4. Labour Market Skills for a New Economy Overview of Skills Skills for a New Economy Where to Find More

Did You Know?

Seventy percent of Canadians now in the work force will still be in the work force by the year 2000, but experts say that 85 percent of the technology they will be using has not even been invented yet.

SOURCE: "Car Talk", CARS Insider, Fall, 1992.

Even though the Canadian Occupational Projection System outlined in Chapter 3 considers the impact of technological change on occupational shifts, with the rate of technological change so rapid, it is difficult for anyone to predict, with certainty, what jobs will remain and what new jobs will emerge. For this reason, one of the most useful things career counsellors, teachers and others providing career services can do to help prepare clients and students for the future is to advise them of the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to operate successfully in a world of non-stop change. This chapter outlines those attitudes and skills. They include the need to:

• become informed consumers of educational services;
• develop generic employability skills;
• realign expectations;
• develop entrepreneurial skills and outlook;
• understand all the steps in the career decision-making process;
• become self-reliant; and
• develop research skills.

Because of the rapid pace of change, workers need to develop higher levels of workplace skills. s highlighted in Chapter 2, occupational shifts have led to an acceleration in the growth of highly skilled jobs. Often, these jobs are in the fast-growing business services sector, which includes advertising, legal, scientific, engineering, human resource and computing service firms. Such firms tend to be small, and to be competitive they must have a well-qualified work force. This places a premium on technical knowledge, business communication and marketing skills.

However, it is important to note that the so-called lower-skilled jobs in traditional services require more skills today than did the lower-skilled blue collar jobs that have disappeared. For example, the shift to tourism activities and to specialized retail sales and personal services that cater to the well-off, mature market demands workers with excellent product knowledge, high levels of literacy and good people skills, which includes good phone skills. These firms also operate in a small business environment, which places a far greater emphasis on the knowledge, communication skills and flexibility of workers than is usually expected.

Clerical work functions are also changing with computer technology to provide complex administrative assistance. It is not unusual to see secretarial staff being required to use spreadsheet, data-base management, accounting and desktop publishing programs. Often, the secretary is the only person in the office knowledgeable enough to run certain computer programs or make recommendations for technology purchases. s a result, they have more input. They work with the manager or a team, as opposed to doing only the more routine support functions.

Employers are not only looking for the proper technical skills, they want employees to have basic generic skills that will make them keen and easy to retrain as the need arises and will make them emissaries of the company as well as task-oriented employees.