Essential Skills are the fundamental skills that make it possible to learn all others. They are enabling skills that help people participate fully in the workplace and in the community.




Understanding Essential skills can help employers to develop job descriptions, identify training needs or decide what skills to seek when recruiting.


  Essential Skills Profiles


You can use this site to search close to 200 occupational profiles. These profiles can help you learn more about the skills you need for the job you want, highlighting each of the nine Essential Skills.


  Test of Workplace Essential Skills


TOWES (Test of Workplace Essential Skills) is an assessment tool used to assess the Essential Skills of Reading Text, Document Use and Numeracy. Test questions use authentic workplace materials and tasks as source materials in order to assess skills as they are used in the workplace. Test writers assume the role of a worker who must process information imbedded in an actual workplace document and complete a task or solve a problem using that information. TOWES scores provide employers with information that is useful in a variety of human resource functions including recruitment, training, succession planning and entrance into apprenticeship.


  Test your skills


Measure Up! is a free web-based tool that tests your essential skills. It has problem sets similar to the ones used in TOWES. Each problem set is based on a document - a memo, catalogue, regulations, work order - associated with workplace contexts. The self-assessments found in Measure Up! have not been subjected to the rigorous validity and reliability standards of TOWES. It is an informal tool which demonstrates the power of TOWES.


  CLB 2000: English as a Second Language for Adults


The Canadian Language Benchmarks describe a person’s ability to use the English language to accomplish a set of tasks at 12 Benchmark levels, in four language skill areas: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing


  Employability Skills 2000+


The Conference Board of Canada with its members developed a series of Employability Skills 2000+ based on fundamental skills, teamwork skills and personal management skills that are required by everyone in the world of work, whether you work on your own or are part of a team.