{"id":5250,"date":"2018-04-10T17:46:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T17:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/thought-leadership\/the-skills-revolution-are-we-really-ready\/"},"modified":"2025-03-26T04:54:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T04:54:47","slug":"the-skills-revolution-are-we-really-ready","status":"publish","type":"rbc_tl","link":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/thought-leadership\/innovation\/the-skills-revolution-are-we-really-ready\/","title":{"rendered":"The Skills Revolution \u2013 Are We Really Ready?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"#RBCDisruptors: The Coming Skills Revolution\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gihZY_fi_Ac?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>This is what you&#8217;ll hear whether you ask a third generation winery, the country&#8217;s largest home care provider, or an entrepreneurial program within a university \u2013 and we did just that.<\/p>\n<p>Canada is currently facing a &#8216;quiet crisis&#8217;, with half of all jobs being disrupted by technology and automation in the next decade. In a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2024\/11\/RBC-Future-Skills-Report-FINAL-Singles.pdf\">year-long study<\/a>, conducted by RBC, our team crisscrossed the country to speak with a wide range of students and youth in their early careers, employers in virtually every sector, as well as educators and policymakers.<\/p>\n<p>We found that recent grads are overqualified for the jobs they have now, and youth are unemployed without the skills needed for the jobs currently out there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have to prepare youth for the future, from a skills perspective, and from an inclusion perspective,&#8221; said RBC President &#038; CEO Dave McKay.<\/p>\n<p>McKay kicked off the last RBCDisruptors, our regular forum on innovation and how it&#8217;s changing the world around us. The event was organized in part to celebrate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/dms\/enterprise\/futurelaunch\/about.html?utm_source=Discover-Learn&#038;utm_medium=referral&#038;utm_campaign=dl-166245\">RBC Future Launch<\/a>, a $500-million commitment over 10-years to prepare young Canadians for the jobs of tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>We also welcomed three dynamic employee\/employer pairs that told us how they are preparing for, and adapting to the future of work in their respective industries. Here&#8217;s some of what we learned:<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout-quote rds-inverse right\"><div class=\"quote-content\"><p>We have to prepare youth for the future, from a skills perspective, and from an inclusion perspective.<\/p><\/div><div class=\"quote-source\"><p>RBC President & CEO Dave McKay<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<h4>Technology Doesn&#8217;t Replace People<\/h4>\n<p>When it comes to automation changing the nature of (some) jobs, technology should be embraced and not feared. There are many things machines can&#8217;t do, such as communication, critical thinking, complex problem solving and social perceptiveness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTechnology is not a job stealing, it&#8217;s job enhancing \u2013 it&#8217;s freeing up your time to use your human skills to devise new processes, and create community that can&#8217;t be done via technology,&#8221; said Thirty Bench winemaker Emma Gardner, who was joined by John Peller, CEO of Peller Estates. The<b> <\/b>winery is using innovative technologies such as drones and heat maps, empowering the winemakers and producing better wine.<\/p>\n<p>Gardner uses her smartphone to track and harvest important data from their precious vineyards, such as wind speed, water saturation and vine health.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are overwhelmed with data and it&#8217;s helping us be smarter and make decisions more quickly,&#8221; said Peller.<\/p>\n<p>He points out that machines don&#8217;t make wine, they help people make better wine.<\/p>\n<h4>Always Embrace Learning<\/h4>\n<p>One question Peller asks his employees is, \u201care you learning as fast as this world is changing?&#8221; He believes in creating a culture of learning and growing as a team.<\/p>\n<p>This means more co-op placements with local post-secondary institutions, team collaboration, communication and leadership development. \u201cDrawing all those things together is what will keep a company successful in the future,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>At Guelph University&#8217;s Arrell Food Institute, students learn entrepreneurship first-hand by building businesses from scratch, and gain workplace relevant, team-based, training experience that cannot be taught in the classroom. \u201cIt&#8217;s an experimental space, and gives people the full skills portfolio of what they need in the workforce,&#8221; said Evan Fraser, the Institute&#8217;s director.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Blechscmidt, a Masters Candidate and one of the student entrepreneurs at Arrell, is a firm believer that everyone should take marketing and business classes to further develop their communication skills, to sell their ideas. \u201cIt&#8217;s definitely an extension of our studies, as it gives us the opportunity to really apply the skills we&#8217;ve learned and develop new ones we wouldn&#8217;t otherwise have \u2013 it&#8217;s not every day you get the opportunity to start a business,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<h4>Focus on Communication<\/h4>\n<p>\u201cAll business is a human sport,&#8221; said Peller.<\/p>\n<p>Arrell Food Institute students work in inter-disciplinary teams, gaining valuable interpersonal, critical thinking and project management skills.<\/p>\n<p>The caregivers at Saint Elizabeth, which has a 9,000-strong workforce, act as coaches rather than directors into their patients&#8217; health. Nurses used to be the main holders of information, informing patients on their conditions. Nowadays, information is easily found online.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe&#8217;re not telling anybody about their disease \u2013 we&#8217;re sometimes translating it and interpreting it for them. We&#8217;re certainly not providing care to people, we&#8217;re providing together care, in a partnership,&#8221; said Shirlee Sharkey, CEO of Saint Elizabeth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m not just a nurse, I&#8217;m a caregiver, a shoulder to lean on and a social worker,&#8221; said Felicia Kontopidis, a registered nurse with Saint Elizabeth.<\/p>\n<h4>Credentials Aren&#8217;t Enough<\/h4>\n<p>It used to be that credentials alone were enough to land you that dream job, but not anymore.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI now look at credentials as the minimum requirement,&#8221; said Sharkey.<\/p>\n<p>When hiring, Saint Elizabeth looks for comfort to work independently, the ability to multitask and incredible organizational skills.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe&#8217;re bringing in and testing for those competencies well above and beyond credentials. We need to create the future and future proof the organization and our talent \u2013 or else we&#8217;re going to have a huge wake up call,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>To hear more from our three sets of guests, subscribe and listen to our episodes of the RBCDisruptors podcast, available on <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/rbcdisruptors\"><i>Soundcloud<\/i><\/a><i> and <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/ca\/podcast\/rbcdisruptors\/id1332711400?mt=2&#038;mc_cid=3a2fab0cf6&#038;mc_eid=1bcb5140b4\"><i>iTunes<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learn how these organizations are prepping for the future of work: a third generation winery, Canada&#8217;s largest home care provider, and an entrepreneurial food program within a university, from the last RBCDisruptors: The Coming Skills Revolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":5251,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"disable_focal_point":true,"featured_image_focal_point":{"x":0.5,"y":0.5},"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"rbc_tl_category":[100],"rbc_tl_tag":[115,105,103,118],"class_list":["post-5250","rbc_tl","type-rbc_tl","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","rbc_tl_category-innovation","rbc_tl_tag-automation","rbc_tl_tag-skills","rbc_tl_tag-technology","rbc_tl_tag-youth"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.7 (Yoast SEO v26.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Skills Revolution \u2013 Are We Really Ready? - RBC<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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