Canada’s digital future: learning new skills in a rapidly changing world

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a digital transformation that was already well underway in Canada – just look at the phenomenal rise in online shopping and video conferencing over the past year.

But the digital economy requires new skills. Is Canada’s workforce ready?

“There is this stat that 40% of work is going to be impacted by automation,” says Sabrina Geremia, VP and Country Manager of Google Canada. “The misnomer is it’s 40% of jobs.  It’s actually 40% of WORK. Which means every single person will have an aspect of their job that will [involve] working alongside digital tools … so every worker needs to continuously train as these tools evolve.”

For Geremia, lifelong learning is essential to helping Canadians adapt to an ever-evolving work environment.  It starts in schools, teaching children not just traditional science and math but “soft skills” such as collaboration and teamwork, she says.

Online training tools can help new grads and job seekers alike upgrade their digital capabilities.  Employers have an important role to play in ensuring that their people keep pace with changing technology.

“We know that digital is shaping the future,” she says, “and it’s only going to work if we have a workforce that knows how to use the tools.”

Transcript:

Sabrina Geremia:

There is this stat that is 40% of work is going to be impacted by automation and the misnomer is that it’s 40% of jobs. It’s actually 40% of work, which means that every single person will have an aspect of their job that will be working alongside digital tools, technology, et cetera. And so, every worker needs to continuously train as these tools evolve.

Goldy Hyder:

Welcome to Speaking of Business. I’m Goldy Hyder, President and CEO of the Business Council of Canada. I graduated from the University of Calgary in the early ’90s. That was a time when education was often viewed as just one step in a long career journey. You went to school, you learned some stuff, and then you got a job. I don’t need to tell you that model has changed. We now live in an age of lifelong learning. It doesn’t matter if you work in retail or construction, manufacturing or healthcare, the nature of work is changing and it’s changing fast. But the rapid pace of change means employers are struggling to find employees with the right sets of skills. So, what’s the solution? For Sabrina Geremia, it lies in training and retraining. As the VP and Country Manager for Google Canada, Sabrina is passionate about teaching Canadians the skills we’ll need to prosper in an ever-changing economy. Welcome to the podcast, Sabrina.

Sabrina Geremia:

Thank you, Goldy. Lovely to see and hear you.

Goldy Hyder:

Likewise. I’m wondering in terms of what you’re seeing right now, what are you learning about yourself, what are you learning about Google, and what are you learning about Canadians?

Sabrina Geremia:

Oh, yeah. There’s been so much learning. I think in all of the adversity of the past year, it really has been a learning moment. We’ve just hit one year on the crisis, right, and so I actually sat down to reflect on that question. I think that the big thing is this notion of resilience. I think we used to think about this only as a personality trait and I think that has been really tested and Canadians are so resilient and so on. But we’ve learned also about resilience of systems and of companies. The idea that in a tough situation, we can stretch and adapt to the external environment. I’ve seen this so much and how many Canadian companies and how many Canadians are really embracing digital and using digital as a tool to get through this moment, but for Canadian companies, also to be successful.

Sabrina Geremia:

I also think we’ve learned a lot about community and what community means. Just this community of the people that you see every day, whether you walk out your front door and these new relationships with your neighbors right down to the communities that we’re forming across borders enabled by technology. I mean, I have been talking to my relatives around the world in Italy on the Google Home Hub. My 90-year-old dad got connected to the Internet for the first time with this Google Home Hub and we talk to him every day and we have these interesting conversations with people from around the world. I think those are the bright spots about what we’ve learned.

Goldy Hyder:

I find that interesting because when you think about it, what you and I have been hearing a lot from the C-suite, and we’ll talk about that shortly here, is how this event has just accelerated everything for them. The things that they were planning to do just brought forward three years, four years, five years, and they just moved into it. Whereas, for those who are the elderly that you’re speaking of, I mean, this has been there, they just never adopted it. Now, I’ve talked to people who are like, “Oh, I do online banking. I’ve never done that in my life and I probably won’t ever go to a bank branch again.” So it’s interesting to see how, in that case, technology is being adopted, as opposed to being accelerated in their life. They just finally chose to take it up.

Sabrina Geremia:

They did. I mean, I’ve never had conversations before this year about what my dad watches on YouTube. It’s really amazing to hear. He calls it “the YouTubes,” it’s very sweet, but he learns all these new things because he’s home alone and he’s isolated and this is one of his avenues to the world and that’s so important right now.

Goldy Hyder:

Technology has clearly become an enabler. I’m wondering, what have you learned about yourself, or what’s something new that you’ve learned through all of this?

Sabrina Geremia:

Yeah. You always learn new skills. I don’t think I’ve talked to a person that hasn’t learned an amazing new skill. My favorite was the other day. We really wanted to learn, I have two ten-year-old kids, about the new vaccine, so we went to this YouTube site and it’s actually called “It’s Okay to be Smart.” Which I love that name, and we learned about how the vaccine is made and how mRNA technology differs from traditional vaccine deployment and we were so riveted by it. We talked about it for hours later and I loved that it was done for someone, for the audience of kids, because it made it so accessible and interesting. I think right now it’s just such an important moment for vaccines and that everybody really leads the charge on this and that we go out and get this done and that little bit of helpfulness of understanding the why and the how was really powerful to me.

Goldy Hyder:

What are you seeing on the issue of innovation in Canada? We always talk about ourselves as being creative people and innovative people, but we don’t seem to commercialize and scale well. Are you seeing a more entrepreneurial response in our innovation industry, in our innovation community?

Sabrina Geremia:

Yeah. I spend a lot of time with startups. We launched two incubators this year, startup accelerators. We actually have another one right now for climate change, an accelerator. So I get, I get to speak to folks in this industry. It seems to me like the tea leaves are out on what kind of startups and what sort of innovation is going to scale and what industries and what aspects. There is a lot of very good innovation going on.

Sabrina Geremia:

I think we know that we get to a certain size in Canada and then there’s a bit of stalling factor because there’s this push that you need to go global. What I see with the companies I work with and the startups that I speak to is once they get their product-market fit right, and they nail that, and then they get to a certain part and they can start to actually be this global HQ Canada. I love this, you are a global company based in Canada, but you are selling to the world. I’m seeing this across the board in industries like furniture, like Article and Rove Concepts, in tech B2B like Lightspeed and Shopify, but you’re also seeing really new, interesting emerging things also in fintech and other areas. I think it’s really exciting. It’s actually an exciting time to be in the startup and scale-up innovation business.

Goldy Hyder:

Now, when we think of innovation, too often we think about technology, but really, at the root of innovation is people. I know that this is an area that’s of tremendous importance to you and that’s primarily the issue of skills. Where does that come from? Why are you so seized with skills? I guess when I think about Google, I don’t think about, “well, they must care a lot about skills.” Why is that?

Sabrina Geremia:

Well, from a personal basis, I come from a family of educators. Three of my sisters are teachers. One is a principal.

Goldy Hyder:

There’s the answer right there.

Sabrina Geremia:

Yeah, but it comes further than this. Digging a little deeper, my mum and dad are Italian immigrants and they were not afforded the chance of an education. And I think there are a lot of immigrants in this company, first-generation, that have that, and they saw how smart and how capable their parents were and the fact that we just have so much opportunity in our education system is so strong. That’s what fuels me, personally.

Sabrina Geremia:

Then I think from a Google perspective, we know that digital is shaping the future. How we live, how businesses operate, how we can be a global HQ company based in Canada, and it’s only going to work if we have a workforce that knows how to use the tools. We have to invent the tools, and we love that, too, right? We have a lot of really amazing engineers in Waterloo, and you just talked about the great innovators across. But it’s also every Canadian learning how to use the tools. I do think going back to this one-year anniversary of the pandemic, it has been an accelerant and everybody learning how to use digital tools, whether it’s your 90-year-old-parent learning how to connect, to your kids learning how to start up a website, to everybody learning how to online bank and online shop. A lot of folks did not have those skills a year ago. So I think it’s an accelerant, and I think it’s foundational to the economic prosperity of Canada.

Goldy Hyder:

Now, you interact a lot with the so-called “C-suite.” I’m wondering, what are you hearing from them on the issue of skills and reskilling?

Sabrina Geremia:

It’s a critical area. Goldy, I know that you did a skills survey, which was really interesting. I think it highlighted that there was some shortages in some areas like AI and cybersecurity. Look, there are going to be shortages as new areas emerge, and then they will be filled. I look back to data scientists a couple of years ago, they were all the rage, right, and it was really, really difficult to find data scientists. We worked hard to engage with the industry to do training, to go wider. A lot of folks were really showcasing this. Schools stepped up and started doing data science programs. I think we’re there. We have actually the supply of amazing folks ready for data scientist roles in Canada, so that kind of skill gap has been closed a bit.

Sabrina Geremia:

But I think now there’s new areas, so there are these areas, but the bigger question at hand is not just these finite skill gap areas that get a lot of attention. What I think we need to be focused on is how every employee knows how to use the digital tools that are actually coming their way. So if you are a car dealer and suddenly your dealerships are shut, which we’ve learned in the pandemic, you’re putting your dealership online on YouTube, right? If you are someone who owns a retail store, we have a pledge to get 50,000 stores, small businesses online with ShopHERE. Basically, folks are learning how to use a site, a Shopify, or a Lightspeed to be able to do contactless retail, or to actually be able to engage with their customers online. So I think that’s the bigger opportunity. It’s where the bulk is, it’s the digital tools for every worker.

Goldy Hyder:

Whose responsibility is that? Because retraining takes time and it takes money, so is that burden on the individual, is it on government, or is it on the private sector?

Sabrina Geremia:

I think we’ve seen from other countries where this is working well. And what is working well in Canada is that the best places are to do this in a consortium. I don’t think the onus is just on one group of people. It’s a systems change, right, so we need to all be working together and doing our part. I visualize it almost like a dartboard. If you think about the outer ring, right, this is before people enter the workforce. And this is steam education for kids and shifting the way that we educate our kids in a digital world. I call this the “unicorn of right brain and left brain skills,” so it’s a combination of steam education, but also real emphasis on what I think our school system does amazingly well is getting kids to learn how to collaborate the soft skills, the teamwork, the building together, right, and growing together. I think the Ontario government’s K-to-12 STEM Education program is a great start. Programs like Actua and code.org is fantastic and I think our school system does do a very good job at the team and the soft skills.

Sabrina Geremia:

I think the next ring in is the people who are looking for jobs, so reskilling, upskilling pilots for job seekers. Here we’ve done a lot of experimentation. We have something called the “Google IT Certificate Program” where we’ve partnered with Npower. We’ve also partnered with a library in the past to help folks with no training actually find a job as an IT professional within 12 to 18 months and we’re seeing graduation rates of like 80% plus, so this reskilling/upskilling is really critical, but the middle core is the people who are working now and whose job is going to evolve. There is this stat that is 40% of work is going to be impacted by automation and the misnomer is that it’s 40% of jobs. It’s actually 40% of work, which means that every single person will have an aspect of their job that will be working alongside digital tools, technology, et cetera, and so every worker needs to continuously train as these tools evolve.

Goldy Hyder:

The message is it’s not a threat to you, it’s a partner.

Sabrina Geremia:

It’s a partnership. I think in Canada, I’m a board member of the Future Skills Centre and there are some amazing, amazing pilots going on there. Like the travel industry just reskilling folks in that area, trying to get more AI and technology training to people in the healthcare industry. And I think as we learn about these pilots, and we learn about how people learn and the interesting thing about the pandemic is this virtual aspect of learning, we’re learning really clearly what works and what could work better. But it does allow us to scale. So, I hope that coming out of this, we’re going to have a Renaissance of training and learning because it does need to be done better, but it needs to be happening in all three rings. I think there’s a big opportunity for business to really uplevel what they do. We take this very seriously as Google because we build a lot of the technology, so we have to train our workforce, but we also want to train Canadians.

Goldy Hyder:

It sounds like the answer to that question is it’s everybody’s responsibility. The individual has a part, the government has a part, and the private sector has a part. Fair to say?

Sabrina Geremia:

Yes, and we need to partner and we need to collaborate on this, so I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.

Goldy Hyder:

If someone’s just listening here and they may have lost their job in the pandemic, they may be concerned about whether their job is available after the fact. How do you give them hope? What do you say to them?

Sabrina Geremia:

Yeah. Well, first of all, my heart goes out to you. I mean, this is very difficult for many people, and I know that there has been some really great support from the government in this area. What I will say is I think this is a great opportunity to try on and learn new skills and use this time to think about what you’re passionate about. I always say where the puck is skating, right, and where things are going. We do have Grow With Google, which is a site that has training for job seekers, for developers, for small business owners. Just having fun with the training and finding something that you’re passionate about and learning a bit about it, I don’t think that’s ever going to be a regrets move. And I do think the more digital skills that you can brush up on, the more marketable you’re going to be for the jobs of the future.

Sabrina Geremia:

It’s interesting, a lot of the work that’s being done now by the Future Skills Centre, there’s also a great initiative by the Australian government of this ilk is just understanding the pathways of what your skills are now in your current role and how they can transfer, because I like to say that jobs are finite, but skills migrate, so you have marketable skills and you have transferable skills. The question is: What roles can they migrate to? There’s a lot of really neat websites, like OTEC, this Ontario Tourism Association has done that, and when you can understand that, then you can learn where you want to double down and what skills you need and brush up on those.

Goldy Hyder:

Yeah, it’s an important message because I think too often people think, “Well, I guess I have to become a coder now, or I have to learn what AI is,” or be a data scientist, as you said, and that’s not the case. It’s interesting, you were saying earlier, it’s really important to hit this home, that notion of left brain/right brain. Some call it “IQ/EQ.” I don’t know about you, but what I hear a lot from the C-suite is the need for thinkers, the need for people to challenge, the need for people to communicate. There’s limits to what technology can do with those things.

Sabrina Geremia:

Oh, yeah, and I know there are some folks that think that actually creativity is going to be the most important skillset for the future, and so I think it’s important that we don’t over-index in one area and under-index in the other. I do think that this left brain/right brain unicorn is the skill of the future and that that’s the worker of the future that we need.

Goldy Hyder:

Let’s fast forward. We’ve talked a lot about the future. Let’s say that creativity really happens. How do you think lives will change, work will change in the next five, 10 years?

Sabrina Geremia:

I think we’re seeing a lot of hints of this right now in how we’ve been adapting. For example, if I take the retail sector, a lot of folks would just go into a store and buy things. Now, there is a different sort of path to purchase. There is a more online component of research. There is contactless. There are all these different ways and so that when the stores do open again, you see a lot of those behaviors stick. So I think that a lot of what we will learn will continue to be accelerated and I think this digital transformation aspect, right, again, this 40% of work actually being infused by technology is going to be ever-present in the future.

Goldy Hyder:

Are you excited by that?

Sabrina Geremia:

I am so excited about Canada’s opportunity to actually just lead in this area. I think we have an amazing workforce. We have one of the highest-educated workforces in the OECD. I think we have extremely resilient people and very creative, innovative people. I think that digital is going to be an economic engine for Canada and it is very exciting. I think the more that we can skill our workforce to learn how to use the tools, enable innovation, help Canadian companies be global HQ companies based in Canada, I think the more prosperity we’re going to see, and so I am excited about the future of that. I’m also excited about the idea that technological innovation can really help in different areas, help educate people, new solutions to problems, whether it’s in healthcare or education or oil and gas. How do we actually break through all of this? How do we build back better with this?

Goldy Hyder:

Well, speaking of building back better, I mean, I’ve often said that leaders lead by example, and you personally and Google is leading by example when it comes to helping people in the Indigenous communities and in diverse communities across the country to get the skills that they need to succeed. Can you perhaps wrap up this podcast with some inspiring stories of impact that you’ve had doing so?

Sabrina Geremia:

Yeah, it’s so critical right now in terms of building back better. It’s just so important that we bring everybody with us. I think we have just seen the divides that have emerged from the past year and that’s not okay. We really need to fix this. Our team is super passionate about this. Grow With Google, I mentioned, is our initiative with a lot of our training. So far, we’ve trained 80,000 Canadians on digital skills, but we have an over-index to programs to underrepresented people in Canada.

Sabrina Geremia:

Last year, we partnered with Npower and ComIT. With Npower, we gave them a $2.5 million grant, and we’re actually offering IT training for 1,700 young adults from underrepresented groups. The training that they’re getting is leading to jobs. There was a cohort that graduated last September, and 83% of them, they’re employed right now. The folks that graduated in December, almost half of them are employed. I think that’s amazing. Those are amazing stats. When I see the feedback from the people and I talk to the people who graduate, a lot of these are newcomers to Canada. A lot of these are people who weren’t sure what path to take for their future and this really has just set them on a new path with digital skills that are going to, they’ve landed them a job, and transferable in the future.

Sabrina Geremia:

Then with ComIT, we’re providing free IT training to 450 Indigenous learners across Canada. It just started in January. We’re seeing a really great reception to this. There are some amazing other initiatives in Canada. There’s one called “CILAR” that we’re involved with. I think there’s so much appetite to do this. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could actually build back better in this area and work together between different companies, the government, and so on to solve this?

Goldy Hyder:

That’s inspiring. Thanks. Sabrina, often as business leaders, you and I and so many others are always asked, “What keeps you up at night?” Standard consulting question, and so I’m not going to ask you that. I’m going to ask you: What are you most optimistic about as you look ahead?

Sabrina Geremia:

Goldy, our mission at Google is anchored on helpfulness. I am very optimistic that digital is going to be an economic driver for Canada. And most importantly, I do think that we have a smart, resilient workforce, and we’re going to meet the opportunity of the future. The bright learning from this pandemic is that this digital acceleration means that businesses and workers have a bigger toolbox to work with and that’s going to create possibilities and prosperity for Canadians and I’m very hopeful about that.

Goldy Hyder:

What a great note to end on. Technology is an enabler, it’s an ally, and we’re all going to get through this. Thank you for doing this, Sabrina. I much appreciate it.

Sabrina Geremia:

Thank you, Goldy.

Goldy Hyder:

Sabrina Geremia is the VP and Country Manager for Google Canada. Sabrina talked about how important digital will be as an economic driver for Canada’s future prosperity. More and more we are relying on digital connectivity in our daily lives. But in a country as vast as Canada, what are the challenges to keeping everyone connected? That’s something we’ll be exploring in our next podcast. I hope you can join me on May 6th for my conversation with Mirko Bibic, president and CEO of BCE Inc. and Bell Canada. Here’s a preview: I have profound optimism about the future, about Canada’s economic recovery and the role we can play in that otherwise I wouldn’t be investing 4.6 to 4.7 billion dollars this year. But underlying that decision is an optimism about Canada’s ability to recover quickly and the role that we can play as Bell Canada in enabling that.

If you would like to hear more of our Speaking of Business conversations with innovators, leaders, and entrepreneurs, why not subscribe to our podcast? You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, or simply go to our website, thebusinesscouncil.ca. Until next time, I’m Goldy Hyder. Thanks for joining us.