Ratnesh Jha discusses English proficiency and workforce mobility
Adaptability has become one of the most valued qualities in today’s workforce. Employers want people who can adjust to new technologies, move between roles, work across cultures, and respond to challenges that may not have existed when they were first trained.
Workers feel that pressure too. In the 2026 ETS Human Progress Report, 77% of employees globally said job security no longer exists without continuous adaptation. The challenge is that adaptability is difficult to define and even harder to measure well. We talk about it constantly, but it is not a quality that lends itself easily to a single score.
For those of us in assessment, that should give us pause. The answer is not necessarily to create a new measure for every quality employers say they value, whether that is adaptability, resilience, or agility. Some human capabilities are simply too complex to reduce in that way. A more useful question is what adaptability looks like when someone actually has to perform. Language offers an interesting way to think about that.
A language assessment cannot tell us whether someone is an adaptable person, and it should not try to. What it can help us understand is whether someone can take what they know and apply it as the situation changes. That is something we do constantly when we communicate. We listen, interpret meaning, read the context, choose language that fits the audience, and adjust when a conversation moves in an unexpected direction or when we are misunderstood.
“Competence is not only about what someone knows. It is also about what they can do with that knowledge when the context changes.”
For multilingual people, there may be another layer of complexity. They often move between languages, cultural expectations, levels of formality, and different ways of expressing the same idea. That does not mean multilingualism automatically makes someone more adaptable in every aspect of life or work. It does, however, illustrate an important principle. Competence is not only about what someone knows. It is also about what they can do with that knowledge when the context changes.
That distinction matters more as the world of work becomes less predictable. We cannot prepare people for every task they will encounter over the course of a career. We cannot know exactly which technologies they will use, what industries they may enter, or what responsibilities they may eventually take on. What we can do is help people build capabilities that transfer across situations and become better at recognizing when those capabilities are genuinely there.
Language assessment has been grappling with this question for years. A meaningful assessment of communication should do more than determine whether someone recognizes vocabulary or understands a grammatical rule. It should also show whether that person can understand information, interpret meaning, and communicate effectively for a particular purpose.
The question is not simply whether someone knows something, but whether they can use what they know. That distinction has implications well beyond language.
If the skills employers increasingly need involve judgment, communication, and the ability to respond to unfamiliar situations, assessments that primarily reward the reproduction of familiar answers can only tell us so much. We need to understand how knowledge holds up when circumstances shift.
Workplace language assessment provides one example of how that role is already expanding. Research conducted for the TOEIC Global English Skills Report found that employers are using English assessments at several points in an employee’s journey. They may use them during recruitment, before training, or when considering employees for advancement.
These are very different moments. During hiring, an assessment may help determine whether someone is prepared for a particular role. Before training, it can help identify where development is needed. Later in a career, it can help make progress and newly acquired capability more visible.
In each case, the assessment does not predict the person’s future. It provides a clearer picture of what that individual can do now and where further development may create additional opportunities. That is an important shift in how we think about the role of assessment.
Assessment has often been viewed primarily as a gateway. A person reaches a certain score and gains access to a program, role, or opportunity. That function will always matter, but assessment can also help guide development. It can give learners a clearer understanding of where they stand, help employers identify areas for growth, and provide individuals with a way to demonstrate progress over time.
As the role of assessment changes, assessment itself also has to become more responsive to how skills are actually used. A single, uniform approach makes less sense when organizations are hiring and developing people for very different roles, industries, and communication needs.
We have seen this firsthand in the development of TOEIC Link, which allows organizations to assess listening, reading, speaking, and writing skills individually or in combination depending on their needs. The point is not that every assessment should become modular. It is that the way we measure skills should continue to evolve alongside the environments in which those skills are used.
As work becomes more dynamic, assessment should become more flexible too, while preserving the rigor, reliability, and comparability that make the results meaningful.
The same principle applies after an assessment is complete. A score is most useful when it helps someone understand what to do next. Measurement can identify a strength or a gap, but its value grows when learners can act on that information through targeted practice, feedback, and continued development.
That creates a more useful relationship between assessment and learning. Instead of measurement being the end of the process, it can become part of an ongoing cycle of understanding, development, and progress.
Language is particularly relevant because proficiency can expand the number of environments in which someone is able to participate. An engineer may be able to contribute to an international project. A frontline employee may become eligible for a regional role. A researcher may gain access to a wider professional community. A manager may be better equipped to lead colleagues across countries. In that sense, language proficiency can create greater optionality.
Learning English does not guarantee career mobility, and no language score should ever be treated as a proxy for intelligence, talent, or potential. It can, however, expand the range of settings in which someone is able to communicate effectively and contribute with confidence.
In an unpredictable labor market, having more options matters. The career someone begins in their 20s may look very different from the work they are doing in their 40s. Industries change. Technology changes. People retrain, relocate, and take on responsibilities they never anticipated.
Do our assessments require people to apply knowledge rather than simply recall it? Do the tasks reflect the situations in which those skills will actually be used? Do the results help people develop as well as demonstrate what they can already do? Can those results remain meaningful as people move between institutions, jobs, and countries?
Most importantly, we should ask whether we are only measuring what a person knows or whether we are getting closer to understanding what that person can actually do. Language assessment has been wrestling with these questions for decades. As education and work become more dynamic, they are becoming relevant far beyond language.
The future of assessment should not be about pretending we can predict exactly who will thrive in an uncertain world. It should be about giving people better ways to demonstrate capabilities that remain useful even as the world around them changes.
Language is one of those capabilities. Its value is not merely that it helps someone communicate today. It can also expand where they can contribute, how they can grow, and the opportunities they may be able to pursue next.
If adaptability is what we increasingly expect of workers, then assessment should be willing to adapt as well.
Ratnesh Jha is Global General Manager, Institutional Products, at ETS.
