REINSTATE BUSINESS AND EXECUTIVE COACHING AS PART OF THE WORK BC TRAINING GRANT PROGRAM TO ENHANCE TRAINING AND SKILLS PROGRAM (2022)

2022

Education and Skills Training

Background

The B.C. Employer Training Grant program (ETG) supports skills training to address provincial labour market needs. The program is delivered by the Province of British Columbia and is funded by the Government of Canada through the Workforce Development Agreement (WDA). The Work BC Training program has evolved over the years and has helped many employers and workers gain important skills. And as the labour market research indicates, there is a huge need for skills training that is growing exponentially. And according to the Work BC Website[1], it notes these statistics:

B.C. is expected to have 1,004,000 job openings between 2021 and 2031.
Nearly 80 per cent of these job openings will require some form of post-secondary education or training.
Approximately 63 per cent of these future job openings will be to replace workers leaving the labour force, mainly through retirements.
About 37 per cent of the 10-year total job openings will be new jobs created either through recovery from COVID-19 or new economic growth.

Here is what the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report states: [2]

50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025, as adoption of technology increases, according to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report.
Critical thinking and problem-solving top the list of skills employers believe will grow in prominence in the next five years.
Newly emerging this year are skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility.
Respondents to the Future of Jobs Survey estimate that around 40% of workers will require reskilling of six months or less.
Half of us will need to reskill in the next five years, as the "double-disruption" of the economic impacts of the pandemic and increasing automation transforming jobs takes hold.

According to the third edition of the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report, it also maps the jobs and skills of the future, tracking the pace of change and direction of travel. Clearly, these statistics show the incredible need for on going skills training as well as “reskilling” in the work place.

In todays VUCA world, which stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, the skills shortage is exacerbated by ever changing needs in the work place, thus skills training is more important than ever. However, The BC Jobs Training Program gives access to new skills for classroom work and traditional training, but this type of training is shown not to be as effective in a VUCA world as skills training combined with on the job application combined with training.

A great article in Mind Tools [3] talks about the importance of on-going skills training, and the fact that traditional classrooms fall short by not allowing the skills to be enhanced by accredited coaching, including business coaching, executive coaching, or leadership coaching through an association that includes on-going training and professional development and a code of ethics, such as PBCA (Professional Business Coaches Association) or ICF (Independent Coaches Federation) or similar. Statistics show that classroom learning is great in theory, but is often forgotten when it lacks hands on application. For example, learning supervisor skills is great, but without hands on implementation, fall short of expectations.

Statistics show that, similar to Red Seal accreditation that combines classroom learning with hands on implementation, accountability, and experience, adding coaching to reinforce learning between sessions (or between modules) and helping the worker apply what they learned while learning it increases their learning by 88%. “Companies that offer training alone experience 22.4% increase in productivity, but when combined with coaching that figure rises to 88%.”  Gerald Olivero, Denise Bane & Richard Kopelman, Public Personnel Management. [4]

Programs that use classroom work alone are shown to be forgotten or shelved by the learners. A resource on the Government of Canada’s website[5] discusses five case studies where improving skills for workers work best when the employee is able to relate and apply the new learnings on the job. Coaching and training together do this. Studies show there is a significant deficiency in using classroom work alone versus adding coaching during the training to help the employees and employers see how to implement the training into their specific workplace. When they are, the above study shows significant improvement in productivity, safety, and also that while it includes access to professional training programs, unlike the Red Seal Apprenticeship Program, there is no allowance for access to coaches during the entire program.

Business and Executive Coaching can be done individually or in groups and help take the classroom training from theory to work-based experiences, where the employee can not only discuss how to apply the learning from the classroom to work applications, but then set up actions to actually use the skills over the next week before their next learning, report back, be accountable, and gain valuable experience along the way. They can not only apply it, but really use it and learn further and apply it in real time. This experiential learning from coaching is an incredibly valuable addition to training alone.

These five studies show the value of business and/or executive coaching and discuss the importance and value, of coaching for improvements of productivity and safety, and reduced absenteeism, improved employee engagement, and thus, improvement in the overall effectiveness of the training.

THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS:

That the Provincial Government:

Reinstate the WorkBC, BC Employer Training Grant to include access to accredited business and executive coaches as part of the overall program.

[1] https://www.workbc.ca/getmedia/c43af36f-f408-4990-9ae1-c5b5f5f7be7a/BC_Labour_Market_Outlook_2021_9MB.pdf.aspx

[2] https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2020.pdf

[3] https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/managing-vuca-world.htm#:~:text=VUCA%20stands%20for%20volatility%2C%20uncertainty,day%2Dto%2Dday%20working

[4] https://www.mowbraybydesign.com/coaching-roi/

[5] https://www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/training/initiatives/skills-success/tools/building.html