Prompt Literacy as a Core Workplace Competency: Development of the Prompt Literacy Index (PLI-20) for Non-Technical Professionals

Organizations are adopting generative artificial intelligence faster than their employees can use it well. Training investment targets tools rather than the human skill that determines output quality. This article defines prompt literacy as a distinct, measurable workplace competency: the ability of a worker to instruct, contextualize, verify, refine, and ethically govern the output of a generative AI system during ordinary job tasks. Drawing on digital literacy theory, AI literacy research, and recent evidence on prompting behavior, the article develops a five-dimension conceptual framework covering task framing, context supply, output verification, iterative refinement, and ethical use. Following established scale development procedures, a 40-item pool was generated from peer-reviewed literature published between 2004 and 2025 and reduced through a structured content-validity design to the 20-item Prompt Literacy Index (PLI-20). The full instrument is presented, together with a registered validation protocol specifying the sample, exploratory factor analysis, and reliability criteria for the planned pilot study with non-technical professionals. The article contributes the first profession-agnostic framework and instrument for measuring applied prompting skill outside technical roles, shifting the unit of analysis in workplace AI research from the tool to the worker. Implications for workforce development, training design, and future confirmatory validation are discussed.