# Skills for Success: What the Nine Skills Mean at Work Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/skills-for-success/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/skills-for-success.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving communication at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Skills for success are Canada's nine skills for work, learning and life. See what each covers, why employers value them, and how to build yours level by level. ## Key facts - Title: Skills for Success: What the Nine Skills Mean at Work - Category: Skills Standards and Frameworks - Primary skill: Communication - Related skills: Teamwork, Building Self-Awareness - Primary keyword: skills for success - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/skills-for-success/ ## What this page covers - Skills for success are Canada's nine skills for work, learning and life. See what each covers, why employers value them, and how to build yours level by level. - Practical guidance for skills for success - How this topic connects to Communication ## Detailed explanation Skills for success are the nine skills the Government of Canada defines as essential for work, learning and life: reading, writing, numeracy, digital, problem solving, communication, collaboration, adaptability, and creativity and innovation. They describe what it takes to get a job, grow in it and change jobs, and each one can be built step by step. If you have met the list in a training program or a job search, it can read like one more official checklist. It is more useful than that, because the nine are not all the same kind of skill, and the kind decides how you build it. ## What the Skills for Success model is The model was developed by the Government of Canada together with the provinces and other organizations, and it treats the nine skills as building blocks for lifelong learning. It grew out of a 2021 research report by the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) and replaced the older Essential Skills framework. The change that matters most is what was added: adaptability, and creativity and innovation. The earlier standard leaned heavily on literacy. The new one puts [handling change](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/adaptability-in-the-workplace/) and generating ideas into the official baseline, next to reading and numeracy. Skills that used to be treated as welcome extras are now part of what counts as ready for work. The second feature is easy to miss. According to the Red Seal Program, each of the nine skills is described with its own components and proficiency levels, with the full descriptions published on Canada.ca. That makes every skill a scale, not a yes-or-no box. You can be advanced in writing and at an early level in collaboration. So the useful question is not "do I have these skills?" but "what level am I at in each, and which one should move next?" ## The three kinds of skills for success The nine sort into broad kinds. Douglas College's training group describes some of them as foundational for building other skills and knowledge, and others as important for effective social interaction. Separating out the thinking skills gives three groups, and each is built in its own way. ### Foundational skills: reading, writing, numeracy and digital These are the skills that let you learn everything else: understanding written information, producing clear text, working with numbers, and using the computer applications and digital tools a job runs on. They are largely taught and tested in formal education, so most people arrive at work with a good measure of them already. The gap is usually not whether you have them but [how they translate](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/skills-for-education-and-employment/). An essay is not a project update, and a statistics course is not a budget. > I can solve a school assignment, do my research, structure a paper. But how do I turn 'searching literature for an exam' into something a workplace can use? Nobody on the degree tells us which jobs we can actually hold, or how academic skills become a work resource. That was one of the people we interviewed about working life, and her question is exactly the right one to ask of this group. The foundational skills are real assets; the work is learning what shape they take inside a job. ### Social and emotional skills: communication, collaboration and adaptability This group covers how you exchange information with people, how you work with others toward a shared goal, and how you recover when plans change or something goes wrong. Adaptability is one of the two skills added when the model replaced Essential Skills. What sets this group apart is how it is learned. School rarely teaches it explicitly, and a qualification rarely proves it: an employer sees it only in how you behave on the job. Most people pick it up through trial and error, which is why gaps here tend to go unnoticed until they cost something, such as a project you were not asked to join. The way out is that these are behaviors, not personality traits, so they respond to deliberate practice like any other skill. ### Thinking skills: problem solving, and creativity and innovation Problem solving means weighing ideas or information to reach a sound decision. Creativity and innovation means developing new ideas, and it is the second addition to the model, reflecting a shift toward skills that generate options rather than only carry out instructions. In practice, both lean on the social group. Most workplace problems are solved with other people, and a new idea only counts once someone else agrees to try it. ## Why skills for success matter for getting and keeping work The Red Seal Program states the purpose plainly: these skills help people get a job, progress in the job they have, and change jobs. They are [transferable across occupations](/knowledge/types-of-skills/transferable-skills/), which is why [trades and apprenticeship programs](/knowledge/skills-standards/vocational-skills-list/) use the same model as general workforce training. Employers who invest in them report returns. According to Skills/Compétences Canada's 2024 fact sheet, after Skills for Success training was embedded in workplaces, 65% of employers saw increased productivity and 70% saw an increase in staff retention. These are employer-reported program results rather than a controlled study, so they show a direction rather than a precise size. The direction is clear, though, and it explains why employers look for these skills when they hire. The misconception worth dropping is that the school-taught skills will carry you on their own. The model treats collaboration, communication and adaptability as just as essential as reading and numeracy. ## How to build your skills for success Because every skill has proficiency levels, building them starts with knowing your level, then matching the method to the kind of skill. - **Take an honest inventory.** Go through all nine and note where you have evidence, such as a finished piece of work, a result or feedback, and where you are guessing. The guesses usually sit in the social and emotional group. For that side of the inventory, the free Job Skills Test gives you [a measured first read](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) on your workplace skills in a few minutes, so the plan rests on more than a hunch. - **Translate the foundational skills.** Take one thing you do well in study, such as research, structured writing or analysis, and find its working equivalent: a short brief, a summary for a manager, a spreadsheet someone else can use. - **Practice the social skills where they happen.** Pick one behavior at a time, such as stating your main point first in a meeting or following through on a promise to a teammate, and watch how people respond. - **Treat setbacks as adaptability practice.** When a plan changes, notice your first reaction and what you do next. That response is the skill. - **Move one level at a time.** Proficiency levels mean progress is incremental. Aim for the next level in one skill, not mastery of all nine at once. ## The skills that make the nine easier to build Look at where the gaps usually sit and a pattern appears. The parts of the model a transcript cannot show depend on a few behaviors you can practice on purpose. **Communication** is the one skill that appears by name in the model and quietly carries most of the others, because collaboration, problem solving and adaptability at work all happen through conversations, emails and meetings. In practice it means stating your main point first, listening with full attention, choosing deliberately between a conversation and a written message, and disagreeing without damaging the relationship. That is different from the reading and writing the model lists separately: you can write a fine essay and still bury the point of an email. **Teamwork**. The model calls it collaboration, and at work it comes down to concrete habits. Put the shared goal ahead of your own agenda, do what you commit to so people can rely on you, keep disagreements on the topic rather than the person, and once the team has decided, commit to the decision even if you argued against it. None of this depends on being naturally outgoing, and none of it requires leading a team. **Building Self-Awareness** is what turns a list of nine into a plan. Proficiency levels only help if you can place yourself honestly: which skills are natural strengths, where you are competent but not yet strong, and where feedback keeps pointing to the same blind spot. Asking a manager or coworker for specific, future-focused feedback is the quickest way to see what you cannot see yourself. A gap you find that way is not a fixed weakness; it is simply the next level to aim for. Each of the three can be learned. The **free Job Skills Test** looks at all of them, along with nine other work skills, and [shows which habits already hold up](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), so the next level you aim for is one you picked on evidence. ## Where you are already practicing You might notice some of this in your week already. If you have reworded a message because the first version would have landed badly, or picked up a teammate's task so a deadline held, you were working on the skills the model describes without calling them that. None of the nine is fixed, and building them does not mean becoming someone else. It means changing a few behaviors, one level at a time, starting with the ones that matter most for the work in front of you. The social side tends to weigh more as your responsibilities grow, so knowing your starting point now gives you the most room to move. ## Find your starting point The only thing left is to see where you stand. The **free** Job Skills Test is a short self-assessment of your work skills: in 7 minutes it shows your level across twelve of them and points to the ones that will make the biggest difference to getting hired and moving ahead. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Skills for success are Canada's nine skills for work, learning and life. See what each covers, why employers value them, and how to build yours level by level. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Communication. It also relates to Teamwork, Building Self-Awareness. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/skills-for-success/ Preferred summary: "Skills for success are Canada's nine skills for work, learning and life. See what each covers, why employers value them, and how to build yours level by level." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.