Essential Skills

ESSENTIAL SKILLS are Everyday Skills

We use Essential Skills every day without even thinking about them: to take part in activities of daily living and to do the tasks required in our jobs. Essential Skills are common to virtually all occupations and workplaces. They are the basic building blocks we use to learn other, more complicated skills.

Having a grounding in Essential Skills helps us to adapt to life and workplace changes. That is why they are called ESSENTIAL Skills.

• Reading Text
• Document Use
• Writing
• Numeracy
• Oral Communication
• Thinking skills, including:
  • Problem solving
  • Decision making
  • Critical thinking
  • Job task planning and organizing
  • Significant use of memory
  • Finding information
• Working with others
• Computer use
• Continuous learning

Essential Skills are needed in virtually all daily activities and occupations - however, they may not all be used at the same time.

They are different from technical skills because they are transferable from job to job, from home to school to work, and from one task or situation to another.

As an example, both a computer programmer and a child care worker need and use writing skills and if they change jobs they do not have to relearn how to write. The skill itself does not change - however, the complexity and how often the skill is used may vary. The child care worker may fill out attendance forms every day, while the computer programmer may be expected to update technical manuals.

Just as this Essential Skill - writing - is adaptable to many different situations, so too are all the other Essential Skills. Those who understand and possess Essential Skills have a better chance of succeeding at any endeavour they undertake.

How do we describe the difference between simple and complex tasks? What do these skills look like in different jobs? How do people know if they have the skills they need to do the job they want? Those were the questions the Essential Skills Research Project (ESRP) set out to answer in 1994. For more information on this consult the Applications of Working and Learning (AWAL) website.

Research continues to be done and many job postings now include the Essential Skills involved and the skill level needed in each to successfully perform the tasks involved in the position.