Canadian Chamber of Commerce: Canada must address its aging workforce

"The Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s report, Canada’s Demographic Crunch: Can Underrepresented Workers Save Us?, examines the great challenge that a rapidly aging population and workforce will pose for Canada’s business competitiveness and economic well-being, and makes practical recommendations on how best to meet and overcome that challenge."

In the report, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce provide a three pillar approach to solving the problems of an aging workforce. These pillars include:

• The first pillar: Unleashing the latent potential
  of the underrepresented workforce
• The second pillar: Expanding the skilled workforce
  through immigration
• The third pillar: Enhancing labour productivity

The third pillar discusses that success cannot only be measured by the number of workers and the number of hours they work but also by the productivity of those workers. One of their recommenedations for boosting labour productivity is the transfer of knowledge from baby boomers to younger employees:

"Baby boomers are beginning to enter the older workforce category. As noted earlier, many older workers wish to continue working, but have neither the ability nor the desire to work full- time. The role of coach or mentor in transferring knowledge to younger colleagues, on part- time and flexible bases, will appeal to many older workers. Not only that, such mentorship roles, by pairing experienced older workers with younger colleagues, will be essential to the retention of knowhow within companies and industries."

Click here to find out how KnowHowKM can help your organization with this transfer of knowledge!

Links

Canada's Demographic Crunch: Can Underrepresented Workers Save Us? (PDF) 

Press Release

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce Website