks. Workers must have essential skills in order to do their work – those who have essential skills at the levels required for their desired occupations will have enhanced employability. To date, more than 3,000 interviews have been conducted across the country, involving workers in some 180 occupations. (www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/essentialskills)

HRDC identified a list of essential skills used in the workplaces of today (based on research conducted by Canada, Britain, Australia and the United States). These skills became the basis of the Essential Skills Research Project. They include:

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

These skills are used throughout the activities of daily life: from shopping to food preparation, from recreational activities to community involvement.

What is the purpose of the Essential Skills Research Project?

Even though international research had identified the essential skills used in Canadian workplaces, a number of important questions remained unanswered. For example, essential skills such as reading, writing and problem solving can take many forms, ranging from simple tasks, such as filling in credit card receipts, to more complex tasks, such as writing scientific reports. How can these differences be described? What do these skills look like in different jobs? How do individuals know if they have the skills they need to do the jobs they want to do? The ESRP has provided answers to these questions – it has catalogued the essential skills used in a range of occupations in Canada, the frequency of their use, and the complexity level at which these skills are used.

The ESRP has also developed ways to talk about essential skills by adapting scales from the International Adult Literacy Survey (www.nald.ca/nls/ials/introduc) and the Canadian Language Benchmarks (www.language.ca), and drawing on other sources from the United States, Australia and Great Britain.