Canadian HR Reporter

STRATEGIC CAPABILITY NETWORK'S PANEL of thought leaders brings decades of experience from the senior ranks of Canada's business community. eir commentary puts HR management issues into context and looks at the practical implications of proposals and policies. CANADIAN HR REPORTER EXECUTIVE SERIES 17 MARCH 2018 Is Canada's prosperity at risk? ree SCNetwork members discuss Ilse Treurnicht's presentation Paul Pittman: What a great way to start the year with an insight- ful macro presentation on Canada's readiness to meet the coming changes in the workplace and how we stack up against the rest of the world. It is reassuring to know Canada compares well. There were few surprises in the projections of the types of changes we should be expecting regarding work, such as multiple careers, more soft skills and more technological skills, but what was surprising were the insights of how we as a country are prepar- ing ourselves. Understated was the territo- rial wrangling between provincial and federal policy makers. ese need resolution and synchroniza- tion, and employers need to voice their concerns and preparedness for partnership with government. Canada's prosperity is at risk and the status quo is not an option. e two major learning streams — primary education and unem- ployment re-training — appear well-established but Ilse Treur- nicht argued for a national ap- proach that extended beyond the parochial needs of employers aimed at reskilling workers who were already in employment. is would be go beyond the narrow needs of employers but require government stimulus, in excess of the funding for Canada's Lifelong Learning Plan, and ultimately equal the commitment to the other major learning streams. She referenced programs in Quebec, France and Singapore as examples. Our larger geography and multi-sector exposure make a coordinated strategy an imperative and to avoid what is becoming evident in other programs — the direction of training budgets to a relatively small portion of the population. For example, 70 per cent of a typical employer training budget is spent on senior employees. More data on emerging skills needs was needed to direct training; a potential role for the FutureSkills Lab possibly? Ten to 12 per cent of Canada's work- force undertakes post-secondary education and it's estimated this needs to increase by 30 per cent to reach globally competitive levels. Treurnicht went on to describe the work underway at AT&T which in 2003 determined that 30 per cent of employees' skills would cease to exist by 2020. It commenced a program jointly funded with Georgia Tech with a budget of $250 million per annum which is now responsible for fi ll- ing 40 per cent of AT&T's newly created roles with retrained exist- ing employees. e alarming conclusion was that ignoring the long-term con- sequences and failing to be pre- pared with the required new skills would cause disruption and dislo- cation that would seriously aff ect the quality of life for Canadians. Jan van der Hoop: is brief reminds me of some research I did a number of years back for a presentation I was asked to give to a group of CFOs. e call to action, if you will, was Canada's fl agging productivity. While that of the United States had risen slowly but steadily over the years, ours had fl agged. At the time, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) pegged us at the same productivity level as Greece, well below most of our peers in the G20. at was a wake-up call to the executives in the room. The OECD calculated that if our productivity had instead followed the slow upward path of our neighbour, the "average" Canadian's annual take-home pay would have been more than $10,000 higher. ose statistics make a fairly es- oteric concept far more tangible. It is a macro problem with no easy solutions. Hesitation to in- vest in meaningful research and development is part of the issue. As is the continued hollowing out of corporate Canada with large employers having become foreign-owned branch offi ces and mid-sized companies disappear- ing from the landscape. Yet the biggest issue I feel is the fundamental (and growing) mismatch between the talent and skills we are producing, and what the market wants to hire. Yes, we need more people through STEM to fi ll high-tech jobs, no question. But we also need to stop steering kids away from the trades and other "voca- tional" jobs that do not require a university degree. ere's already an oversupply in that quarter — too many baristas with PhDs. My call to action with the CFOs certainly raised eyebrows and got tongues clicking, but the is- sue (and the opportunity) is too broad and complex for any one individual, company or associa- tion to address. Can the government do better? Silvia Lulka: I agree, Paul, thought-provoking on so many levels. Jan, I agree too, on the link to education. I left the session with an over- arching question of how do we re- ally tackle this, or at least start to make a meaningful dent. How do we start to get traction on a chal- lenge of such magnitude? How can we understand what skills we'll need? How can we help peo- ple to continuously be prepared to learn new skills? e piece that was missing for me was the demographic fore- casts. In 2038, what skills will 20- and 30-somethings have? We can't assume it will be the same as today's 20- to 30-year-olds. e same goes for every age category — today's octogenarians are far more tech-savvy than octogenar- ians in 1998. There's nothing easy about this, and it is of paramount im- portance. ere has to be strong partnership between govern- ments, employers of all sizes and educational institutions at various levels. Treurnicht gave us some great examples of what other countries are doing. I think the question is: Who spearheads this? And then, from there, who needs to be engaged? PANELLISTS: • Paul Pittman, founder and president of the Human Well in Toronto • Jan G. van der Hoop, president of Fit First Technologies in Toronto • Silvia Lulka, director of coaching at Rogers Communications in Toronto Jan van der Hoop Silvia Lulka Paul Pittman between the ages of 25 and 65, she said. is reskilling pillar will require an additional $15 billion in fund- ing per year by 2030, according to the council's research. "It will take a big collective eff ort of not just provincial and federal governments, but private sector employers , training and skilling organizations, the post-secondar y system, and (Canadians themselves)," said Treurnicht. "We will need to rethink all of our training programs to make them much more agile, much more current and relevant to the skills we need today, and stream- line the access to those programs. We have to fl ip to a much more agile programming infrastruc- ture that can stop stuff that's no longer working." e strategy will require access to more up-to-date analytics of the labour market, as opposed to month-old information released by government agencies such as Statistics Canada, she said. "Unfortunately, the data is usu- ally quite old and, in fact, many of the job categories that we see today are not even represented in those tracking systems… We need to shift to a much better understand- ing of skills — emerging skills." Better analytics required BUILDING < pg. 16 Yes, we need more people through STEM to fi ll high-tech jobs. But we also need to stop steering kids away from the trades. Join our professional community of Canadian HR & Organizational Leaders: • Connecting @ monthly events • Collaborating with peers • Challenging conventional thinking The Power of Human Capital CULTIVATING LEADERSHIP FOR 35 YEARS Great Leaders GROW www.scnetwork.ca

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