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The Movement for Canadian Literacy (MCL) is the national coalition advancing literacy and essential skills across Canada.  One of MCL’s goals is to provide a clear picture of literacy for employers.

As an employer you will often hear the term “Essential Skills”.  Essential skills are the foundational skills required to learn all other skills.  They are the skills that everyone needs in the workforce but they are equally important in all aspects of our lives.  It is about more than reading and writing information at work.  Workforce literacy and essential skills are needed to find a job, keep a job, do jobs well, change jobs or get a promotion.  Essential skills help employees to be more productive, have increased self-confidence, work as part of a team, have fewer workplace accidents, solve problems, make decisions, perform better in the workplace and more easily learn new tasks.

Essential skills are embedded in all duties that employees undertake in the workforce.  For example, a day care worker may have to explain about a food allergy and its impact to a parent.   The worker may have to read information about the allergy and its effects, or refer back to notes, decide how to present the information to the parent, answer questions and also create a Fact Sheet to help other parents understand the issue.  Many essential skills are embedded in this one activity: reading, document use, oral communication, writing, computer use and possibly continuous learning.