Naval  Association  of  Canada




Association navale du Canada


Recap: October Speaker Program

10 Oct 2017 08:37 | Barry Walker (Administrator)

Our regular meeting on October 2nd, 2017 featured Dr. Sherry Scully of the Institute for Ocean Research Enterprise.  Dr. Scully spoke on the Maritime People Partnership which was established to explore workforce development issues and advise on a national human resource development strategy.  

Her work identified six priority areas that comprise common challenges to workforce development in the marine industry, nationally. These priority areas include:

  • The History of Boom and Bust

o Projects and initiatives aimed at progressing the industry from an infrastructure or workforce development perspective often find themselves dragging the dead weight of a legacy of boom and bust that produces tenuous confidence in the dreams of building a sustainable industry.

  • The Socializing and Normalizing of Mobility

o Coastal regions now have an established and embedded history of ‘leaving for work’, which normalizes and rationalizes this as a valid option

o Trends in worker mobility demonstrate that our workforce ignores regional boundaries in the pursuit of employment. The conventional mindset views this as cannibalization of workforce. There is an opportunity to shift our thinking to see workforce mobility as a benefit that expands rather than shrinks the pool of talent. A national workforce strategy can help to balance regional supply and demand, and support the cultivation of domestic talent and experience

  • Social and Systemic Challenges to Attracting Talent to the Skilled Trades in the Marine Industry

o A significant hurdle to the recruitment of new young workers to trades and technology careers is the social bias against what is perceived to be a plan-B education and career path

o Career literacy and career counseling in schools emerged as significant gap areas relating to workforce development. Career counseling tends to be biased towards traditional academic pathways

  • Developing Essential Skills, Workplace Skills, and 21st Century Competencies

o Essential skills support effective learning, enabling workers to learn new skills, possess workplace knowledge more readily, adapt to workplace change, and make better decisions

o New entrants to the workforce or to post-secondary education are lacking the minimum level of these skills to be successful and to contribute at the expected level

  • Developing Workforce Capability among Under-Represented Workers

o Women, immigrants, Aboriginal people, visible minorities, and people with disabilities have largely been marginalized from the marine industry because of low turnover, low relative visibility of the industry, perceptions of unwelcoming work environments and workplace cultures, low awareness of how to hire an under-represented worker, and lack of awareness of how innovations have made many roles more accessible to a broader range of workers

o Common obstacles include the absence of relatable role models, perceptions of restricted accessibility and ‘fit’ challenges, and lack of continuity in Government-funded initiatives aimed at supporting under-represented workers

  • Developing Management and Leadership Capability

o The cycles of boom and bust have derailed succession strategies so that there is a significant gap in management and leadership capability (the ‘little middle’) across the industry

o Modern management and leadership require a more complex combination of technical and interpersonal skills, and diminished notions of positional authority require more nuanced people management skills

Dr. Scully's presentation informed and challenged the members, and generated considerable discussion.   

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