Talk to any business leader and you’ll hear it’s a daily problem: an owner or manager, looking at 22 sub-par applications for an opening in their company. Or worse, yet just as common, business owners panicking as an application window closes because they’ve received zero applications.
Alberta business leaders are neglecting a critical area of business development: education.
And not post-secondary training or upgrading employees’ skills. In this context, education means nuts-and-bolts, K-12 schooling. Business owners who are exhausted by the search for non-existent construction workers, welders or mechanics and who are appalled by employees that can’t read a measuring tape or regularly come in late, need to get serious about schooling.
Quite frankly, they need to start their own schools, covering kindergarten to the senior grades in high school.
Here’s why: The problem of weak employees and no applicants isn’t going anywhere.
A new report from think-tank Cardus earlier this year determined up to 85 per cent of employers are struggling to find workers in technical and trades sectors. Fifty-four per cent of business owners can’t find the employees they need, and 63 per cent assert candidates don’t have the required skills or experience. Half (49 per cent) stated candidates lack work ethic – a pretty basic requirement to hold a job – and almost as many (47 per cent) say candidates’ wage expectations are too high.
So what does all this data tell us? It tells us would-be employees’ skills, knowledge and ideas about work are divorced from economic reality. For business, this is a massive and unsustainable problem.
Businesses aren’t getting what they need from workers because students aren’t getting what they need to be successful in life. Staying with the status quo costs everyone (literally everyone – because this affects Alberta’s entire economy, civic health, social cohesion and even general neighbourliness).
However, business owners are in a natural position of community leadership. They are uniquely positioned to offer solutions to these issues and they often have access to resources and networks that make it tangibly possible.
So the business community needs to start paying attention to K-12 education. The business sector has long been focused on post-secondary, but that’s missing much of the point.
Basic skills – communication, work ethic, basic numeracy, and punctuality – are learned in the K-12 years. And in order to funnel students into jobs or post-secondary programs where workers are most needed, you have to pique their interest in these careers long before they actually graduate.
And the alternative, for both businesses and the economy as a whole, really isn’t an option. Incompetent, unhelpful or AWOL employees threaten business operations and reputation. The inability to find employees threatens a business’s long-term sustainability. Already, some construction companies are holding back from taking on new projects simply because they don’t have enough employees. That’s crippling to a business and its long-term future.
So business leaders need to start new independent schools. Now.
Why? Because business leaders can create and design their own school environment, implement a teaching philosophy and offer the types of courses that will give students the knowledge and skills to be successful adults and future employees.
Independent and charter schools have, by nature, high levels of accountability and flexibility – each is a small enough system that it can easily and naturally adapt to changing realities and new technologies. These schools are directly accountable to their boards, the provincial education ministry, and to their parents, for student success and achievement of the school’s mission – in such a system, it’s much harder for students to slip through the cracks.
The knock-on effects would be huge. When parents have more agency in their child’s education, the whole school system benefits. As some schools (even just a few) begin to innovate, get creative, and offer unique programming all other schools pay attention, meaning we can deepen a public conversation about academic excellence and innovation and provide increased access to tailored educational experiences for all Alberta students.
Let’s be clear about what this is not: this is not about training children to be employees or forming them to exist for the good of corporations.
The purpose of education is to form good citizens – friends, siblings, spouses, mentors, and colleagues – not to teach students how to be good workers. Yet where are such outcomes most common? Amongst independent, charter and homeschool graduates, with each educational environment having a strong track record of forming well-rounded, competent, engaged graduates with quality character attributes.
But let’s be equally clear about what this is: an opportunity for community leaders like business owners to come together to recognize a problem of the commons and work together with parents to find community-based solutions. The primary benefits go to the students, but there will also be positive ripple effects across society and the economy generally. Yes, better educational options will improve overall productivity, but more importantly, they will produce benefits for humanity and human dignity, contributing to citizens’ foundations of meaning, purpose and community.
Alberta is experiencing a major skills mismatch and a dearth of quality of character, setting everyone up for failure. Graduates will struggle to find jobs, businesses will struggle to maintain operations with fewer staff, and the economy everywhere suffers. So, business owners and leaders need to start new schools. It might be the best investment they’ll ever make.
Catharine Kavanagh is the Alberta liaison officer at the non-partisan think tank Cardus. Send Industry Perspectives Op-Ed comments and column ideas to editor@journalofcommerce.com.
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