The Florida Ready To Work portal was designed and funded by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity as a workforce development tool. Job seekers use this tool to learn and test themselves on functional workplace skills, while employers use it to make more confident hiring decisions.
Ready To Work was first funded in 2006 through the Florida legislature and was officially launched in 2007. Florida has continued to fund Ready To Work and does not charge job seekers to participate. Ready To Work was designed to bridge the gap between job seekers’ skills and education and employers’ needs for skilled workers. Job seekers participate by completing three courses: a course in reading; a course in math that teach useful skills for many workplaces, such as crunching numbers, reading data sets, and understanding reports; and a third course that teaches students the skills needed to search for information.
On completing the coursework, participants take a proctored assessment that scores them on each of these three areas. If they pass the exam, they earn either a gold, silver, or bronze credential. Participants have the incentive to do as well as possible on the exam because the credential they earn is based on the lowest of their three scores. For example, if an individual earns scores worthy of a bronze on one part of the test and higher scores on other parts of the exam, the person earns a bronze credential.
The Ready to Work portal is available to the general population of job seekers through workforce and education partners throughout Florida. High schools, community colleges, technical centers, and organizations with closer connections to Employment First implementation, such as One-Stop Career Centers, workforce investment boards, and the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, prepare and administer the Ready To Work assessment.
