Canadian HR Reporter - Sample Issue

CANADIAN HR REPORTER May 1, 2017 NEWS 7 Competency-based, pan-Canadian qualifications framework recommended 'e need to fill our jobs with competent people has never been higher' BY SARAH DOBSON THE skills gap — where jobs need people and people need jobs — continues to challenge the labour market and the economy, both in Canada and worldwide. One solution? Canada should follow the lead of more than 140 countries and create a competen- cy-based, pan-Canadian quali- fications framework, according to Canada West Foundation, a Calgary-based think tank. "e need to fill our jobs with competent people has never been higher, and we do have a well- trained workforce in Canada, but people are not able to articulate well what it is they are able to do well, so we're constantly missing the match between people. Now is the time to develop the frame- work, and then we'll be able to understand what the gaps are that need to be filled," said Janet Lane, director of the human capital cen- tre at Canada West. "If we have a framework, we can see where else you can go with those competencies and what gaps you would need to fill if you wanted to move into a dif- ferent job, and that would make it so much easier for us to train and upskill and reskill our workforce, as shifts and changes happen." e framework would help with the development, classification and recognition of skills, knowl- edge and competencies across a hierarchy of defined levels, with links to recognized qualifications and associated occupations, said the think tank. Great West is suggesting a made-in-Canada governance model based on the Standards Council of Canada. New realities A framework approach makes all the more sense with the growth of the gig economy, said Lane. "If you don't have a way of badging or credentialing what it is you learned in your last job so you can go to your next job and say, 'I learnt this in school and I've learnt this, this and this since then,' then how do you get that next job, how do you go up against all the other graduates, people in the economy, who have some way of proving they're doing that?" she said. "We've got to do a better job of saying, 'What you're learning on the job has as much value as what you learned when you were in school' to the employer." Many employers use algo- rithms to go through a flood of applications, so if jobseekers don't have the right buzzwords, the right diploma or the right de- gree, they will be discarded right from the start, she said, "because these programs cannot look at the fulsome, holistic person… and yet a person whose resumé has been discarded may be able to do the job very, very well." We've always had to reskill the workforce as it's gone through churn and upheaval, but the pace of change is so much greater now, said Jeff Griffiths, principal at Griffiths Sheppard Consulting Group in Calgary, citing changes in technology. "e economy is changing so fast, so we need some kind of mechanism to be redeploying the talent that exists within the economy and upskilling people throughout their careers — not just patches at the beginning." Many skills are common to more than one occupation, and more than one industry. But, there is no way to know for sure which skills are shared with which occupations, as occupational standards in Canada tend to be "stovepiped" along occupational lines, according to Canada West's report Matchup: A Case for Pan- Canadian Competency Frame- works. For example, many of the competencies for an HR manager may be similar to those needed by a purchasing agent, but there is no way of visualizing the path from one to the other. Mind the gap So, how has this gap or mismatch come about? e education system doesn't always know what the industry needs, and competency-based education is a fairly new field. On the other hand, employers don't have a framework for identifying what competencies are needed by workers, said Lorraine McKay, co- founder and chief marketing offi- cer at Human Resource Systems Group in Toronto. "There's many people who would fit the bill but don't neces- sarily have that same credential, so they're equally qualified but WE > pg. 8

• Cover