Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER FEBRUARY 2019 2 NEWS Performance management versus harassment Was it truly workplace harassment, or simple performance management? Canadian HR Reporter talks to three legal experts about the latest challenge for employers. Making trauma even more traumatic Alberta case shows mental injuries can be complicated and often need time, and understanding for a full recovery Bill 164 in Ontario Protecting some of the province's most vulnerable citizens e greying workforce By 2040, there will be 2.7 working-age American retirees — down from 4.8 in 2010 Bill 66 could have 'pretty profound' impact on Ontario employers Proposed changes would cut bureaucracy: Lawyers Burnout, stress lead more companies to try 4-day workweek Productivity, motivation tend to rise, say employers BLOGS BRIEFS NEWS FEATURED VIDEO BLOGS BRIEFS NEWS FEATURED VIDEO BLOGS BRIEFS NEWS FEATURED VIDEO Recent videos, stories and blogs posted on www.hrreporter.com. Check the website daily for updates from Canada and around the world. COMPENSATION info@resourcecorporation.com | (416) 498-7800 ext. 101 | www.resourcecorporation.com Compensation Surveys Compensation Surveys Compensation Surveys Incentive Programs Incentive Programs Incentive Programs Job Descriptions Job Descriptions Job Descriptions Job Evaluation Job Evaluation Job Evaluation Pay Equity Pay Equity Pay Equity Performance Appraisal Performance Appraisal Performance Appraisal Salary Administration Salary Administration Salary Administration Sales Compensation Sales Compensation Sales Compensation CONSULTING. As 'jobs for life' disappear, focus turns to reskilling Government interest in training highlights need for new skills BY MARCEL VANDER WIER AS news of the impending shut- tering of General Motors' Oshawa assembly plant continues to rever- berate in Ontario, for many work- ers, the focus has turned towards reskilling. "Some of those people I'm sure thought that they had a job for life and now they need to per- haps get some skills to allow them to re-enter that workforce," said Chris Dudley, director of the TD- Helix Transformation Initiative, a soon-to-be-launched reskilling program at Seneca College in Toronto. e need to reskill is especially critical for professionals at risk of job loss due to technological ad- vances, he said. e movement has caught the eye of the federal government, and the 2019 budget is expected to focus on skills training, as tech- nology continues to render some jobs obsolete. "Retraining and training will be increasingly important," Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told the Canadian Press. "We need to work with partners — provinces and territories — but given that the challenges faced by provinces and territories are in many cases common to all… there is a federal role that needs to be addressed." It is important to have many partners involved in the reskill- ing solution — including employ- ers and employees — rather than relying solely on the education system, said Ray Barton, CEO of Vitesse, a non-profi t reskilling or- ganization in Kanata, Ont. "We need more national debate on the subject because there's no silver bullet," he said. Businesses in general are want- ing everyone to be job-ready day one, said Barton. "And, basically, they expect the government or somebody else to pick up the costs. ey're very reluctant to pick up those costs today," he said. " e business's role is absolute- ly important and they must be in- volved... You cannot create an ef- fective program or labour market strategy without them." Reskilling is not necessar- ily a new idea, nor is Canada ill- prepared for this moment, said Marie-Hélène Budworth, assis- tant professor of human resource management at York University in Toronto. " is is just the nature of careers at the moment, and it has been for quite some time now — the un- derstanding that your career will no longer be linear, and what you trained to do at the beginning of your career will change and adapt, and you'll have to change and adapt and move, depending on the nature of the work." Continuous learning Continuous learning is critical to successful long-term career employment — that should be refl ected in organizational struc- ture, said Budworth. " e nature of work, employ- ment, our world over the last 100 years implies that the thing that I learned to do today is not the thing that I'll need to know how to do tomorrow," she said. "It will no longer be useful, re- gardless of the career I'm in, the path I take, or what I decide to do with regards to employment." " e only certainty is that I can be successful if I have a few core sets of skills and one of those is being engaged in how to continu- ously learn, continuously adapt, continuously acquire new skills, new insights and to be able to do that on my own." Responsibility for learning falls on all those associated in work re- lationships — including the work- ers themselves, said Budworth. "To remain competitive, we need to continue learning," she said. "So that should be refl ected in diff erent ways in how we build our organizations, how we build policy around employment and employment standards." Oftentimes, continuous learn- ing is overlooked in favour of a "static skill" found in past de- grees or certifi cates, according to Budworth. "That's limiting," she said. "Viewing yourself as a continuous, ongoing learner at an individual level, but then at a societal level, understanding the importance of that value for all of us puts us in a much better position to be pre- pared for the types of things that will come down the pipeline that we can't even anticipate." There are "fundamental dif- ferences" between training and reskilling, according to Barton. "Everyone tends to focus on skills," he said. "We need to focus more on competencies. e dif- ference between skills and com- petencies is universities today produce lots of people with good skills, but they're still not meeting the demands of business." "Business is looking not just for your knowledge or your skills, but they're actually looking for experience, where you've actually applied the knowledge which you have gained in a project." Reskilling is not the provision of basic analytical skills, but rather building on abilities and refocus- ing them on current labour de- mands, said Barton. "As long as they have the ana- lytical skills, you can focus in terms of what's in demand," he said. "And the skills that were in demand four years ago are not the ones that are going to get you a job today." Division of responsibility Employers, employees, govern- ment and post-secondary institu- tions each need to play a role in reskilling initiatives in order to fi nd success, said Budworth. "Post-secondary is one place you will fi nd it, but you'll fi nd it probably more broadly across a range of spaces," she said. "There's always new and emerging programs that univer- sities are developing that respond to new trends in employment, that are a bit more progressive," said Budworth. "Often, you'll find them through certificate programs or through continuing education in some institutions, and those programs certainly fi t for this market." Seneca College, for example, is launching a reskilling initiative in March meant to empower profes- sionals to become intrapreneurs, able to innovate within their ex- isting jobs to adapt to new needs within the labour market, said Dudley. e programming is meant to "build resilience in mid-career in- dividuals to survive the changing workplace and to develop 21st- century skills that are required to thrive and/or re-enter the workforce." Topics covered in the sessions will include interview skills, de- sign thinking, eff ective commu- nication and resiliency, he said. "Work has changed in Canada," said Dudley. "People don't have jobs for life. People are moving be- tween jobs or between companies, or even within the same company, moving to diff erent jobs within that company. And you need to have those resilience skills, those adaptability quotients to be suc- cessful in those new challenges." As for employers, their role in training and development is often suppressed by business pressures, said Barton. "We can't blame businesses for not wanting to invest in training," he said. LOOK > pg. 8 " e business's role is absolutely important and they must be involved... You cannot create an eff ective program or labour market strategy without them."

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