Managers and labour leaders demonstrated a remarkable degree of agreement on the actions they felt to be most important in addressing skills needs. From a list of 16 possible actions (Figure 26) they were asked to evaluate how important each would be in meeting their own organization’s human resource and skills requirements over the next five yearsFootnote 20. Each action was rated as being either "not important", "somewhat important" or "very important". Out of the list of 16 possible actions, five emerged as the top five actions of private and public sector managers and labour leaders:
| private sector managers | public sector managers | private sector labour leaders | public sector labour leaders | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The figures in bold represent the 5 actions most commonly viewed as "very important" | |||||
| Taking specific measures to retain current employees | 45% | 46% | 47% | 50% | |
| Upgrading skills of current employees | 44% | 47% | 70% | 59% | |
| Improving succession planning | 43% | 51% | 59% | 66% | |
| Hiring young labour market entrants | 39% | 36% | 68% | 63% | |
| Mentoring of young workers by older workers | 38% | 43% | 63% | 55% | |
| Attracting workers from other organizations | 21% | 19% | 11% | 14% | |
| Extending the working careers of older Canadians | 20% | 17% | 10% | 17% | |
| Changing job descriptions: reallocating work | 17% | 17% | 21% | 22% | |
| Substituting machinery/equipment/technology for labour | 15% | 4% | 32% | 19% | |
| Hiring new immigrants | 15% | 16% | 16% | 20% | |
| Hiring Aboriginal people | 11% | 23% | 30% | 28% | |
| Contracting out | 11% | 5% | 42% | 37% | |
| Hiring Visible minorities | 7% | 12% | 19% | 25% | |
| Hiring people with a disability | 6% | 11% | 14% | 22% | |
| Downsizing | 6% | 4% | 34% | 32% | |
| Recruiting workers directly from abroad | 6% | 6% | 4% | 7% | |
taking specific measures to retain current employees";
upgrading the skills of current employees";
improving succession planning";
hiring young labour market entrants", and;
mentoring of young workers by older workers".
Less important actions for dealing with skills requirements included attracting workers from other organizations, extending the careers of older Canadians, and changing job descriptions or reallocating work. In addition, although managers and labour leaders often described the hiring of young labour market entrants as very important, they were much less inclined to give the same rating to the hiring of specific groups within the population such as immigrants, Aboriginal peoples, members of a visible minority, or persons with disabilities. Three actions - substituting machinery or technology for labour, contracting out, and downsizing - were seldom viewed by managers as very important. In comparison, a much higher percentage of labour leaders described these as very important; perhaps further indication of their scepticism or lack of trust with management over the solutions to future skills and human resource requirements.
Return to note 20 Labour leaders were asked this question with reference to the organizations where their union members work.