The skills Canadian employers are looking for in the age of AI

Poor productivity should concern us all: It measures how much the average worker earns each year, how well our living standards compare to counterparts elsewhere in the world, and how much money we have to fund public institutions like schools, hospitals and other critical infrastructure—all of which can affect growing income inequality. 

Why skills training is more important than ever 

As Canada’s productivity continues to fall behind that of its G7 peers, it will be up to a new generation of workers to pick up the pieces. Luckily, one of the most critical things they can do next is obvious: train themselves and their teams in the right mix of skills and technologies. Or, as Rogers herself put it: “Doing the jobs we’re doing, but [doing] them more efficiently.”

But where do workers begin in an era of rapidly changing technology that has reduced the half-life (the length of time a skill remains relevant at work) of some skills to fewer than five years? 

If saving up for a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) seems too daunting, don’t worry. According to Jennifer Campbell, director of the Master of Management Analytics program at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business, there are workshops, bootcamps and other learning formats that can expose learners to a wide range of perspectives, technologies and practices, sometimes in as little as a day or two.

“The beauty of it is you don’t have to quit your day job,” she says. “And you can often take what you’ve learned and immediately apply it in your current workplace.”

“The job of a senior executive has become far more complex than it’s ever been,” says Gervase Bushe, a professor of leadership and organizational development at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. “The rate of innovation is faster and there’s an acceleration of global issues that develops in ways you can’t predict.”

What Bushe says applies to everyone. He suggests workers evaluate learning opportunities across two dimensions. Many leadership courses, for example, focus on horizontal skill development— picking up technical skills and domain-specific expertise. This can, for example, include learning a computer programming language, project management tools or how to use bookkeeping or accounting software. However, the best programs should also further your vertical development, which includes your emotional intelligence, ability to make sense of paradoxes and your capacity to handle and lead others through change.

The skills businesses are investing in now

Experts cite a lack of investment in technology as a big part of Canada’s productivity problem, which means staying relevant and excelling in today’s job market increasingly means learning to make the right judgment calls in terms of which technologies and skills will move the needle in a particular organization or sector.

This requires broad exposure to different disciplines, the kind that offers enough depth to hire and converse with specialists, but also the breadth to make the “business case” for different technologies without necessarily becoming a practitioner oneself. 

There are, at least, specialized technologies and management and leadership techniques that can help businesses more quickly accelerate their productivity. Here are some of the most popular based on recent demand trends from Canadian education marketplace CourseCompare. 

What is digital transformation and change management?

Digital transformation is a broad area of study that emerged in the early 2000s and further accelerated in popularity around 2015. While it touches upon the skills, practices and ideas that fall under virtually every other area of study on this list, it offers useful blueprints and guidelines for identifying and evaluating different technologies like cloud computing (think: on-demand IT support), Artificial Intelligence, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems and many more that can fundamentally change the way a business operates and delivers value to customers.

Training providers in this area will often help learners develop a strategy for introducing the best technologies to a specific business, examine case studies for varying tech implementations, and create a “roadmap” for their own business, along with a change management plan designed to improve processes, communicate change and secure “buy in” from employees at every level of an organization.

Imagine, for example, introducing new project management software to your company that stores all the information everyone needs in one place, automatically assigns work to employees, identifies issues as they happen, and keeps everyone on track by updating people’s tasks and schedules in real time. 

When leaders in a Deloitte study combined a strategic and operational approach to digital transformation—when they adopted new technology, but also invested in rejigging the processes supporting it—their companies increased revenue 22% on average. Profitability also increased, by nearly as much at 19%. 

Training in digital transformation is dominated by business schools, especially their schools of executive education. But independent training companies and bootcamps are launching programs and courses too, along with online learning platforms. Tuition therefore runs the gamut, from low-cost subscription-based services offering snack-sized videos to more hands-on programs that cost upward of $10,000 for part-time personalized training within cohorts of learners with at least a few years’ work experience. 

What is data analytics and decision making?

Companies today collect a lot of information, from product quality metrics to online user behaviour to sales data and beyond. The trick is to collect, store and share that data seamlessly across teams so that businesses can use it to inform their strategies and improve their productivity. 

Data analytics helps companies do everything from reducing equipment downtime to improving supply chain management, customer satisfaction and fraud detection. For example, research by IBM suggests there’s a significant opportunity for Canadian companies to combine improved data analytics with cybersecurity to reduce the costs of data breaches. Canada’s losses are currently the third-highest in the world, with the average cost per incident approaching $7 million.

The market for training people in data analytics is dominated by b-schools, but anyone can learn hands-on technical skills in the field with introductory courses—online or in-person—at universities, colleges and coding bootcamps. A part-time program at a top Canadian business school will typically cost $3,000 to $4,000 dollars—although keep in mind employers will commonly pick up the tab. Specialized business degrees, including MBAs and masters of management analytics, have also emerged that teach business administration through a data-driven lens, with tuition ranging from $20,000 to more than $45,000 for domestic students. 

What customer experience (CX) has to do with Canada’s economy

As more customer relationships move online, or are at least intermediated by technologies from email automation to chatbots and AI assistants, it makes sense that customer experience (CX) would be top of mind for business leaders. Customer experience involves thinking through the entire customer journey from the moment they discover a brand to long after they make a purchase.

Customer experience, like so many other emerging disciplines on this list, touches many different fields, including marketing, data analytics, and user experience (UX) design, to name a few. Combining user experience design skills with a deep understanding of your customers’ online behaviour, for example, could unlock significant opportunities for Canadian companies to spend their advertising dollars more efficiently. A systematic and measured approach to customer experience is also helping some companies overcome the productivity slump. 

Companies considered “customer experience (CX) leaders,” according to consulting firm McKinsey, have in fact achieved more than two times the growth of their competition since 2016 based on one study of 75 companies.

E-commerce giant, Amazon, is a prime example of a company that can unlock millions of dollars by making relatively small changes to its customer experience. Easy and intuitive web navigation, personalized recommendations next to product searches, and a hassle-free return process are just a few things Canadian e-commerce companies can invest in to increase sales and improve customer loyalty. 

Customer experience is less well represented in college and university course catalogues than, say, data analytics and digital transformation—but courses in user experience, customer relationship management, and marketing that focus on measuring customer sentiment and improving the overall user experience can help businesses uncover significant productivity gains. Courses are available from a few hundred dollars at local colleges to nearly $15,000 for part-time intensive bootcamps that, for example, help would-be founders and product designers build new prototypes from scratch.  

Is Canada ready for Artificial intelligence (AI)?

Ever since ChatGPT took off in late 2022, AI has been more than a hot topic in boardrooms across Canada and beyond. Executives may not need to study machine learning or be able to design algorithms, but they should understand how AI can reduce or eliminate manual work and predict future business outcomes.

If there’s any doubt about AI’s potential value, consider a recent study by PwC, which estimates AI could contribute $15.7 trillion globally through product innovation and improved labour productivity. Bloomberg estimates Generative AI alone will become a $1.3 trillion industry by 2032. 

AI is a largely interdisciplinary field, drawing on mathematics and statistics, software engineering, data science, machine learning, deep learning and other disciplines. Short introductory courses on the field are available for free online, as well as through colleges and universities that offer live instruction for as little as several hundred dollars. 

Coding bootcamps, designed to impart practical job skills and assist with employment, offer certificates and diplomas from several thousand dollars to more than $15,000 for more intensive training in data science and software engineering that places students in full-time jobs right after graduation. 

Meanwhile, graduate programs for people interested in conducting original research and launching innovative new products can range from $7,000 to roughly $20,000 for a master’s and $30,000 for a PhD in computing with an AI focus at leading universities.

Why emotional intelligence matters more than ever 

“Emotional intelligence,” “leadership development,” “executive coaching”—these and similar terms all fall beneath the branch of executive education focused on so-called “soft skills” or “people skills.” These are the skills Gervase Bushe at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business is referring to when he says workers need to focus on their “vertical development”—and they are becoming more important than ever. 

The changing rate of innovation, and the uncertainty it can bring, means tomorrow’s leaders will need to be able to apply sound judgment, critical thinking, creative problem solving and communication skills with a clear vision of the future to help interdisciplinary teams navigate change and uncertainty. 

Evidence of this is legion, from examples of improved employee performance to increased retention and innovation—not to mention benefits to productivity itself—within companies that have emotionally intelligent managers and executives at the helm.

Bushe adds that the ultimate value of education transcends what a person gets paid—and that the impact can have huge ripple effects.

“Leadership development is not something we do with this one person over here,” he says. “It’s something that can shift the entire organizational culture.”

Perhaps, if tomorrow’s corporate and government leaders are up to the challenge, it will help shift Canada’s overall productivity, too. 

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About Robert Furtado

Robert is the CEO of CourseCompare, Canada’s marketplace for education. His writing and commentary about higher education, technology and careers has appeared in leading publications across North America.

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