How Canada's Workforce Approaches Digital Skills Training
Reading Time: ~2 Mins | Written By: Anabel Blesch
Jelly Academy recently ran a study, sponsored by Innovate BC, to determine the state of digital skills training in Canada’s workforce. With digital marketing and tech roles increasing in demand, it was important to understand how Canadian businesses are approaching and handling the influx of demand, and training their employees.
Research
Jelly Academy surveyed over 500 participants from Canadian businesses in industries such as Digital Applications, Agriculture, Manufacturing, Retail, Food & Beverage, Financial Services, Clean Tech, Education, Advanced Health, Oil & Gas, and more. The survey focused on the approaches to digital marketing training via employee education and opportunities, as well as the funding available across Canada, and future planning for training employees to develop digital marketing skills.
Results
The study found that many Canadian businesses are either considering offering training or have an existing program that offers digital training already. Despite this, the study found some differences and inconsistencies between participants in terms of how they are approaching training. Only 7.44% of respondents actively provide access to digital marketing training resources for their employees at this time and from this small group, 39.74%, provide partial funding to their employees to enroll in required training, 37.73% provide full funding, and 22.53% offer no funding at all.
For the respondents that do offer training, 40.84% offer it via external programs, and 32.05% provide it through internally developed offerings. The additional 27.11% expect that their digital skills employees acquire their credentials and training before commencing their role. These results show some differences between how employers are expecting training to be offered to their employees.
With these differences in mind, the majority of participants said they were planning to introduce internal initiatives for digital marketing training in the near future. If these companies are offering internally, it would be an opportunity to have a standardized training model for businesses across Canada to implement in their programs. To achieve this, public and private stakeholders would need to support in developing a regulatory framework that the digital workforce should uphold. These interventions would include funding, such as the Canadian Digital Adoption Program, and guidelines for what the training should entail, and what credentials would be officially recognized.
The digital industry is growing at an exponential rate and having a skilled workforce via standard training programs and credentials will make this workforce shift significantly more positively. By bringing more awareness to existing funds, businesses can realize the benefits of financial support for getting their employees certified. This, along with promoting industry recognized training programs such as Jelly Academy, Meta Blueprint, SEMRush, Google Grow Certificates, Hootsuite Academy, and more, the digital workforce will become much more standardized and increase readily available skilled workers.
To learn more about the key findings and recommendations, read the study here.
