Skills development and lifelong learning are key to investing in employee capabilities and advancing well-paid, sustainable work in the Canadian automotive industry.

Knowing this, a lot of work has gone into the development and distribution of the FOCAL initiative’s new occupational profiles. The creation and application of these profiles enable employers to source and match job opportunities with those equipped to perform them—to an increasingly exacting technical standard. 

The digitization of manufacturing

As is widely known, the Canadian automotive industry has been significantly impacted by the digitization of manufacturing, widely referred to as Industry 4.0. The term Industry 4.0 stands for the fourth industrial revolution that is driven by the introduction of smart and autonomous systems fueled by big data and machine learning.

The FOCAL Initiative has concluded that Industry 4.0 technologies will have significant but manageable impacts on Canada’s automotive sector, especially as that shift affects current employment levels and future training, upskilling and hiring practices.

• 80% of jobs performed by production occupations will be affected through the partial or full elimination of certain tasks.
• 50% of skilled trades tasks will be equally affected.
• The industry will also be impacted by the creation of new job responsibilities reflecting the increased requirements for digital skills.

The role of occupational profiles

As the shift from ICE driven vehicles to EVs evolves, the need for accurate, effective and utilitarian occupational profiles becomes ever more vital. And that is where FOCAL has a central part to play.

FOCAL is in the process of creating a total of 55 occupational profiles for the Canadian automotive industry, the objective of which is to increase awareness of skilled roles that are:

1. Interesting and stimulating to qualified candidates.
2. Promising in terms of high-income potential.
3. Available locally, coast-to-coast.

What follows is a sampling of five recently released occupational profiles, together with a brief supporting descriptor. As you will see by clicking on the link, each profile is considerably more detailed:

Hiring, re-training and upskilling

FOCAL is sharing this information with relevant employers operating in the Canadian automotive industry so they can identify projected opportunities in the years to come and plan their recruitment practices – including hiring, re-training and upskilling – accordingly.

Equally, these profiles help inform students, new graduates, new Canadians and other underserved categories (women, for example) about employment opportunities and job skills required, as they become available.

Overall, FOCAL occupational profiles will benefit employers, current employees and job seekers – while supporting the evolution of the Canadian automotive industry as it continues to develop and expand. 

Skills Transferability Matrices

Occupations in the automotive industry may have overlapping skills and competencies with occupations in other types of jobs, industries and sectors. Many automotive occupations may be capable of transitioning to other industries/sectors and vice versa.

Accordingly, FOCAL is developing Skills Transferability Matrices (STMs) that deploy algorithms to match and group employee attributes and competencies into data clusters that will enable the auto industry manufacturers, employees in transition, career development agencies and job seekers to assist workers impacted by changes in the sector.  

Further details about these and other anticipated changes in the automotive sector were addressed in a recent Unifor | IPS Conference Presentation – Unifor is Canada’s largest private sector union and IPS is Canada’s Independent Parts Supplier group – and additional information is available on the FOCAL website.

Follow FOCAL to stay informed

We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us and we’re geared up to handle it. Please follow FOCAL on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay informed about the progress we’re making  and gain access to resources and special events as well as funding opportunities for employers. 

We encourage everyone reading this blog to share it with their professional networks to best share these opportunities with automotive sector staff and employers. Again, the FOCAL team welcomes your questions and feedback – you may contact us at your convenience.