Canada’s preparedness to compete in the increasingly competitive, knowledge-based, global marketplace appears to be in jeopardy because of a lack of awareness that investing in the human capacity of Canada’s workforce is paramount to success. This paper reviews some of the key issues relating to Canada’s economic performance and explores critical linkages between weak national productivity growth, business performance and underinvestment in training and skills development.

In their reflections, the authors consider the following questions: What is the real benefit to Canada’s national economy from training employees? What is the payoff to businesses for investing in training? What is the evidence that training improves the bottom line? Are there any credible and easy-to-use strategies organizations can adopt to evaluate business returns and performance improvements from training?