WorkKeys Workplace Documents study guide
WorkKeys Workplace Documents · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The ACT WorkKeys Workplace Documents assessment is one of the WorkKeys career-readiness assessments. It measures the skills people use when they read real workplace documents - messages, emails, letters, directions, signs, bulletins, policies, websites, contracts, and regulations - and then use that information to make job-related decisions and solve problems. The WorkKeys Workplace Documents study guide has 5 sections and about 1,892 words.
01Level 3 - Basic Company Policies, Procedures, and Announcements
Short, plain-language workplace texts: a one-page attendance policy, a memo about a schedule change, a numbered procedure for requesting supplies, a break-room announcement. Questions ask you to find a stated fact, follow a short sequence, and tell who does what by when.
369 words, about 2 min02Level 4 - Multi-Step Procedures and Notices
Documents now have parts that interact: a procedure with branching steps, a notice with a table of deadlines, a policy with an approval chain. The language is still plain, but you must hold more of it in mind at once.
368 words, about 2 min03Level 5 - Documents with Conditions and Legal or Contract Language
Informational, instructional, contract-style, and legal text where meaning depends on conditions: if, unless, provided that, except, subject to, only if. Vocabulary turns formal, and consequences attach to getting it wrong.
360 words, about 2 min04Level 6 - Jargon, Acronyms, and Extraneous Detail
Longer passages pulled from real workplaces - safety bulletins, benefits summaries, compliance guidance, technical memos - loaded with acronyms, trade vocabulary, and information that looks important but is not needed for the question asked. Most documents expand an acronym on first use: 'personal protective equipment (PPE).' Find the parentheses, then substitute the full term.
371 words, about 2 min05Level 7 - Dense, Unclear, or Undefined Reading Material
Heavy material: a regulation excerpt, a vendor agreement with tangled clauses, a memo whose sentences outrun the reader. Terms appear without definitions, and the document may bury its point mid-paragraph or read ambiguously.
424 words, about 2 min