Global Competitiveness on the Shop Floor
How to fix the skilled worker shortage and make Canada a top economy in one step
by Brian McCready
In the new, knowledge-based, global economy, there’s a message for Canada: success in the 21st century depends on people.
A report put out by the World Economic Forum says Canada’s global competitiveness has been on a downward slide for almost a decade. This is largely because we haven’t done enough to upgrade the skills of our adult workers.
The value in training a workforce applies to every business from the shop floor of an oilfield service company to the office of a major corporation. For the trades, that means offering apprenticeships and advanced safety training. For office staff, it means education in new systems and procedures that boost efficiency.
Our ability to increase economic prosperity and the standard of living of Canadians depends on our ability to add value to our economic activities, businesses and jobs. This is the basis for our competitive future.
That’s why the organization I represent, the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, as the nation’s leading trade and industry association, has an incentive idea for Canadian firms. We are advocating a tax credit for companies that would amount to 15% of business investments in maintaining and upgrading the skills of their workforce.
By offsetting this credit against Employment Insurance premiums – which many of our member companies complain are too high – it would give companies the incentive to invest.
In Alberta, we feel the pressures of a skilled and non-skilled worker shortage every day. The latest estimates say our province will have a deficit of approximately 100,000 workers in the next decade. That is after we add almost 300,000 in new and replacement workers to the Alberta labour force. What these numbers leave out is the additional training required to make this workforce productive and knowledgeable.
Today, Canada’s customers and competitors are located around the world. And the competition for investment, market share, knowledge, technology and skilled workers is intense. But we have remarkable assets working in our favour: the richness of our natural resources, a highly educated workforce, our knowledge base, a highly productive business sector and our well developed services infrastructure. Our future economic prosperity rests on our ability to grow those assets and to create greater value from them.
Consider how Canada stacks up compared to its neighbour to the south: This country’s participation rate of employees in training is half of the U.S. level. What’s more, American per capita spending on training is $1,135 per employee, while Canadian firms spend only $834. The average investment in training as a percentage of payroll is 1.57% in Canada, compared to 2.34% in the U.S.
To remedy this shortfall, a change has to begin in Canada’s boardrooms where workplace learning should be seen as an investment rather than an expense.
There are many barriers facing companies – small and medium enterprises in particular – including time, money, lack of information and the potential for poaching from other firms. But as an economy and as a nation, those are challenges we must overcome through education and action. Workplace learning offers a great return on investment. A highly trained workforce is a productive one that produces increased profits.
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We have to be creative. Productivity and competitiveness begin with an investment in our people. And that should be part of
a national vision for a Canadian workforce that can claim four important credentials: intelligent, innovative, inclusive and international.
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In the new economy, where knowledge is power, a company’s best competitive advantage is a knowledgeable, highly-skilled workforce. But that doesn’t occur by itself.’
It takes continual training and lifelong learning to produce the best problem solvers and innovators. And that begins with a mindset that understands that training is not an expense, but an investment with a priceless return.
Between the Lines is a guest column about current affairs topics that touch on business in the province. Brian McCready is the vice-president of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters – Alberta & Saskatchewan.
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