When we talk about the digital skills that will soon be essential for workers, we are not generally talking about the know-how of a software developer or an expert in artificial intelligence. It is, much more modestly, about being able to use a computer to find and process the necessary information or communicate together.
By being told that the future will belong to new technologies, readers of Duty were perhaps not surprised, but still shaken, to read on Tuesday that 9 out of 10 jobs will require digital skills by 2030 and that 70% of medium and large Canadian organizations report having difficulty find such qualified workers. This observation was taken from a report by the consulting firm Deloitte based in particular on a survey carried out among more than 800 Canadian business leaders.
Who hasn’t already heard about the difficulty of recruiting and retaining a programmer these days? No wonder the demand for specialists in artificial intelligence, robotics and cybersecurity is much greater than the available workforce? But it’s not just about that, explains Deloitte.
Basic digital skills
More than half of Canadian businesses told Statistics Canada in 2021 that “their staff as a whole did not have all the skills needed to perform the job at the required level.” And this is mainly caused, it was said, by their lack of mastery of the famous information and communications technologies (ICT). This included basic digital skills, such as communicating online with colleagues and using digital devices and basic software applications, Deloitte notes.
In fact, it is mainly about basic skills, noted another report, from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this one, in 2020, where researchers asked Ontario business leaders to explain what their digital skills needs were specifically about. “Deep technological skills” — such as those that engineers and other university graduates in technology sectors may have — only accounted for 10% of cases. In another 15% of cases, we were looking for people who have the ability to integrate new technologies into the management of organizations. For the mass making up three-quarters of the cases, it was only a question of a much more modest and accessible level of basic digital literacy, such as the ability to use word processing software (Word), presentation software ( PowerPoint) or spreadsheet (Excel).
Faced with a serious labor shortage problem, Quebec is starting to get used to being told that the long-term solution will involve improving its productivity, that is to say the quantity of wealth produced per hour worked. To do this, the use of more automation, computerization and other technological tools seems self-evident and private companies and other organizations are being urged to accelerate their investments in the field. Especially since Quebec and Canada lag behind in terms of productivity compared to most other developed economies.
Vicious circle
But now, a study by the Business Development Bank of Canada already reported in 2019 that more than half of SME managers in Canada were limiting their investments in new technologies due to the shortage of qualified employees. This constraint was even seen as more important than the lack of liquidity and the lack of confidence in the economy.
The brake exerted by the lack of skills would not only come from employees, but also from employers, observed experts from the Center on Productivity and Prosperity at HEC Montréal. The higher the diploma obtained by an SME manager, the greater the probability that his company has innovated over the last three years in terms of products or services offered, production methods, organizational methods or strategies. of sale.
Perhaps the problem is not just that organizations aren’t investing enough in digital technologies, but they’re also not investing enough in training their staff in the same area, Deloitte suggests.
A little more than 11% of Canadian private companies reported in 2021 having offered their employees some form of training aimed at developing their ICT skills, according to the OECD. This was true in Canada on the 25the rank out of 29 countries, while the average was almost 20% for OECD countries and exceeded 30% in Sweden, Norway and Finland.
The task appears particularly difficult for SMEs, in particular because their smaller size makes the implementation of such training more complicated and more expensive, observes Deloitte. The consulting firm proposes, among other things, that business leaders come together alongside “partners from the public sector and academia to create sectoral training centers”. We also encourage them to find out about online training open to all (MOOC in English) often free, if not very affordable, already available on the Web, and take advantage of it. Finally, we are urging governments to do more in terms of raising awareness and informing businesses on this issue, and in terms of financial assistance.
Humans at the controls of machines
As important as they have become today, digital skills are not everything, warned the OECD in its 2020 report on the future of the labor market in Canada. We also see in Canadian companies a need and a lack of more general skills (soft skills in English), such as the ability to communicate and work in a team, management capacity, creativity, adaptability, critical thinking and good judgment.
“Despite the growing discourse around the importance of learning to code, for most Canadians, basic digital skills, as well as a set of non-digital skills—particularly interpersonal skills—are foundational essential to be competitive in the job market,” it said.