Friday, January 31, 2014

Case Study Answers Evlyn Maria, Student ID: 300777789

Friday, January 31, 2014 Five Major Ways Canadian Workplace is Changing

Recently we could see a drastic change in the Canadian workplace; a major shift from the traditional career. These changes are contributed by many factors like macroeconomic changes, demographic trends, new workplace standards etc. The current labor market majorly consists of immigrants, women and old workers .This new labor pool can create labor shortage as well as increase in production cost. Thus, how these Canadian Workplaces adjust to this new kind of paradigm, is topic we are going to discuss about. Rising Higher Educational Requirements According to the new emerging Canadian economy, most of the core manufacturing industries are shifting to the service based industry. The service based industries are of very high value added sectors as it includes technical services, food and health services, scientific services, professional services etc. Based on the above new requirements, industries demand for postsecondary education as a mandatory requirement to work. Most of the jobs require specializations to work, therefore those with a high school degree finds it very difficult to get a job. Because of these reasons, Service Canada has estimated that, in the next 5 years, 65% of the jobs in Canada require post-secondary education (Canada S. , 2007). The best example for the need of Higher Education is start of many programs by the government and other organizations. Most of the programs (like Federal and Provincial) are focused on those students, who are capable of succeeding but not continuing due financial issues. Apart from that, higher educations acts like a benchmark in both society as well as economy. Because of this shift in the educational requirement, people with the post-secondary education will have more income, more wealth and affluence where as others will be left behind creating huge gap between rich and poor.

Friday, January 31, 2014 Contract vs. Fulltime, Changing nature of work

Traditional mode of employment is Canada was more of full-time work. But recently, we could see that due to constantly changing needs of the companies, many temporary arrangements like part-time, contract has come into picture. These are of non-permanent nature and on an average, each Canadian will have three career and eight jobs, as the reports say. (Canada H. R.) Most of the Canadians prefer this kind of employment due to the constraints on the budget they have, changing demands of the company etc. According to Statistics Canadas Workplace and Employee Survey (WES), the employees who reported having no non-wage benefits, declined from 33.9% in 1999 to 26% in 2005 (Canada S. , 2007). This doesnt mean that the employees are better treated, but it is removing the traditional non-wage benefits that Canadians look upon. Rise in Technology. Productivity Dilemma The most visible change that the Canadian government is witnessing, is a weaker productivity growth. An economic growth of the country completely depends on the productivity growth as well as the labor force growth. It was estimated that the Canadas business sector productivity is 73.6% that of US (Baldwin, 2010). This is mainly because a shift in the traditional primary and manufacturing sectors towards the service industry. For this major rise in technological advancement, we should have enough labor force to support it. As far as Canada is more dependent on immigrants, aboriginals, women and older workers, there could be a huge labor shortage .These groups are underrepresented in the current industries and roles. This would be the greater task to increase productivity. Changing composition of Workplace - Women

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In the current Canadian job market, we could see more labor from non-traditional groups like aboriginals, immigrants, women and elder workers. But we could see that an increasing participation from the women, was one of the main reasons for labor force growth in the 1980s and 1990s. According to the surveys, in 2009, 47% of the workforce was constituted by women. The current situation says, women in Canada is more educated than men. Need for Aboriginal Labor The fastest and the youngest group of people in the Canadian workplace are aboriginals. This can be very much visible in the data provided by Statistics Canada. In 10 years (1996-2006), the aboriginal population grew by 46.8% where as non-aboriginals by 8.4%. Thus, these values indicate that, this category is going to be our primary source of labor in the next decades. The above said points clearly state that the nature of the Canadian employment is changing. Introduction of temporary jobs, need for higher education, rise is service industry, decrease in production based industries, inclusion of new workforce are some of visible changes in the workplace. Most of these changes are happening due to the oncoming labor shortage and solution to reduce the cost related this kind of adjustment. These changes can definitely change the economic growth of the country.

Friday, January 31, 2014 References Baldwin, J. (2010). Statistics Canada. Canada: OECD. Canada, H. R. (n.d.). Addressing Work-Life Balance In Canada. Canada, S. (2007). Job Futures. Canada: Service Canada.

Friday, January 31, 2014

Are these Changes Good or Bad? Changes are a vital part in every economy. A change can be planned as well as unplanned. But how these changes impact the society purely depends on the existing conditions and measures taken. In case of Canadian Workplace, in recent years, we could see a large amount of changes happening in every sector of the society. Let us discuss whether these changes good or bad and how it impacts us. The need for higher education is very important to the present Canadian economy. Is seen that those with a college or university degree gets more jobs than those with a high school degree. According to the census, half of the Canadians do not have any kind of post-secondary education. The change is good but there are many barriers to it. Many students who are really good in studies, stop the education due to financial barriers. Lower education attainment among the parents would have placed the whole family into low income quartiles. Over a decade, the tuition costs have gone up to 19.2% excluding accommodation food etc. This would make higher education to students belonging to lower income quartile highly unavailable. All the Federal and Provincial programs aiming at reducing these costs are very inefficient. The people are unable to identify who is actually indeed. Because of these issues, people with Post-Secondary Education will have higher income, more wealth and affluence, whereas others are left behind. This will create a huge gap between the rich and poor. Another change we are witnessing is the new type of Canadian employment. Temporary or contract jobs in the place of full time jobs have given the employers a new way to save cost incurred.

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This is very bad compared to the traditional full time employment due to various reasons. Full time jobs comes with full benefits like medical, insurance, retirement funds etc. Whereas Contract or part-time doesnt have any obligations to the employee. The employer will give limited or no benefits. Because of these reasons, employer pension plan coverage is declining and it has become the responsibility of the individual to take care of retirement plans. This will eventually lead to no savings due to which the income security of the future generation retirees is in trouble. Decades ago, there was a huge difference in the composition of workforce. The number of women participating in work was very low. Interestingly, at the present scenario, these differences have disappeared that women has come up a long way in the workplace. This is a very good sign of change. But still, issues exists in many other areas like gender wage gap, occupational divergence etc. The main reasons are their own representation in the part time employment, cultural stereotypes present in the society, no efficient allocation across industries and roles etc. The women basically concentrate in limited number of fields and tend to go into female dominated occupations. E.g.: There are high representations of women in health, educational, physical and life sciences compared to other fields like maths, engineering and computer. Women are mostly into part-time employment that tend to be very low compared to the full time employment. 38% of women do part-time jobs because they care about their children. This higher rate is caused as women remain as the primary caretaker of the family. Another issue what we face among the Canadian industries is the shift to the service sector. The new technological advancements have made most of the production based companies to make a shift. This has created a low productivity growth in Canada. The productivity growth has declined due to various reasons. Heavily regulated industries and market segments find it

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very difficult to invest in innovation and R & D divisions, as the incentives are very low. There are many inefficiencies in the Canadian labor market that contribute to the problem like heavy restrictions on interprovincial labor, employment insurance and welfare programs that reduces the incentive component, lack of training and recognition to new immigrants alleviate the issue. Another factor which contributes the change is the need for aboriginal labor. Even though they form the major part of the labor force, they are highly underrepresented in it. This is due to large educational gap that exists between the job requirement and the aboriginals. This education gap in turn creates a wide income gap as well. The good thing is that, a number of programs regarding education, training, skills development, and employment opportunities has been included by the Federal government for Aboriginals as part of Canadas Economic Action Plan. These measures are a mix of new programs and additions to existing ones, will definitely bridge more of these gaps in education and labor outcomes. Thus the Canadian government will have some crucial changes in the years ahead due to the outcomes of the current changes happening in the Canadian workplace. We have a dynamic cultural workforce which is yet to be utilized to its fullest. Most of the findings can be rectified, if there is flexibility in the part of employers.