This episode features an interview with Earl Anthony Wayne, An accomplished diplomat and executive, Ambassador Wayne has served in a wide variety of positions during his career, including as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico and Argentina, Deputy Ambassador in Afghanistan, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe. In this episode, he discusses where the U.S. ranks when it comes to preparing for the workforce challenges of tomorrow, the skills that workers will need, and the need to understand the global supply chain.

Ron is joined by Simon Chan VP, Talent, Academy and Future of Work at Communitech and Christine Robinson Head of Human Resources at Manulife to discuss taking a human-centered and community based approach to tackling the future of work. Communitech and Manulife have partnered in Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada to lead the formation of a community coalition of stakeholders (private sector, academia, and government) which is the first of its kind in Canada to address the challenges posed by the disruptive trends impacting the workforce. In their process they convened community meetings, interviewed workers, held workshops, and crowdsourced community based solutions for those likely to be impacted by these upcoming changes. They also shared their vision for how this innovative community based approach could be scaled to other communities with the ultimate goal of building healthy organizations and resilient communities.

Lisa Taylor is President of Challenge Factory and the Center of Career Innovation. She is the co-author of The Talent Revolution. Through case studies, metrics, strategies, and tactics, The Talent Revolution explores the impact of workforce demographics on the future of work and provides new, actionable strategies for turning an aging workforce into a competitive advantage.

Episode highlights:

•Employees are not just an asset but are rather the greatest source of equity.

Bob Magee, Chairman of Woodbridge group and Vice Chair of Canada’s Next Generation Manufacturing Supercluster, joins Ron to discuss the ever-changing manufacturing industry and workforce.

Highlights:

Steven Tobin, Labour Market Information Council in Canada, Executive Director

• The LMIC’s mandate is to improve the timeliness, reliability and accessibility of labor market information to improve decision-making by employers, workers, jobseekers, academics, educators, career practitioners, students, parents and under-represented populations.

NAWB’s Ron Painter speaks with Jake Hirsch-Allen, Economic Graph and Learning Solutions for Higher Education and Workforce Development, Canada.

• The Economic Graph is a digital representation of the global economy based on over 590 million members, 50 thousand skills, 30 million companies, 20 million open jobs, and 84 thousand schools. In short: it’s all the data on LinkedIn. Through mapping every member, company, job, and school, we’re able to spot trends like talent migration, hiring rates, and in-demand skills by region. These insights help us connect people to economic opportunity in new ways. And by partnering with governments and organizations around the world, we help them better connect people to opportunities.

• Employers are increasing recognizing skills and previous tasks rather than credentials and degrees when assessing candidates.

Sarah Watts Rynard joins NAWB's Ron Painter in discussing how Canada's polytechnic institutes are preparing students for in-demand jobs with practical training.

Polytechnics Canada: www.polytechnicscanada.ca/

Key Takeaways:

•People need to acquire new skills and comfortability with technology to adapt to changing workplaces and careers.

•Businesses should play a more active role in skill development and connecting to outside students during their educational phase.

•Polytechnics are well suited for career prep because they offer apprenticeships, certificates, 2- or 4-year degrees that suit a variety of careers.

•Competency based admission programs are experimenting with considering candidate portfolios rather than just grades.

•Educational outcomes are becoming more focused on skills than on what students can do, rather than on what knowledge they can recite.

In this podcast NAWB President Ron Painter is joined by Hamoon Ekhtiari of Audacious Futures. They discuss the looking at the future of work and learning as well as what companies need to consider in strategic decision making when thinking about the future of work.

Key Takeaways:

In this very first episode of Workforce Central Canada, host Ron Painter, NAWB CEO, is joined by Devone Holt and Tim Foster of Rescare Workforce Services, Kelly Hoey of HIEC, and Trudy Parsons of MDB Insight. Together they talked about their experiences in workforce development.