Employability Skills Forum

In 1993, Irving Pulp and Paper joined forces with Hampton High School, about 30 kilometres northeast of Saint John, New Brunswick, to make technical education programming a vehicle for enhancing students’ employability skills.

National Silicates’ Chemical Process Operator (CPO) program began in 1995 when the firm teamed up with four other industrial chemical companies to fill their common need for workforce training in both generic and technical skills.

Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board in Ontario is using a comprehensive strategy to support every step of the career education learning process for secondary students, including those at risk of dropping out.

The board helps students learn about themselves by providing them with Career.MAX, a self-assessment tool that helps students identify their skill strengths, and explore career options related to those strengths.

Dufferin-Peel Roman Catholic Separate School Board in Ontario is helping non-university-bound secondary school students make the transition to the world of work by opening up apprenticeship opportunities.

Steel company Dofasco, based in Hamilton, Ontario, created the Trade Assist Program to help employees learn the skills they need to maintain ever more technically sophisticated equipment.

Dofasco, a steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario, established the Apprenticeship Technician Program to help employees learn the skills they need to maintain ever more technically sophisticated equipment.

CORCAN, an agency within the Correctional Service of Canada, is rehabilitating offenders by developing their employability skills.

Offenders generally lack the generic skills, attitudes, and behaviours needed to find and keep a job when they re-enter society. CORCAN’s Offender Employability Skills Project addresses that problem by helping offenders prepare for employment as part of their rehabilitation.

Chrysler Canada is helping to develop the workers of the future by enhancing its employees’ generic employability skills, and by benchmarking the apprenticeship training programs it builds upon these skills against global best practices.

Canada Post Corporation’s Learning Institute is developing the generic employability skills of all its employees and improving employees’ job performance by increasing its emphasis on education and training, and aligning the corporation’s learning programs with its business strategies and culture.

British Columbia’s School District 59, based in Dawson Creek, has developed a process that helps teachers and students agree on what different skills look like in different contexts, including the classroom or a co-op program.

In the Employability Skills Carousel activity, the teacher selects between eight and 10 employability skills for students to focus on in a given term.