Section 7
Continuing education in the workplace
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7.1 Characteristics of workplaces supporting continuing education
The ability and willingness of adults to continue learning throughout their lives has been identified as a critical element in Canada's economic future. The need for new skills in the economy has had a profound impact on jobs, in most, if not all, industries and occupations. Traditionally, many of these new skills would have been provided by "new" workers, both young adults and immigrants entering the labour force. However, the demographic reality is that smaller cohorts of young workers will be entering the workforce and, as the workforce ages, the potential for skill shortages grows. The "upskilling" of workers already in the labour force is widely seen as an important measure to meet these needs (Peters 2004).
The information used in this section comes from Statistics Canada's Workplace and Employee Survey (WES). The WES represents a rich source of linked information on workplaces and their employees. This survey consists of two components: (1) a workplace survey on the adoption of technologies, organizational change, training and other human resource practices, business strategies, and labour turnover in workplaces; and (2) a survey of employees within these same workplaces covering wages, hours of work, job type, human capital, use of technologies and training (refer to Appendix 1 for a general overview of this survey).
Please note that the information provided in this section is only available at the national level and for the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Given the sample size, data for the Atlantic and Western provinces were grouped together.
7.1 Characteristics of workplaces supporting continuing education
It is generally recognized that in order to participate fully in the process leading to innovation within a firm, workers must not only acquire strong basic knowledge through the education system but also need to have opportunities to acquire training in the labour market (Turcotte et. al. 2003).
Recognizing this need for ongoing learning, employers often encourage and support continuing education. This is particularly true in health occupations where regulatory frameworks often require ongoing maintenance or upgrading of skills.
Results from WES showed that about six in ten (58%) workplaces in the health care and social assistance sector in Canada supported classroom and / or on-the-job training for their employees in 2003, about the same as in the other industrial sectors (56%).9 Support for such training activities by workplaces in the health care and social assistance sector was about the same across the provinces, from 55% in the Atlantic to around 60% in Quebec (60%), Ontario (57%) and the Western provinces (59%). The difference between support offered by workplaces in the health care and social assistance sector and the other industrial sectors was, however, larger in Quebec (60% compared with 49%) than in the other provinces (Tables 7.1.1 to 7.1.5).
Not surprisingly, workplaces that introduced innovations10 between April 2002 and March 2003 were more likely than non-innovating workplaces to support training activities. While about three-quarters (76%) of the innovative workplaces in the health care and social assistance sector in Canada supported training activities for their employees during 2003, this was the case for slightly less than 50% of the non-innovating workplaces in that sector of activities. At the provincial level, support for classroom and / or on-the-job training were also higher in innovative workplaces from that sector of activities (66% compared with 49% in the Atlantic provinces, 72% compared with 57% in Quebec, 77% compared with 42% in Ontario, and 80% compared with 50% in the Western provinces) (Tables 7.1.1 to 7.1.5).
Workplaces can support classroom training and / or on-the-job training. As shown in Table 7.1.1, about 44% of the workplaces in the health care and social assistance sector in Canada reported supporting classroom training in 2003, while about half (48%) reported offering on-the-job training. By comparison, about a third (32%) of workplaces operating in other sectors of activities reported supporting classroom training and about half (48%) some informal type of training activities.
Similar to what was observed at the national level, the support for classroom training in the provinces was also higher in the health care and social assistance sector than elsewhere (43% compared with 28% in the Atlantic provinces, 55% compared with 33% in Quebec, 40% compared with 32% in Ontario, and 38% compared with 34% in the Western provinces) (Tables 7.1.2 to 7.1.5 and Chart 7.1). In the case of on-the-job training in Ontario and the Western provinces, the support from workplaces in the health care and social assistance sector was about the same as in the other industrial sectors. With about 46%, the support for such type of training in Quebec was about 10 percentage points higher in the health care and social assistance sector than in the other sectors of activities (35%). The situation was reverse in the Atlantic provinces, with about 36% of the workplaces in the health care and social assistance sector supporting on-the-job training activities compared to about 48% of those in the other industrial sectors (Tables 7.2.1 to 7.1.5).
Table 7.1.1 shows that the proportion of workplaces supporting training increases with the number of employees at a location, for both classroom and on-the-job training. However, the difference between small and large workplaces is smaller for on-the-job training than for classroom training. This was true, independently of the sector of activities and the province (Tables 7.1.1 to 7.1.5).
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