TOWES: practical, effective, beautiful.

• Position: Test of Essential Workplace Skills

It may seem strange to refer to a hiring tool as beautiful, but the Test of Essential Workplace Skills (TOWES) fits that descriptor in its practicality, logic and effectiveness. This major national initiative was developed to assess skills competencies in the areas of reading text, numeracy and document use--not to align people with further education as most tests do, but to determine their fit with specific jobs and job environments.

Funded by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), this test is delivered in Ontario through a partnership among 21 of Ontario's Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology, and the College Sector for Adult Upgrading. The test compares a person's skills against ratings developed by the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and HRSDC to help employers increase workplace safety, improve their productivity, screen for skills in potential employees, and adapt more quickly to new technologies. It measures essential skills, or the skills people use to carry out a wide variety of everyday life and work tasks--not the technical skills required by particular occupations. Writing skills used in the filling out of forms is one example. In addition to helping people perform these tasks, essential skills provide people with a foundation to learn other skills, and enhance their ability to adapt to change.

One of the most active colleges in the TOWES initiative is Canadore College in North Bay, where they are currently testing potential employees for Ontario Northland, an operational enterprise of the Government of Ontario providing transportation and telecommunication services throughout northeastern Ontario. Karyn Brearley, Executive Director of Enterprise and Partnership for Canadore College, says that TOWES is one of the most useful tools her department has to carry out its mandate. "We're the sector of the college that looks after all interaction with businesses and industry," Brearly says. "If a company needs to train welders, for example, their representatives would come to us. We also deal with all three levels of government, from municipal organizations to HRSDC."

Brearley points out that TOWES was initiated in western Canada, where the concept was developed, designed and prototyped. "Through the Colleges of Ontario Network for Education & Training (CON*NECT), Canadore College has been involved since December of 2003. In a way, we were launched into it by the needs of Ontario Northland, one of our...