Canadian HR Reporter

N E W S 10 www.hrreporter.com 'Huge opportunity for HR' in upskilling workforce While coping with the pandemic will be a huge challenge for employers going forward, a lack of essential skills is also a major obstacle, finds Sarah Dobson skill for those sectors pretty rapidly… We haven't gotten our heads around how to change the way we skill people. We're pretty good at reskilling 18- to 22-year-olds, because then we ask the universities and colleges to do that, but we haven't thought about how do you reskill 35-year-olds." Traditionally, people tend to move within the silo of their industry sector. So, if you're in the hotel industry, your next job is likely to be in the same industry, says Gupta. "But now when sectors are disrupted and people need to do this cross-sector transition, we need mechanisms to get them there, and these pathways just haven't been well built." Organizations haven't done a great job at planning, says Dominic Levesque, president of Randstad Canada in Montreal. " T here's still a gap inside of organizations at looking far enough ahead, meaning the vision of what we're going to need in the future, the same time, we're seeing huge groups of individuals being exited from organizations. So, it may be traditional work that is now being automated; in particular, transactional work that is being replaced by AI and robotics p r o c e s s a u t o m at i o n ," s ay s Je a n McClellan, partner and national people and organization leader at PwC Canada in Calgary. There are also challenges around productivity and profitability, not because processes aren't efficient or the technology is lacking but because of human potential. "We're seeing challenges around people having change resilience or the ability to adopt the technology that's being implemented, to scale it and integrate into organizations. And so, right now, our opportunity as a business community is really to look at the human potential and our human talents and capital and resources in a much more analytical way." These issues are not necessarily new, says Arvind Gupta, CEO of Palette in Toronto, an upskilling and training project from the Brookfield Institute. I f y o u g o b a c k 1 0 0 y e a r s , manufacturing was trying to rapidly expand but had difficulty finding the skilled labour it needed for assembly lines, he says. "What is new is how fast the economy is changing... We're into this new economy, which is knowledge based, all based on people." New ideas can be transformational, such as the internet of thinking, blockchain, bitcoin and the AI revolution, says Gupta. "These big new ideas create very large new industry sectors, and we need to where's the market going to go… We see a lot of disruption [such as] the gig economy, a lot of trends coming at companies that they don't see coming because a lot of companies are still today 'in the moment': How do we compete? What does my competitor do? How do I keep up?" he says. "There needs to be a better balancing between looking ahead and today." The skills are also changing very quickly, he says. "Companies need to be built on a much more agile framework that allows the change in course direct faster, that allows upskilling to be part of the DNA of the organization." Focusing on skills in training, recruitment One problem is the huge inefficiencies in HR systems, says McClellan. "We often over hire for a position because we haven't put the supports, w e h av e n' t p u t t r a i n i n g a n d infrastructure and technology in to assist people in doing their roles." For example, an accountant might be hired for a role that doesn't require that RESOURCES, RETENTION AMONG CANADA'S TOP UPSKILLING CHALLENGES "The big change that's happened to us is that we haven't gotten our heads around how to change the way we skill people." Arvind Gupta, Palette 23% Lack of resources to conduct programs 13% Retaining workers who have been upskilled 13% Employees being able to learn new skills 13% Defining the skills needed Source: PwC EVEN before the onse t of the C O V I D - 1 9 p a n d e m i c , Canadian CEOs were showing greater levels of uncertainty about global economic growth, with 63 per cent (compared to 53 per cent globally) predicting a decline in the rate of economic growth in 2020. More encouragingly, 70 per cent of Canadian CEOs said they were somewhat or ver y confident about their organizations' potential for growth in the next year, according to a PwC report. But aside from the pandemic, organizations face a number of challenges, such as over-regulation and trade conflicts. Key skills lacking in new economy Another top concern? The availability of key skills, says the PwC report Succeeding in uncertainty. " W h a t w e a r e s e e i n g f r o m organizations is huge demand and lack of ability of sourcing new skills in the market. So, this is either digital capabilities and data analysts, data scientists — there's a number of positions that we're seeing in the new economy that organizations can't fill. At

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