The extent of automation’s impact on the general workforce won’t be known for another decade or two, but tech industry experts say Canada is in the midst of a transition period in which demand is rising for relationship-based skills at upscale businesses, while middle-class routine jobs – work based on repeated tasks – will be most at risk of disappearing.
You can take a pessimistic view of the impending automation wave, or you can be an optimist about it, said Steve Eccles, dean of the School of Computing and Academic Studies at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). According to Eccles, there’s a strong demand for relationship-based business skills – such as know-how in sales and marketing, investor relations and human resources – required to adapt to the demands of a rapidly digitizing economy, in addition to technical skills like coding and app development. However, jobs in fields such as telemarketing and truck driving are more likely to be eliminated through automation.
“There are a lot of reports and data on automation, which really speaks to the fact that the 2020s will be a decade of redeployment, not unemployment,” Eccles said. “I think there’s a real opportunity to provide the transition to enable people to embrace these opportunities and re-skill, rather than be left behind. I think getting participation in the new economy is a good thing to do, and also, from an economic and social point of view, it’s a priority.”
According to a BCIT fact sheet, over 18,000 students are enrolled full time at BCIT, while 29,000 are part-time students. Many of the people taking part-time courses, which can be pursued online or in evening classes, are already part of the workforce but are upgrading or re-skilling in order to change their career paths, Eccles said. He said the traditional post-secondary model of a stretch in college or university, followed by nothing else, is becoming old-school.
“We’re seeing more of our students come to our day-school programs, our full-time programs, and then they’re constantly coming back to the part-time track to refresh, upgrade, and add layers of technical skill,” he said. “And I think you’re going to see more and more, as we deal with this new economy, the need for students and workers to almost subscribe to ongoing learning, to keep topping up and keep adapting as technology shifts.”
Representatives of business software giant SAP SE’s (NYSE:SAP) Canadian branch echoed similar optimism about automation.
“For us, automation in the tech industry means that we can do things faster [and] we can do more things,” said Kirsten Sutton, vice-president and managing director at SAP Labs Canada. “We can automate the things that can be automated and we can focus on the things that can’t, so we see it certainly as an opportunity rather than a threat to our employees or a threat to our business. It’s that digital transformation that’s happening in the world that is what’s driving tech jobs right now.”
From the company’s HR perspective, skills that are growing in demand call for emotional intelligence and decision-making expertise that advances in technology can’t replace.
“Beyond the technical and hard skills, what has also been really critical for us to educate our employees on, and to ingrain it into our culture, are some of the more soft skills or the non-technical skills – and by that I mean critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, how do we communicate and collaborate really well together,” said Agnes Garaba, who is the head of human resources at SAP Canada.
“These are the competencies that will set jobs apart that can’t be automated.”
