Sept. 18, 2017 "How your company can keep pace with disruption": Today I found this article by Jonathan Lister in the Globe and Mail:
VP of sales and country manager, LinkedIn Canada.
Canada's work force is in a period of unprecedented change, with shifting demographics and technological innovation dramatically altering what it takes for both businesses and professionals to be successful.
Seniors out-number children for the first time ever, and our working-age population is steadily declining.
Yet the trend with the greatest potential to transform our work force is innovation. The blistering pace of technological change makes it difficult for schools, governments and business leaders to properly train workers for existing and future jobs, which is widening the gap between the skills professionals have and the skills employers need.
One of the best ways to narrow skills gaps is by sharing new insights that complement existing economic indicators and can help workers better navigate their careers.
We recently released LinkedIn Canada's first Workforce Report for the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), harnessing our data from millions of members in the region and thousands of companies using LinkedIn to uncover key work-force trends on hiring rates, skills gaps and talent migration.
It's our vision to create economic opportunity for every worker across the globe, including every Canadian worker.
We hope workers use these insights to better navigate their careers;
employers use these insights to upskill their teams and stay competitive;
and government leaders use these insights to make more informed decisions on policies that can help narrow skills gaps.
We hope workers use these insights to better navigate their careers;
employers use these insights to upskill their teams and stay competitive;
and government leaders use these insights to make more informed decisions on policies that can help narrow skills gaps.
Here are a few things we've learned and how you can think about applying them to your organization:
Develop curriculum with schools to ensure students learn the skills you need
Business leaders, educators and policy makers need to recognize the role we play in training our work force and empowering them with the tools they need to learn new skills. A crucial part of this is understanding your company's emerging skills gaps.
Then you need to take steps to ensure your employees and future employees get the skills they need to qualify for your open jobs.
Then you need to take steps to ensure your employees and future employees get the skills they need to qualify for your open jobs.
According to the World Economic Forum report, The Future of Jobs, half of subject knowledge gained during the first year of a four-year technical degree is already outdated by graduation day.
We need to work directly with educators to develop new curriculums and ensure that students – a.k.a. your future employees – gain the skills needed most today and those likely to be in high demand tomorrow.
For example, Shopify and Carleton University recently announced a first of its kind, four-year Bachelor of Computer Science internship program to help students learn industry-leading skills and explore opportunities in software and computer science.
We need more programs like this to teach students about the current business landscape and encourage them to stay curious and on the cusp of emerging technology trends. This is how we foster skill sets that match the speed of innovation.
Keep your team agile with continuous learning
These days, school is never out. You and your team should always be looking to keep pace with what's changing in your industry. Careers exist now that were unimaginable a decade ago, such as machine learning developers, cloud computing specialists and driverless car engineers.
Training and development can feel like a moving target in this landscape, but teaching your employees new skills on an ongoing basis will make sure you stay competitive as new fields, tools and technologies emerge.
Training and development can feel like a moving target in this landscape, but teaching your employees new skills on an ongoing basis will make sure you stay competitive as new fields, tools and technologies emerge.
Fifty-four per cent of all working Americans think it will be essential to develop new skills throughout their working lives. For adults under 30, that number goes up to 61 per cent.
Do you have a continuous education strategy for your employees?
Have you talked to your HR lead about how to integrate education into your benefits package?
If you're not investing in upskilling your workers, you're falling behind.
Do you have a continuous education strategy for your employees?
Have you talked to your HR lead about how to integrate education into your benefits package?
If you're not investing in upskilling your workers, you're falling behind.
This also applies to soft skills. Ensure that you're building a team of adaptable problem-solvers with the strategic chops to help you shift as needed to keep up with the pace of change, and invest in training on collaboration and communication for your existing team.
Not doing so can wind up costing you in productivity and sales performance.
Not doing so can wind up costing you in productivity and sales performance.
Offer a career, not a job
Professionals are holding more jobs over the course of their careers than any previous generation and are taking their job search global. Continuous learning isn't just a vital part of your growth strategy – it's crucial for employee retention.
We've seen that Toronto is losing skilled workers to cities such as New York and San Francisco, while attracting them locally from Montreal and Kitchener. In a global talent market, it's clear that the stakes are higher than ever to hold on to your best and brightest.
Attract and retain your top talent by keeping employees challenged and fulfilled.
Work with HR to bring attention to new roles available within your company to current employees, providing them with options for growth and development.
Work with HR to bring attention to new roles available within your company to current employees, providing them with options for growth and development.
While making a good salary remains a key factor for many, it's also important to emphasize the softer benefits of a role and the unique experiences your organization offers. Ensure you're able to articulate who you are and what your company does, and keep the channels of communication open.
Replacing an employee can cost up to 40 per cent of his or her salary according to Manulife Financial, so investing in ongoing upskilling offers significant return on investment when it comes to maintaining your competitive edge.
Preparing your business for what's to come can be difficult, but taking care to use real-time insights to keep pace with the disruption that accompanies technological change and demographic shifts will go far in putting your employees and organization in the best possible position for success.
Mar. 30, 2021 My opinion: This stood out to me the most:
"According to the World Economic Forum report, The Future of Jobs, half of subject knowledge gained during the first year of a four-year technical degree is already outdated by graduation day."
I post these job articles, mostly from a few years ago. However, I still find these job articles helpful. It's fine if you say that you don't find them helpful or outdated.
"As Amazon pivots toward automation, workers assume more 'engaging' roles": Today I found this article by Nick Wingfield in the Globe and Mail:
FLORENCE, N.J. — Nissa Scott started working at the cavernous Amazon warehouse in southern New Jersey late last year, stacking plastic bins the size of small ottomans. It was not, she says, the most stimulating activity. And lifting the bins, which often weigh 25 pounds each, was also tiring over 10-hour shifts.
Now Ms. Scott, 21, watches her replacement — a giant, bright yellow mechanical arm — do the stacking.
Her new job at Amazon is to babysit several robots at a time, troubleshooting them when necessary and making sure they have bins to load. On a recent afternoon, a claw at end of the arm grabbed a bin off a conveyor belt and stacked it on another bin, forming neat columns on wooden pallets surrounding the robot. It was the first time Amazon had shown the arm, the latest generation of robots in use at its warehouses, to a reporter.
“For me, it’s the most mentally challenging thing we have here,” Ms. Scott said of her new job. “It’s not repetitive.”
Perhaps no company embodies the anxieties and hopes around automation better than Amazon. Many people, including President Trump, blame the company for destroying traditional retail jobs by enticing people to shop online.
At the same time, the company’s eye-popping growth has turned it into a hiring machine, with an unquenchable need for entry-level warehouse workers to satisfy customer orders.
At the same time, the company’s eye-popping growth has turned it into a hiring machine, with an unquenchable need for entry-level warehouse workers to satisfy customer orders.
Amazon’s global work force is three times larger than Microsoft’s and 18 times larger than Facebook’s, and last week, Amazon said it would open a second headquarters in North America with up to 50,000 new jobs.
Complicating the equation even more, Amazon is also on the forefront of automation, finding new ways of getting robots to do the work once handled by employees.
In 2014, the company began rolling out robots to its warehouses using machines originally developed by Kiva Systems, a company Amazon bought for $775 million two years earlier and renamed Amazon Robotics. Amazon now has more than 100,000 robots in action around the world, and it has plans to add many more to the mix.
In 2014, the company began rolling out robots to its warehouses using machines originally developed by Kiva Systems, a company Amazon bought for $775 million two years earlier and renamed Amazon Robotics. Amazon now has more than 100,000 robots in action around the world, and it has plans to add many more to the mix.
The robots make warehouse work less tedious and physically taxing, while also enabling the kinds of efficiency gains that let a customer order dental floss after breakfast and receive it before dinner.
“It’s certainly true that Amazon would not be able to operate at the costs they have and the costs they provide customers without this automation,” said Martin Ford, a futurist and author of “Rise of the Robots,” a book about automation. “Maybe we wouldn’t be getting two-day shipping.”
The dynamics between people and machines play out on a daily basis on the floor of Amazon warehouses in places like Florence, N.J., and Kent, Wash. In Kent, the robots vaguely resemble giant beetles and scurry around with vertical shelves loaded with merchandise weighing up to 3,000 pounds on their backs. Hundreds of them move autonomously inside a large caged area, tailgating each other but not colliding.
On one edge of the cage, a group of human workers — the “stowers” — stuff products onto the shelves, replenishing their inventory.
The robots whisk those shelves away and when a customer order arrives for products stored on their backs, they queue up at stations on another edge of the cage like cars waiting to go through a toll both.
The robots whisk those shelves away and when a customer order arrives for products stored on their backs, they queue up at stations on another edge of the cage like cars waiting to go through a toll both.
There, human “pickers” follow instructions on computer screens, grabbing items off the shelves and putting them in plastic bins,
which then disappear on conveyor belts destined for “packers,” people who put the products in cardboard boxes bound for customers.
which then disappear on conveyor belts destined for “packers,” people who put the products in cardboard boxes bound for customers.
Dave Clark, the top executive in charge of operations at Amazon, said the company wanted the machines to perform the most monotonous tasks, leaving people to do jobs that engage them mentally.
"It’s a new item each time,” Mr. Clark said.
“You’re finding something,
you’re inspecting things,
you’re engaging your mind in a way that I think is important."
“You’re finding something,
you’re inspecting things,
you’re engaging your mind in a way that I think is important."
The robots also cut down on the walking required of workers, making Amazon pickers more efficient and less tired. The robots also allow Amazon to pack shelves together like cars in rush-hour traffic, because they no longer need aisle space for humans. The greater density of shelf space means more inventory under one roof, which means better selection for customers.
The Amazon warehouse in Florence shows the latest example of the kinds of jobs machines can do better than people. Eight mechanical arms are in operation at the facility, a warehouse where large quantities of merchandise are broken down into smaller units and distributed to Amazon fulfillment centers across the country.
The arms go by the awkward name of robotic palletizers, but workers have given them a dash of personality, sticking signs on each one naming them after Stuart, Dave and other minion characters from the “Despicable Me” movies. Unlike the warehouse robots in Kent, which were based on the machines Amazon got through its Kiva acquisition, these arms come from an outside company.
Amazon began installing them late last year, not long after it opened the warehouse in Florence. The robot arm is configured to pick up only bins of a standard size, not objects of other dimensions. In a demonstration of future possibilities, Amazon showed a virtual reality simulation used to prototype new robot concepts, including an arm with a forklift attachment that moved pallets.
When Amazon installed the robots, some people who had stacked bins before, like Ms. Scott, took courses at the company to become robot operators. Many others moved to receiving stations, where they manually sort big boxes of merchandise into bins.
No people were laid off when the robots were installed, and Amazon found new roles for the displaced workers, Mr. Clark said.
No people were laid off when the robots were installed, and Amazon found new roles for the displaced workers, Mr. Clark said.
“The people didn’t go anywhere,” he said.
The question going forward is: What happens when the future generations of robots arrive?
For now, there are warehouse tasks — for example, picking individual items off shelves, with all their various shapes and sizes — where people outperform robots. Amazon has added 80,000 warehouse employees in the United States since adding the Kiva robots, for a total of more than 125,000 warehouse employees. And it says the warehouse hiring spree will continue.
But start-ups and researchers are scrambling to overcome the many remaining technical obstacles. Amazon even sponsors an annual contest to encourage more innovation in the category.
Mr. Ford, the author, believes it is just a matter of time before the employment picture in Amazon’s warehouses changes.
“My assumption is this technology will eventually displace a lot of people in those warehouses,” Mr. Ford said. “I would not say that overnight huge numbers of jobs disappear.
Maybe the first indication is they don’t get rid of those people but the pace of job creation slows down.”
Maybe the first indication is they don’t get rid of those people but the pace of job creation slows down.”
Amazon’s Mr. Clark said history showed that automation increases productivity and, in some cases, demand from consumers, which ultimately creates more jobs. He said warehouse workers would continue to work in technologically rich environments.
“It’s a myth that automation destroys net job growth,” he said.
In the case of the Florence facility, it opened up the new opportunity for Ms. Scott.
At one point, one of the arms knocked over a tote, sending a dozen or so cone-shaped plastic coffee filters skidding across the ground. Ms. Scott hit a button that froze the arm so she could safely pick up the mess.
Then the arms started working again.
“The robot will work the same all day long,” said Edward Cohoon, who supervises Ms. Scott and other Amazon workers as they tend to individual robots. “Their stomachs don’t grumble.”
This week's theme is about jobs and technology in the present and future:
"Yahoo to shut down all Yahoo Groups"/ "Ontario to (finally) pull the plug on fax machines in public service"
"Start me up"/ "To ensure your startup success, remember you aren't Steve Jobs"
My week:
Jul. 3, 2021 Friends: I called up my friends. Dan L. and I talked for about 35 min.
Digital camera: I told him I had my sister's old digital camera she bought in 2005. I was practicing with it and posted a lot of pictures on my Facebook page. I mainly took pictures of some stuffed animals.
There were some old pictures of myself, so I posted all that too.
Dan L. told me I should use a smart phone because they take good pictures with good resolution. Phones and cameras technology has improved in the last 10 years.
I'm learning how to use this camera since I'm planning on going on vacation.
Writing about TV shows: This weekend I had off. I was watching these recordings on DVR and I don't really like them. I decided to write reviews of some TV shows that I like. I would be like re-watching them by writing about them.
Jul. 6, 2021 "The Gratitude Gap: What does Canada owe refugees, and what do they owe us?": I found this article by Omar Mouallem in the Globe and Mail on Jun. 26, 2021.
I went to Professional Writing (now Professional Communication) at MacEwan University in 2006-2008. I am Facebook friends with him and he posted this article on his Facebook page.
This is a long and well-written article. The Coles Notes version is that it's great that the Liberal government accepted all these immigrants into Canada. The immigrants are residents so they have to work and pay taxes.
Should they vote for the Liberal government because that's the government that let them into this country? Or should they vote for someone else?
"Subway Grasps for a Lifeline With Americans Shunning Aging Brand": Today I found this article by Deena Shanker and Leslie Patton in the Financial Post:
Subway is one of the most recognizable names in the restaurant industry, and its more than 22,000 U.S. locations makes it the largest by store count, dwarfing even McDonald’s Corp. But its massive size obscures a simple fact: American tastes have changed.
Although 2020 was a boom year for many fast-food rivals, fewer than one in 10 Subway stores has a drive-thru, meaning it missed out on much of that low-contact demand. In fact, the Subway app didn’t even offer delivery — it’s rolling that out this summer as part of the refresh. The company closed 1,600 net locations in its home market last year as system sales tumbled 18%, according to Technomic data.
During the pandemic that upended the food-service industry, Subway’s sales depended largely on location, said Trevor Haynes, the chain’s head of North America. Closed stores at some hard-hit locations like colleges and airports have yet to reopen, he said, but overall sales are now “tracking up.”
Subway Grasps for a Lifeline With Americans Shunning Aging Brand (bloombergquint.com)
My opinion: I didn't know there were more Subways than McDonald's.
"As Delta Variant Surges, Outbreaks Return in Many Parts of the World": I found this article by Hannah Beech and Livia Albeck-Ripka on Jul. 1, 2021 on Yahoo News:
As Delta Variant Surges, Outbreaks Return in Many Parts of the World (yahoo.com)
My opinion: I'm going to my second vaccine shot soon. I have an appointment. I will be wearing my face mask when I go out. I may be travelling out of the country next year. We may be coming out of the pandemic right now, because a lot of people got vaccinated, but we still need to be careful.
Jul. 8, 2021 The Edmonton Travelers Club- JoinMyTrip: Today I went to the online event at this Meetup group. The topic was "Travel Fails" about their blunders while traveling. I'm planning on traveling, and this was in the morning from 11:30am- 12:30pm. I thought only people from Edmonton were there, but there were people from Canmore, AB and other countries there too.
One guy talked about how he went to Dubai and got on a train without reading the sign, and it was only women sitting there. It turns out there are women only compartments. Then another guy said he went to Japan and he accidentally got on the compartment that was only for women too.
Other stories are where one guy went to catch a plane, and he looked at the wrong day and the flight was yesterday. Another guy said he went to the airport a day early.
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