Page 84 Ask any employer to outline their most pressing challenges and skilled labour is likely to top the list It s no dif erent for the mining and exploration sectors In fact it s a global challenge According to the global accounting and consultancy f rm Deloitte The challenge to keep and retain skilled workers is hardly new but the skills gap has been accelerating in recent years By 2025 analysts anticipate over 2000000 skilled manufacturing jobs will go unf lled Compare that to 600000 unf lled jobs in 201 1 Many f elds are experiencing a shortage of professionalsparticu larly those with careerspanning expertise Within industrial mar kets there are several job functions across the value chain that are most af ected including setup and changeover assembly operation maintenance f eld service techni cians and senior service experts While a retiring workforce is a pri mary driver there are complex pressures making it dif cult to maintain steady and skilled worker resources Those pressures in clude A lack of systems to produce new generations of skilled work ers Competition with other types of jobs Continued global expansion which means there are more jobs in more locations giving young peo ple more choices than ever before and lastly physical assets requir Manpower and Skilled Labour By Kevin V incent ing skills are becoming more complex and individualized The days of blue collar jobs where someone s mere presence and physi cality are the dominant factors are nearly gone According to SHRM the Society for Human Resource Man agement by 2022 over 26 of workers in the manufacturing and industrial sectors will be over the age of 55 Those workers are staying on the job longer than they need to For one they need the money T wo employers are desperate to retain their expertise as they struggle to replace them SHRM suggests that most compa nies today are focusing on three strategies encouraging longtime employees to stay longer even if it is for a few extra years amplify ing the ef ectiveness and ef ciency of the existing workforce without increasing workload and mak ing longterm plans that focus on inhouse skills development while minimizing thirdparty contractors That third strategy is commend able but it comes with a longer timetovalue proposition In early April the Brookf eld Insti tute for Innovation and Entrepre neurship a nonpartisan policy institute based out of Ryerson Uni Major items to impact future employment opportunities versity in T oronto released a report called T urn and Face The Strange Changes Impacting the Future of Employment in Canada Until re cently forecasters spent a lot of time trying to quantify how techno logical changes will af ect the skills employers look for The Brookf eld report was looking at a far more complicated picture about how a wide range of trends may be inter acting in dif erent ways to inf uence the types of skills that are likely to be in demand The report s authors concluded there are seven major items that are going to impact future em ployment opportunities includ ing Mandatory Creativity The report suggests creativity could soon be the most indemand skill sought by employers across all industries In fact business schools today are churning out graduates who pos sess the ability to innovate and Contd on pg 84