The deep end of Canada’s talent pool needs attention.
For one thing, it’s not deep enough; for another, the country is not investing enough in the pool’s shallow end to increase the deep-end depth.
Without that investment, Canada’s 21st century competitiveness prospects will be relegated to farm team status.
B.C. and the rest of Canada are not alone in wrestling with how best to retool their human resources to maximize digital industrial revolution opportunities. But the pandemic has trained a spotlight on the country’s skills depreciation crisis.
Canada’s first wave of widespread pandemic unemployment has been followed by a spike in job vacancies.
Some employees who were laid off when COVID-19 hit hardest have chosen new career paths; others have hit the skills wall and face the prospects of long-term unemployment.
A new report from business management company Sage found that, as of September, 47% of the workers included in the report’s survey said they have or are considering pursuing new career opportunities.
Employee expectations for higher wages and better health care and other benefits are also increasing.
That places a premium on the need for better employee-employer matchmaking, which is where the depth and breadth of the country’s talent pool becomes such a critical factor.
Investment in human capital and skills upgrading is fundamental to Canada’s future prosperity.
But as a recent C.D. Howe commentary points out, the country needs to do a better job of targeting that investment and retooling its human capital.
Places to start, it notes, include developing a national data-collection system to link training programs to the skills needed in the marketplace.
Fundamental to proactively refilling Canada’s talent pool is this: Government and the private sector need to work together to build a national skills development system that promotes learning as a lifelong process.
Without it, neither the country nor its citizenry will secure long-term prosperity.
