Foundational Skills Gaps Are Constraining Workforce Mobility

Georgia Reagan frames foundational skills as part of the path to credentials that improve a worker’s economic position—not a prerequisite adults should have to clear before they can begin working or learning. Lumina Foundation’s goal is for 75% of adults in the U.S. labor force to hold a college degree or another credential of value by 2040. But the people in scope are already workers. They cannot simply leave the labor market to become full-time students, and a credential matters only if it leads to better work, higher earnings, or genuine opportunity.

That makes literacy, numeracy, English-language proficiency, and digital fluency workplace concerns. Workers may need support in those areas while pursuing a credential or a promotion. Employers, Reagan argues, occupy an important place in the learning ecosystem because they can connect instruction to a current job, a next role, a pay increase, and further education.

The national backdrop is not reassuring. Chelsea Miller describes PIAAC as an OECD-run international benchmark for adult literacy and numeracy. The NCES/PIAAC 2022 U.S. National Results displayed during the discussion place the United States 14th in literacy and 24th in numeracy among 31 countries. Miller says U.S. scores in both areas have declined across the data collections since 2012.

UpSkill America’s own Room for Growth survey points to a separate, employer-specific set of findings. The survey included more than 600 employers, but Miller cautions that it was not representative and its results should not be generalized to all employers. Among respondents, just over half offered foundational-skills training—more than offered AI training or apprenticeships. Programs employers rated most successful emphasized core reading and math, and about 70% of respondents offering foundational-skills training had an internal program.

The implication is not that every employer should build a school inside the company. The employers instead describe a more bounded task: identify the capabilities a role actually requires, understand where an individual needs support, and decide what should be owned internally versus supplied by partners.

At Tyson Foods, Della Adams describes a frontline workforce whose diversity makes a one-size-fits-all training model unworkable. Tyson has roughly 130,000 workers globally and 88,000 frontline team members in the United States. About half of those U.S. frontline workers prefer a language other than English, and more than 60 languages are represented across the company’s facilities.

Tyson’s entry-level frontline roles do not require English proficiency, computer skills, or a high-school diploma. That removes barriers to getting a job, but it does not remove the skills barrier to advancing within the company. Adams says the gaps Tyson sees most often involve reading, writing, basic math, English, and digital literacy. A worker may have been an engineer in their home country, she notes, but lack the English skills needed to access a different role at Tyson.

The business effects are not limited to promotions. Foundational-skill gaps can require more interpreter support and can pull HR staff into helping team members complete basic tasks, such as finding pay stubs. Digital-literacy gaps have also complicated enterprise-wide system rollouts. And because many Tyson facilities operate in rural areas, developing talent internally is essential to filling higher-skilled and higher-paid roles such as industrial maintenance.

At Ochsner Health, the implications are shaped by patient care and a highly regulated workforce. Quentin Bradley says the organization employs about 50,000 people across the Gulf South, including clinical staff as well as medical assistants, patient care technicians, certified nursing assistants, environmental-services workers, food-service workers, patient escorts, access staff, and others who support care delivery.

For Bradley, the challenge is not just qualifying someone for a job. It is helping them transition into work, remain employed, and grow. In healthcare, literacy, numeracy, digital fluency, critical thinking, communication, and English proficiency affect whether work is performed safely and effectively. Team members have to read manuals, document clinical charts, apply math, use workplace systems, and communicate across teams and networks.

But the skill question cannot be separated from workers’ circumstances. Transportation, housing, and childcare can affect whether an employee can reliably use and build the capabilities the job requires. Ochsner therefore treats foundational skills, worker supports, and manager support as a combined ecosystem rather than isolated interventions.

CJK Group faces a related problem in a manufacturing context. Joe Dunlap oversees training and development at the global print and finishing company, which employs roughly 5,000 people; about 80% are frontline machine operators. In that environment, a worker’s educational background is not necessarily a reliable indicator of whether they can perform the work at hand. The issue is whether their foundational capability can be applied in the specific work context—quickly enough to protect safety, quality, productivity, and the time needed to reach competency.

The pressure is acute: Dunlap reports that 43% of CJK’s workforce is expected to retire within seven years. Recruiting younger workers into manufacturing and the trades is difficult, he says, so the company needed to make the career on offer more legible and accelerate its internal talent pipeline.

Across these accounts, foundational skills are less abstract deficits than capabilities that become visible at particular moments: when a worker must navigate a new system, communicate with a patient or supervisor, move into a technical role, or qualify for a better shift and higher pay.

Joe Dunlap says CJK built its model from the job backward. The company mapped every role on every machine and identified the foundational skills, knowledge, capabilities, and competencies needed to do that work. It then uses those role definitions to assess incoming workers and build individualized training plans.

The assessment is not described as a single gate that determines whether someone gets a chance. Depending on the role and a worker’s strengths and weaknesses, CJK may provide a full training program before someone begins the role or assign narrower foundational-learning components needed for a successful start. The company developed the assessment internally and makes it available to workforce-development departments in each of the 11 states where it operates, so those offices can assess people they believe could fit CJK’s work.

Once workers are hired, CJK monitors progress against milestones at three, six, and nine months. When indicators suggest capability is slipping, Dunlap says, the company intervenes with refresher support. The accumulated data also gives CJK a view across 15 U.S. plants and 24 global facilities: where critical machines or roles lack sufficient bench strength, which workers have the skills to cross-train, and how people can be moved as production needs change. Dunlap describes workers moving between press and bindery roles on a weekly basis when production requires it.

The company’s Fast Track Operator program is an attempt to address the retirement problem with a more deliberate progression model. Dunlap says becoming a master operator in print and finishing traditionally takes six years, and that even this only begins to cover the experience involved. CJK created a two-year pathway with state workforce-development partners. In the prior three years, he reports, 34% of the company’s senior operators had completed it.

At Ochsner, identification is more closely linked to an employee’s career plan. Quentin Bradley says clinical workers generally arrive with required technical credentials and certifications. In nonclinical support roles, foundational skills may become visible when a worker seeks to move into a new job profile. Employees develop growth plans, visit the organization’s internal career center, work with career coaches, and can use vendor platforms to identify skill gaps and enroll in adult education.

Bradley does not present this as frictionless. Much of the process depends on a worker recognizing a desired next step and coming forward. But the career center attaches assessment to a decision: what role does the person want, what does it require, and what support closes the gap?

Tyson’s identification model is broader because its workforce enters with varied levels of prior preparation. Della Adams says onsite HR and learning partners conduct outreach and initial assessments, including assessments of English and digital-literacy levels. The company then uses that information to route people toward an onsite or online option. A worker who already has relatively strong English and digital skills may be directed toward online learning; another may be better served by an in-person class at the facility.

The shared distinction is between recognizing that workers have a gap and building a route through it. CJK uses detailed, role-specific diagnosis and follow-up. Ochsner gives workers a structured way to pursue a next role. Tyson reaches workers broadly and sorts them into learning channels that fit their skills and circumstances.

Tyson’s Upward Academy began more than a decade ago as a response to demand for English-language classes in plants. It has since expanded to include GED preparation, citizenship, financial literacy, digital literacy, and other foundational skills. The program operates in about 40 locations and serves nearly 2,000 students a year.

Della Adams emphasizes the program’s logistics as much as its curriculum. Classes resemble a traditional school setting, with an in-person instructor and sessions held at facilities during shifts or immediately before or after them. Tyson promotes the offering through break-room registration periods, digital signage, a frontline app, and direct outreach by local HR and learning partners in workers’ native languages.

The company also offers Upward Academy Online in partnership with Guild. The two channels are not competing versions of the same intervention. They are ways to meet different workers where they are. A person with sufficient digital confidence may benefit from online learning; for others, a classroom at work and an instructor are the more viable route.

Adams says the business case is supported by retention, career progression, and engagement data. The onsite program’s 91% retention figure is annualized employee retention, not class retention. Local plant leaders, she adds, often do not need the metric to recognize the practical need: their facilities need workers with the skills to advance, particularly where the local labor market is thin.

Tyson identified paid, on-shift learning as a consequential design choice in its internal analysis. The company does not use it everywhere; plant managers decide whether a program is offered on or off the clock. Where workers are not paid or attend outside their shift, Tyson may use incentives such as a paid day off for 80% attendance, a $100 gift card, classroom food and drinks, or graduation ceremonies.

Adams says Tyson’s analysis found that workers taking classes during paid shift time learned twice as fast as workers taking the same content off the clock and unpaid. She explains the difference in terms of the energy and capacity workers have when learning is paid and built into a shift. The company uses that finding in conversations with plant managers as an argument that paid learning is a talent-pipeline choice rather than simply an employee benefit.

Ochsner’s approach to communication shows that foundational skills need not be taught only in a remedial classroom. Quentin Bradley sees gaps in self-advocacy, conversations with supervisors, interactions with patients, reading comprehension, and speaking. He links some of those challenges to cohorts of young people whose education was disrupted by COVID and who are comfortable with technology but have had less practice interacting face to face. He presents that as a skills-development issue, not an indictment of younger workers.

Ochsner is trying to engage people earlier through K–12 and secondary-school partnerships. Students can explore careers in eighth or ninth grade and proceed into internships, job shadowing, apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, and other work-based learning. These settings let students apply classroom learning, receive real-time feedback from professionals, build relationships with mentors, and develop the language to navigate stress and problems on the job.

Bradley recounts the case of an unnamed Ochsner employee who entered in an access role, participated in upskilling, moved into supervision, and ultimately became a clinic manager. The outcome he values is not just the promotion, but the worker’s ability to see what a career path looks like and understand the steps needed to travel it.

Taken together, the employers’ examples suggest three starting points rather than a single program architecture. CJK begins with a detailed account of the work itself. Tyson begins with broad outreach to a highly diverse frontline population and uses assessment to route workers into different learning formats. Ochsner connects development to a worker’s intended next step through career coaching and a career center.

CJK’s approach gives the company a detailed view of its talent pipeline and helps it move people across roles as production needs change. Tyson’s approach accepts that the same format will not suit everyone and relies on local outreach, assessment, instructors, and plant-level decisions about paid time. Ochsner’s career-center approach provides workers a place to identify what they want next, understand what it requires, and pursue support; Bradley also makes clear that the process often starts when a worker recognizes a possible next step.

The practical advice offered to employers and intermediaries starting this work was concrete:

• Begin with actual work, not a generic catalogue of skills. Dunlap’s advice is to understand the processes, technologies, and context of the job before designing training.
• Identify the point at which support is needed: entry, transition into a technical role, an employee’s request for mobility, or a broader population-level need.
• Make participation feasible. Adams urges employers to understand workers’ digital-literacy levels and build wraparound supports. Bradley includes transportation, housing, and childcare among the realities that can affect participation and workplace success.
• Show what learning leads to. CJK makes vertical and horizontal career paths visible and ties skill growth to raises; Ochsner uses career coaching and work-based learning to help people see pathways; Tyson connects foundational learning to advancement in roles such as industrial maintenance.
• Pilot before scaling and provide high-touch support. Bradley recommends both, along with finding someone committed enough to lead the work.
• Test the learner experience rather than assuming it works. Adams advises employers to talk to frontline workers, avoid designing “in a corporate bubble,” and walk through the user experience of any vendor offering.

The survey finding that internal programs were often rated more successful does not mean employers should try to supply every component alone. All three employers describe blended systems.

Ochsner works with K–12 systems, community colleges, community-based organizations, workforce commissions, career centers, and other postsecondary partners. Quentin Bradley says the organization looks for partners who understand both learners and job realities, will co-design, can personalize learning, remain flexible, and are accountable for results. Ochsner tends to build internally when content is specific to its culture, workflows, patient experience, systems, or work-readiness expectations. It looks outside for academic instruction, foundational-skills support, accredited credentials, licensure, specialized roles, and one-on-one learning.

CJK’s internal role analysis and assessment system are paired with public workforce partners. Joe Dunlap says its state workforce-development relationships extend the company’s recruiting and assessment reach, while CJK remains responsible for defining the work, monitoring progression, and providing support tied to its own machines and roles.

Tyson partners with community colleges for adult basic education, English-language instruction, and related programs, while also hiring instructors directly for some sites. Della Adams says the deciding question is often whether an outside organization can operate at the speed and conditions of an employer. If a plant manager agrees to launch a program, Tyson does not want to wait for a new fiscal year or spend months negotiating a memorandum of understanding. It also avoids partners whose participation requirements impose too much class time or other burdens on frontline workers.

Agility is not sufficient by itself. Tyson looks for partners that can connect foundational learning to concrete advancement routes. Adams points to a partnership with Metropolitan Community College in Nebraska that supports both foundational skills and industrial-maintenance pathways, allowing workers to move from frontline work into a role with what she calls a life-changing wage through a more cohesive experience.

The final requirement is instructional quality.

If a program is not useful, Adams says, workers will leave it. A strong educator—willing and able to teach at hours that accommodate frontline schedules—is therefore not a peripheral implementation detail. It may determine whether an employer’s training investment reaches anyone.

Georgia Reagan sees this division of labor as a response to a recurring silo problem. Employers, education institutions, community organizations, and support providers often say they do not know what the others need or that existing offerings do not fit. The employers’ accounts point to a working division of labor: employers define the work and outcomes they need; external organizations contribute instructional expertise, community trust, credentials, or support services; and the relationships need maintenance because both partners and worker needs change.

The employers’ policy requests are practical rather than abstract. Joe Dunlap pointed to a recent Department of Labor release on AI foundational skills. He said it named five core elements and seven sub-elements, but, in his view, addressed only how to understand AI rather than how workers would use it in their jobs. The same concern can apply to any skill: general literacy or technical knowledge may not be enough if policy does not reckon with the specific work where that capability must be applied.

Quentin Bradley raises a different constraint: accessibility on paper can still be unaffordable in practice. If a pathway to a better job forces a worker to risk housing, transportation, family stability, or public benefits, he says, then the pathway is not truly accessible. Benefits cliffs are a real concern in designing programs intended to improve mobility.

Della Adams asks for simpler access to employer-friendly grants. Tyson wants to invest in its people, she says, but mechanisms for doing so must also be workable for employers and their finance teams. Easier access to grants would make it simpler for companies to respond to the foundational-skill gaps they see at the frontline.

For smaller employers, the panel argues, the first step need not be a proprietary corporate academy. Dunlap says CJK used Microsoft Teams channels organized by role and topic to bring subject-matter experts together around critical workflows, standard operating procedures, and the skills, knowledge, and capabilities each job required. The process took substantial work, he says, but produced a useful view of the talent pipeline.

Adams offers another option used in smaller Tyson facilities, sometimes with fewer than 100 workers. The company has trained existing team members to teach: employees can be put through TESOL preparation to teach English to speakers of other languages, or supported to teach GED classes, when a facility cannot afford to hire an outside instructor.

Bradley’s advice to smaller employers is to look outward before assuming they must create the expertise themselves. Community colleges may have adult-education programs that are fully funded; community-based organizations and local workforce commissions may have training capacity supported by government funds. The immediate task is to understand what exists locally and build relationships with organizations already serving workers.