Why Leisure Reading is A Competitive Business Advantage

When was the last time you read a book purely because you wanted to?

Not a technical manual. Not an industry report. Not an email that somehow became a 14-page attachment.

A book.

Maybe it was last night. Maybe it was six months ago. Maybe your reading list consists entirely of articles you saved and fully intend to read “someday.”

You are not alone.

The good news is that global literacy has improved dramatically over the long term. The less encouraging news is that reading proficiency and reading for pleasure are declining in important populations. For businesses, particularly in an increasingly AI-driven workplace, literacy matters.

Literacy Is More Than Knowing How to Read

UNESCO reports that 88% of the world’s population aged 15 and older can read and write, while approximately 739 million adults still lack basic literacy skills. Four in ten children in low- and middle-income countries are also not reaching minimum reading proficiency. UNESCO’s global literacy data puts the numbers into perspective.

The OECD’s PISA 2022 assessment found that average reading performance across OECD countries fell by 10 points between 2018 and 2022, with reading performance already showing a downward trend in some countries before the pandemic. OECD PISA 2022 results document the decline.

Canada’s picture is somewhat better, but hardly something to ignore. Statistics Canada found that 19% of Canadians aged 16 to 65 were in the two lowest literacy proficiency levels in 2022, while 14% were in the highest two. Statistics Canada’s 2022 literacy results also point out that people at the highest levels can integrate information across dense texts and reason by inference.

That last bit is particularly interesting in an AI economy. Because reading isn’t simply decoding words; it’s understanding what those words mean, deciding what matters, recognizing what is missing and figuring out what to do next.

And Fewer People Are Making Time to Read

A 2025 study of more than 236,000 Americans found that daily reading for pleasure fell from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023, a relative decline of about 3% per year. It’s important to note that the researchers included books, e-readers, and audiobooks in their definition of reading for pleasure. The full iScience study makes an important distinction: the decline cannot simply be explained by people abandoning paper books for digital formats.

The changing formats of reading material may be part of the solution.

Audiobooks: Same Book, Different Door

There is no scientific prize for reading with your eyes.

A September 2026 study of 130 university students found similar performance between print and audio for recall and inference, although print produced stronger results for overall gist and vocabulary. The study in Contemporary Educational Psychology suggests that the medium affects how people process information, but audio is certainly not ‘not reading.’

For many people, its biggest advantage is accessibility.

Audiobooks can turn a commute, walk, workout or household chore into reading time. They can also provide an important alternative for people who experience barriers with traditional print, including some people with visual impairments, dyslexia or other accessibility needs.

And Canadians are using them.

According to BookNet Canada’s 2025 research, audiobook checkouts through OverDrive’s Canadian library network increased 11% from 2024 to 2025, and audiobooks accounted for 41% of digital library checkouts.

Print isn’t disappearing. In fact, 71% of Canadian book borrowers still preferred print in 2025.

That’s the point.

Accessible reading doesn’t have to mean replacing print. It means giving people more doors into literature.

Your Library Card Just Got an Upgrade

One of those doors is sitting in your phone.

In 2025, readers using the global Libby and Sora network borrowed 820.5 million digital titles, up 10.9% year over year. More than 379 million were e-books, and audiobook borrowing reached record levels. OverDrive’s 2025 digital lending report shows just how significant digital library access has become.

And Libby isn’t just about downloading a book and disappearing into your headphones.

Libby Reads gives libraries a way to make an e-book and audiobooks available to everyone simultaneously, without waitlists, creating opportunities for shared reading, discussion, and community engagement. OverDrive’s Libby Reads announcement describes it as the next chapter in more than a decade of library-led shared-reading programmes.

That is technology doing something rather lovely; it’s using software to make literature more accessible, while helping people connect with other people.

Why Should Technology People Care?

This is where reading stops being a nice hobby and becomes a business conversation.

Technology professionals spend their days interpreting information.

Developers read requirements, documentation, code, error messages, API specifications and security advisories. Architects interpret business needs. Cybersecurity teams evaluate threats. AI practitioners assess data, model behaviour and increasingly complex systems.

And none of these jobs exist in a vacuum.

The better you understand people, language, context and diverse ways of thinking, the more perspectives you can bring to a technical problem. Those diverse perspectives matter even more in the AI era.

Generative AI can produce code, summarize documents, and suggest solutions at remarkable speed. A 2025 series of randomized field experiments involving 4,867 software developers found a 26.08% increase in completed tasks among developers using an AI coding assistant. Microsoft Research’s study provides compelling evidence that AI can increase developer productivity.

But productivity is not the same thing as judgement.

Microsoft’s AI Where It Matters report with 860 developers found that AI adoption varies significantly by task, with developers placing particular importance on reliability, security, transparency and maintaining control depending on the work involved. illustrates why human oversight remains important as AI takes on more software work.

In other words, the faster AI can generate answers, the more important it becomes to have people who can ask:

• How do we know?
• Is the requirement correct?
• Is the data reliable?
• Does this code solve the actual problem?
• What assumptions are hiding underneath that very confident AI response?

Being well read doesn’t magically answer those questions. But reading broadly exposes people to more ideas, perspectives, arguments, and evidence. It helps build the intellectual context that allows technology professionals to challenge assumptions rather than simply accepting the first plausible answer.

A software developer who reads outside programming may understand users and business problems differently. An AI practitioner who reads history, philosophy, science, fiction, or social sciences encounters different models for thinking about people and systems. A technology leader who reads broadly has more context when evaluating unfamiliar technology.

In an AI time, that context is becoming a competitive skill and a business advantage.

Read Something. Anything.

There is something wonderfully rebellious about reading for pleasure.

No dashboard.

No notification.

No productivity metric.

Just several hundred pages of somebody else’s thoughts.

A 2026 review in Psychological Medicine found converging evidence connecting reading engagement with cognitive performance, brain health and well-being, including associations with reduced stress, greater empathy, and slower cognitive decline. The 2026 review is a useful reminder that reading isn’t merely an old-fashioned pastime.

So read the technical manual, read the industry report, read the AI-generated summary.

Then read something completely unrelated:

• a novel
• a biography
• a history book
• a mystery
• a cookbook
• terrible science-fiction novel you secretly love

Try it in print, on an e-reader, through an app on your phone, or pop on your noise cancelling headphones and dive into a multicast audio performance of an old classic.

Because in a world where AI can generate more information than any human could possibly consume, being able to read, understand, question, and connect information may be one of the most valuable human skills we have left.

And that sounds like a surprisingly good reason to pick up a book.

Epilogue

Its one thing to write about the prowess of reading it’s another to lead by example.

At STEP Software we pride ourselves in being able to tackle the most complex business challenges by turning them into elegant software, perhaps it is because we are a group of voracious readers.

With that in mind, here’s a list of some of our team’s favourites, TBR’s (to be read) and what they are currently reading.

Enjoy!

Alex, Software Developer: currently reading – The Amazing Spider-Man by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Forward by Jason Reynolds Riley, Software Developer: currently reading – The Fires of December by Brandon Sanderson Lorrie, HR: Top two recommendations of all time – A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles Rob, Director of Technology: currently re-reading the classic – Operating Systems Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Albert S. Woodhull Next up Animal Farm by George Orwell Stephen, Software Developer: currently reading Treasure Island byRobert Louis Stevenson Craig, Sr. Software Developer: one of his favourites of all time – Ronald Reagan: An Intellectual Biography by David T. Byrne Cole, Software Developer: currently reading The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein Viktor, QA & Graphic Designer: one of his favourites, How Steel Was Tempered by Nikolai Ostrovsky Leanne, Director of Client Engagement and writer of STEP blogs: currently reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, favourite book this year, so far – The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Drop us a line if you want to talk books, technical challenges or how we can help turn your ideas from fantasy to reality.