Skills, Innovation and Productivity

The ability to develop the required workforce is a necessary competitive strength to keep our economy strong and attract talent as well as investment. Bridging the gap between people (students and workers), post-secondaries, employers and innovation is the key. A competency approach is that bridge.

Policy Goal: Develop Western Canada’s workforce with the competencies required to create economic growth through the adoption of innovations and improved productivity.

We will: 

• Work with employer and industry associations to expand the apprenticeship model beyond trades to other occupations to build job-ready competencies in new workers and the existing workforce. 
• Promote the removal of barriers within existing trades apprenticeships to improve attraction and retention in the skilled trades workforce. A competency-based approach builds the workforce faster, certifies capacity to perform job tasks and improves productivity.
• Continue the Future of Work and Learning Brief.

Policy Goal: Reduce friction in the labor market through the use of competency-based workforce development and employment systems that better match people with jobs and jobs with people.

We will:  

• Work with stakeholders to propose a systems approach that starts with government but brings along employers, labour market information, education providers and individuals.

Policy Goal: Attract and retain international talent through effective and efficient credential and competency recognition.

We will: 

• Demonstrate how competency assessment can help qualify and pre-qualify immigrants for jobs in Canada.

SIGNATURE PROJECT PROFILE

Competency to adopt innovation
Canada’s productivity lags as does its adoption of innovations in new plant and equipment and processes. A competency approach can not only improve workers’ productivity in their current workplace, but it can efficiently and effectively improve their ability to perform in the next workplace. This work will provide evidence for the link between competency-based training and assessment, and firm-level adoption of innovations.