Adult Working Learners Vote With Their Feet: What Employers Are Learning About Foundational Skills

Chelsea Miller

Associate Director

In mid-August, UpSkill America and the Lumina Foundation hosted a conversation I’ve been wanting to have for a while: what does it actually look like when employers invest in foundational skills, and what happens when they do it well? More than 600 people signed up to hear from Della Adams at Tyson Foods, Quentin Bradley at Ochsner Health, and Joe Dunlap at CJK Group, alongside Lumina’s Georgia Reagan. If you were there, you know it was one of those hours that could have run another two. If you were not able to join us, this recap covers what we discussed, and you can watch the full video here.

The Context We’re Working Against

In order to ground the insights from employers with data, we started with a review of two data sources:

1. The PIAAC, the OECD’s international benchmark for adult literacy, has tracked the United States at three points since 2012, and the trend isn’t good: American adults now rank 14th in literacy and 24th in numeracy out of 31 nations. That’s not a one-time dip; it’s a sustained slide over the decade-plus data has been collected.
2. UpSkill America’s yet-to-be-released 2026 Room for Growth survey found that just over half of employers already offer some kind of foundational skills training, more than offer AI training or apprenticeships. The programs rated most successful tend to focus on core academic basics like reading and math.

Put together, that’s the webinar’s thesis: the foundational skills gap is real, and employers are already working to close the gap, often quietly. 

Reagan tied the data back to why this work matters at scale: the Lumina Foundation wants 75% of the US labor force to hold a credential of value by 2040, and since these are working adults who can’t stop working to become full-time students, employers are the ones positioned to support workers in developing the skills they need for the role they have today and future roles.

What It Looks Like in Practice

The employers we talked with during the webinar all have one thing in common: a passion for supporting their workforce to have the skills they need. This is not just good for their business; it is also essential for their workers to have the skills they need to succeed in their careers. 

Tyson Foods has run this playbook the longest. Adams described Upward Academy, which is now in its second decade and serves close to 2,000 students a year across roughly 40 locations. It grew from offering just English classes into a range of courses, including ESL, GED prep, citizenship, financial literacy, and digital literacy. These are delivered through both an on-site track and an online option built with Guild for team members who already have strong skills in English and digital literacy. With half of Tyson’s 88,000 US frontline team members preferring a language other than English, that dual-track design isn’t a nice-to-have; it is essential.

The number that got everyone’s attention was Tyson Foods’ reported 91% annualized employee retention for participants in the on-site program. And when Tyson compared team members paid during their shift to attend classes against those attending unpaid on their own time, the paid group learned twice as fast on identical content. Adams’ advice to other employers: if you can, pay for it and do it on the clock.

Ochsner Health is facing a different issue. Bradley described the real bottleneck for many entry-level and transitional workers as the need for durable skills, not technical certifications, but communication and self-advocacy as what is needed to move in the role the worker desires.  Ochsner’s response starts early: partnerships inside K-12 schools get students into work-based learning as early as eighth or ninth grade, building workplace relationships and mentors before they ever apply for a job.

CJK Group built its approach out of demographic necessity. With 43% of the workforce projected to retire within seven years, Dunlap’s team mapped every role on every machine down to the specific skills and competencies required, then built assessments and individualized training plans against that map. The resulting Fast Track Operator Program has cut the path to master operator from six-plus years to two, and 34% of current senior operators have come through it in the last three years, with pay tied directly to skill growth.

What Ties It Together

A few threads run through all three stories. First, understand the actual work context before building anything; Dunlap’s advice was to start with the day-to-day tasks of the work itself, not the end result (the credential). Second, be honest about what to build internally versus source externally: Ochsner keeps anything culture- or workflow-specific in-house and partners out for accredited instruction, while Adams screens outside partners for agility, since a slow-to-respond partner or burdensome class schedule both lose adult learners fast. Third, high-touch support isn’t optional; Bradley’s advice for anyone starting this work was to pilot before scaling, then handhold people to the finish line.

On policy, the asks from employers were concrete: (1) ease access to employer-friendly grants, and (2) fix the benefits cliffs that punish people for taking the steps meant to help them get ahead.

For more insights from this discussion, you can view the full recording, along with a transcript, clips, and related resources, here.

UpSkill America is in the early phases of our foundational skills landscape analysis supported by the Lumina Foundation. In the coming months, we will have more insights and briefs to share. If you’re doing work like this, or know someone who is, we want to hear about it. You can reach out to us at [email protected].