ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts an employer-centric perspective on workforce readiness. Employers have unique configurations of processes for hiring, placing, retaining, managing, motivating, and developing employees. Quantifying future workforce supply was made easy by relying on estimates of workforce growth, publicly available from Statistics Canada, in each of the 95 key occupations. Uniquely from the employer’s perspective, the existing external labor market can immediately be leveraged in ways that do not require time spent waiting for future workers to complete their programs of study or military service. Manufacturing organizations face profound workforce readiness challenges due to changes in technology-driven production processes. Additive manufacturing, a new and rapidly evolving process, is also affecting the nature of work. The capabilities it deemed most important to future business success were the very capabilities most lacking in the current workforce. Lower wages, fewer benefits costs, lower overhead costs related to maintaining physical workplaces and employee record-keeping are all sources of cost savings for employers.
