How to prevent businesses and workers from being left behind in a changing world

Linda Nazareth, host of the Work and the Future podcast, has a great column today in The Globe and Mail on a topic dear to my heart and critical to the future of both business and employees over the next decade or two.

She writes: “Reskilling” is something that sounds like a buzzword but is actually a requirement if we plan to have a future where a lot of would-be workers do not get left behind. We know we are moving into a period where the jobs in demand will change rapidly, as will the requirements of the jobs that remain. Research by the WEF, detailed in the Harvard Business Review, finds that on average 42 per cent of the “core skills” within job roles will change by 2022. That is a very short timeline, so we can only imagine what the changes will be further in the future.

The need for better training of entrants into most job fields and for retraining those who do have jobs to meet the need of the more-technical, more-digital world to come was obvious to most experts and even politicians before the COVID-19 crisis hit Canada and the rest of the world.

For years, there have been predictions that up to 30 per cent of current jobs will cease to exist simply because of the increasing use of artificial intelligence and robotics.

The COVID-19 crisis has both hastened and exacerbated this trend as well as the need for solutions to the “reskilling” or retraining issue.

At Conquest Communications Canada, we are already working on parts of this serious issue and would love to hear from others who have ideas on how to mitigate the problem.

Overall, the emphasis is going to be on individual training because there are several roadblocks to a coherent one-size-fits-all approach by both business and government.

Nazareth also writes: The question of who should pay for reskilling is a thorny one. For individual companies, the temptation is always to let go of workers whose skills are no longer in demand and replace them with those whose skills are. That does not always happen. AT&T is often given as the gold standard of a company who decided to do a massive reskilling program rather than go with a fire-and-hire strategy, ultimately retraining 18,000 employees. Pre-pandemic, other companies including Amazon and Disney had also pledged to create their own plans. When the skills mismatch is in the broader economy though, the focus usually turns to government to handle. Efforts in Canada and elsewhere have been arguably languid at best and have given us a situation where we frequently hear of employers begging for workers, even at times and in regions where unemployment is high.

The G-20 group of countries, which includes Canada, has circulated this proposal:

The G20 should launch and spearhead a new initiative to establish national adult training programs that focus on strengthening workers’ resilience to technological change. This initiative should encourage and support countries in establishing institutionalized national lifelong training programs for employed workers. The programs should focus on workers with limited general skills who are less mobile across jobs and occupations, and whose jobs are susceptible to being replaced by the new technologies. These programs should aim at upgrading workers’ proficiencies of theoretical, non-cognitive or digital skills to:

• keep them employable in the digital age,

• strengthen their resilience to technological change,

• enable them to utilize new technologies to increase their own productivity,

• enhance their mobility across jobs, occupations, and industries, particularly their upward mobility, and

• spare them from the need to take lower-paying services jobs that cannot (yet) be automated.

There’s no sign yet that this is happening in Canada, as Nazareth noted, or in most of the G-20 countries.

How does a worker laid-off from his/her previous job because of technological change acquire the necessary skills to find a new job in a more digital world?

How does someone who lost her/his job because of COVID-19 get “reskilled” to find new work when there is a vaccine and things return to the “new normal” early next year?

How do recent university or high school graduates, educated and trained for a different world, find entry-level jobs when they become available again?

How do businesses find the right help to retrain their existing staff rather than get into the “fire-and-hire” cycle that Nazareth cites?

The fact that there is no overall answer means that solutions must be found elsewhere. What’s missing from all of this is the personal approach and/or reskilling on an industry-by-industry or field-by-field basis.

There’s a great business opportunity here in providing these services on a specialized basis.

For example, a company with an existing job board in a specialized field for companies, agencies, and applicants – it’s also one of the long-standing clients of Conquest Communications Canada -- has recently tasked us to help them study the possibility of a pivot to a greater focus on providing services for first-time job seekers, as well as career-advancement advice for existing employees.

The need for that is obvious.

My advice to other business owners: Start now. Don’t be left standing on the platform after the train has pulled out of the station. And don’t hesitate to let us know how we can help you with this or your other digital needs.

Further reading

World Economic Forum: We need a global reskilling revolution – here's why

Visier: 3 Tips for Reskilling Your Workforce in 2020

McKinsey: To emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis, companies should start reskilling their workforces now