November 20, 2022

ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING FOR ALL STUDENTS (not just business students)

By

ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING FOR ALL STUDENTS (not just business students)

THE FUTURE OF WORK IN CANADA:

Research and Written by Ashwin Nair, Researcher

Under the direction of Andrew Cardozo, President

  

 

 

Introduction

 

The future of work in Canada is looking increasingly distinct from the rest of the country’s history of employment and work patterns. Traditionally, Canadians would first graduate from high school or university, either having been educated in their                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                career field or taking up a trade, after which, they would seek to work a full-time time job with regular hours that they would remain in for the rest of their working lives, as they secure a career. A lot of traditional jobs, both blue and white collar, would come with benefits, such as insurance and paid time off. It would not be uncommon for workers to join a union through which they would work to secure further benefits. Work today, however, has already departed from this traditional model, and is continuing to shift and transform.

 

In 2022, approximately 36% of the U.S. workforce is made up of so-called ‘independent workers’, which include contract, freelance, temporary, or gig workers. In Canada, Statistics Canada reports that, in 2018 (the last available year with the following statistics), self-employed workers accounted for 15% of the workforce, though this ‘self-employed’ category may not even include the full extent of ‘independent workers’ such as contract workers or temporary workers who may still have an employer. This changing nature of work is due to various factors. The last two decades have seen several bouts of economic instability and fluctuation, including the recession of 2008, through which many workers lost their jobs. In response to this, employers will have also adjusted their hiring practices and the benefits that come along with being a traditional full-time employee to make it through tough economic times. Along a similar timeline, younger generations have also witnessed and bore the brunt of a ‘trimming down’ of the social safety net, owing to government austerity, as well as an increasingly inaccessible housing market. Furthermore, newer technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), have accelerated the advent of automation in the workplace, where companies are finding some workers increasingly redundant as machines, AI, and new technologies are able to provide the same value of labour but at a lower cost. This trend is set only to accelerate and seep into more and newer domains of the workforce. Lastly, the Covid-19 pandemic has played a remarkable role in accelerating these shifts in the workforce that may have already been brewing. Much unlike previous recessions, the pandemic has put workers and business out of work, while simultaneously shuffling those who used to work in-person to now work remotely. It has been reported that, for 83% of workers in the United States, a remote work opportunity would make them feel happier at their job. The shift from in-person work to remote- or home-working is one of the biggest shifts in work culture in recent decades, and is representative of patterns we can expect in the future of work.

 

Given such circumstances, younger generations – mostly, though not exclusively – are forced to navigate an ever-disruptive economy where work has become more precarious and where the social contract of working hard as the sole prerequisite to building a career and livelihood has ostensibly been broken. As a result, workers of the future are increasingly choosing to take their careers into their own hands, sometimes by choice, but sometimes out of circumstance. In light of such changes, workers should not be left to their own devices when it comes to navigating this newly emerging world of work. Workers may increasingly have to turn to their own skills in various capacities to make ends meet. The late 2010s and early 2020s’ work culture has been characterized by the rise of the ‘side hustle’, which refers to work of a temporary or freelance nature that is engaged in by workers to complement their primary source of income. While this can range from tutoring on the weekends to starting one’s own business from scratch, there are skills that workers can acquire to better navigate the uncertainty of the economy and capitalize on their skillset and their own reserves of knowledge to make it work for them.

 

It is in this spirit that the future of work in Canada requires everyone to become somewhat of their own entrepreneurs, thus rendering more relevant some form of entrepreneurial training, not just for those enrolled in a business program at a college or university, but for all students regardless of their program, as well as anyone else who might be interested in such an education.

The Shifting Nature of Work in Canada

 

Over the past several decades, the jobs and careers of Canadians have been gradually shifting away from traditional full-time employment with benefits, as forms of more precarious work have been on the rise. This is owing to a combination of factors. The 1980s and 1990s saw the concurrent phenomena of globalization and a shift away from manufacturing and toward the services sector in North America. As companies opted to shift their manufacturing capacity abroad, where costs would be cheaper, full-time quality jobs that often came with benefits (and sometimes unionization) were lost. Other factors include the rise of automated technology to replace some forms of manual labour, especially repetitive manual labour. More recently, the Covid-19 pandemic caused a shock to the economy, suddenly putting large numbers of people out of work. These factors have also led some companies to see an opportunity to hire workers on an ‘independent contract’ basis, such as Uber, in whose case, drivers are not formal employees of the company, but rather independent contractors, and therefore receive fewer traditional employment benefits in exchange for a greater flexibility in working. Other private companies and even government agencies have caught on in hiring independent contractors and temporary workers. This indicates that the employment market is continuing to trend toward increased precarity among workers.

 

According to the House of Commons report on precarious work from 2019 entitled “Precarious Work: Understanding the Changing Nature of Work in Canada”, precarious work takes shape in two primary forms: low-wage work and non-standard work.

 

According to this report, low-wage work is concentrated in sectors such as retail and hospitality and often entails few to no benefits, a high-pressure work environment and limited career prospects, in addition to low pay. Crucially, more often than not, women are concentrated in these forms of work, usually on a temporary and part-time basis. According to Statistics Canada, low-wage sectors seem to simultaneously be some of the fastest growing ones too, which could indicate a more urgent need on the part of Canadian workers to secure some form of employment to make ends meet, confirming the phenomenon of an increasing sense of precarity when it comes to employment.

 

Non-standard work includes workers with fixed-term contracts (i.e. temporary workers), workers who work part-time but would prefer to work full-time (i.e. involuntary part-time workers), and unincorporated self-employed people who have no employees of their own (i.e. solo self-employed workers). Figure 1 below, from the House of Commons report, shows the number of people, above the age of 15, employed in non-standard work in Canada between 2007 and 2018.

 

 

FIGURE 1: NUMBER OF PEOPLE (IN THOUSANDS) IN NON-STANDARD WORK IN CANADA BETWEEN 2007 AND 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1 demonstrates a number of things. Firstly, and most prominently, bouts of economic downturn, such as the 2008 recession, caused an increase in all categories of non-standard work accounted for in the graph, though the extent of the increase varied depending on the type of non-standard work. Secondly, even though other forms of non-standard work eventually leveled off, those engaging in temporary work continued to increase steadily until 2018. Lastly, it is important to note that the rate of non-standard employment is higher for women than it is for men in all categories except ‘Solo Self Employed’, as is the rate of increase for women compared to men during bouts of economic downturn. This means that programs targeted toward addressing more precarious work, such as entrepreneurship skills training, must also take into account the fact that women seem to be the most disproportionately affected by precarious work, in both the ‘low-wage work’ and ‘non-standard work’ categories.

 

 

 

 

Entrepreneurship Training For All

 

It has become increasingly clear that all workers can spend a part or their whole careers being entrepreneurs, whether by choice or not.  It is important therefore that all students, not just business students learn entrepreneurship.

 

The previous section demonstrated the contemporary state of affairs in Canada as it relates to the increasing precarity in the labour market. It made clear that solutions to this issue are needed on a society-wide scale. As work becomes increasingly precarious for newer generations of Canadians, it is not only students that have an educational background in business that are in need of learning entrepreneurial skills, but, in fact, all students as newer workers are increasingly expected to take matters into their own hands. A comprehensive entrepreneurship training program would include the following components: developing an entrepreneurial mindset, staying up-to-date and engaged with newer technologies, learning digital marketing as a core skill, committing to lifelong learning, developing soft skills, and understanding the traditional set-up of a business.

 

1. Developing an entrepreneurial mindset

 

There are several elements to having an “entrepreneurial mindset” when facing the job market. This includes, firstly, a mindset of gauging and understanding the contemporary state of the job market, including what kind of jobs and career paths are within reach of pursuit, the chances of pursuing those paths, as well as the nature of that kind of work (i.e. full-time with benefits, temporary, gig work, etc.). Once this is laid as the first step, one is able to navigate an ever-shifting job market, new jobs and careers are being created just as old ones are rendered obsolete. Once one is working with an entrepreneurial mindset, one can then measure oneself against the current employment market and its needs and see where their contribution would make the most sense for themself.

 

1. Engaging with newer technologies

 

Staying up-to-date with new technologies is a major component that makes 21st century entrepreneurship feasible. While running any operation of your own in the 20th century will have required office space, a need for physical documents, as well as have involved a much slower delay in accessing information, these issues are almost entirely solved with online applications like Google Drive, Microsoft Office, and Slack, which essentially moves one’s office online. Workers whose work might involve a lot of writing (such as freelance writers) may make great use of an application like Google Documents where all their work for several different clients can be drawn up and subsequently well-organized and formatted. For aspiring photographers or graphic designers, programs such as Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator can serve as one’s own home studio where editing work for clients gets done.

 

This can be taken a step further, where students learn AI skills as part of their entrepreneurship training. As technology becomes increasingly complex, the job market will always require a proportionate number of workers who are able to operate these new technologies. Since it is the rise of AI that is greatly responsible for a shifting job market and thus, a serious contributor toward increased job precarity, students and new workers may have a better chance of offsetting these effects caused by AI by trying to hone skills in it.

 

Furthermore, since the Covid-19 pandemic, more work has been moving online. Technology plays a major role in this online shift, making it crucial to develop skills that facilitate this shift. Online work, or working-from-home, allows students and new workers to work on multiple different projects at once, thus maximizing potential streams of revenue, all from the comfort of one’s home. In fact, 83% of workers in the U.S. have expressed that a remote work opportunity would make them feel happier at their job.

 

1. Digital marketing skills

 

Advancement in technology has equally caught up to marketing. Students and new workers, in their pursuit to offer their services to market and gain new clients, should be trained in digital marketing skills. Digital marketing in today’s era allows a direct link between entrepreneurs and their prospective clients without necessarily going through an excessively bureaucratic medium. Social media applications like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are increasingly used to promote one’s business or services. One major advantage to this is the ability to ‘put oneself out there’ at absolutely no cost, since creating and maintaining a page for your business or service on these platforms is free-of-charge. Additionally, if they so desire, one has the option, on these platforms, to conduct paid advertising as well to further boost their business or services, ultimately making the process of digitally marketing your business or services so convenient that it can be done from the comfort of one’s own personal mobile device at whichever time they desire. Comprehensive entrepreneurship training for students and new workers, therefore, must include a robust section on the ins and outs of digital marketing.

 

1. Lifelong learning

 

In order to keep up with the constantly shifting and evolving nature of work, students and new workers must be taught and trained to value and commit to a culture of lifelong learning. While a more ‘industrial’ form of education may have prevailed in the past, training students in a particular skill set on which they can depend to last them the entirety of their career, the world today is more dynamic than ever before; a shift from ‘industrial education’ toward ‘entrepreneurial education’ must be nurtured such that students and new workers can develop a dynamic mindset and attitude to potentially have to pick up new skills, both hard and soft, over time in order to adapt their careers to the shifting labour landscape.

 

1. Soft skills

 

While hard skills, such as mastering new technologies and understanding the finances of one’s operation, are important to the success of aspiring entrepreneurs, soft skills are equally as vital. The most prominent of such soft skills is building a professional network. Given that the nature of the work of aspiring entrepreneurs is reliant on maximizing outreach to new clients and/or maximizing the number of opportunities one encounters, connecting with other individuals, organizations, and/or companies to gain greater access to these opportunities is an essential component to entrepreneurship.

 

1. Understanding the traditional set-up of a business

 

Last but not least, every entrepreneurship training program must include a section on the traditional set-up of a business. This includes teaching skills in accounting, financial planning, human resources, supply chain management, taxation, and marketing. The Entrepreneurship and Small Business program at Durham College sets the best example for how to include the teaching of these skills as an essential component of entrepreneurship training. Aspiring entrepreneurs, through learning these skills, will gain a better grasp of managing the finances of their operations as well as operating within the legal framework laid out by government (especially as it relates to licensing and taxation).

 

 

Implementing Entrepreneurship Training

 

After having explored what the contents of an entrepreneurship training course for all would be, the subsequent question arises of when and how this training reaches students and new workers. The content of this training course is most relevant to those who are about to enter the job market, and therefore can be delivered to students at both the high school and university levels. This way, it is able to reach both those who prefer to pursue trades as well as those who pursue tertiary education. At both high school and university, entrepreneurship training can be delivered as an elementary course before other courses are pursued, typically positioned at the beginning of the semester or program. Courses similar to this are not uncommon. In several engineering and other STEM programs across various tertiary educational institutions, a basic course in communications for STEM students is often mandated at the beginning of the program so that aspiring engineers and scientists develop the essential skill of being able to communicate scientific findings to the wider public.

 

In addition to schools, entrepreneurship training can and should be offered by professional associations as well. One example of an existing professional association offering similar programs is the Canadian Bar Association. Those who have a membership in the Canadian Bar Association are entitled to free access to several programs, including media relations skills, litigation skills, ethics, law practice management, and more. Other professional associations might be able to follow suit and benefit their members by offering courses on entrepreneurship.

 

Furthermore, there may be a role government can play here as well in combating precarious work and preparing students and new workers for the shifting job market. The House of Commons report on Precarious Work made several recommendations on this front, of which recommendation 9 was the creation of an ‘essential skills agenda’ for the 21st century workforce, which would include a national skills and competency framework and corresponding assessment tools, the development of some federal training programs to address gaps in skills, as well as develop policy to foster a culture of lifelong learning. Additionally, recommendation 4 in the same report put forward the potential for the federal government to consider income supplement programs that are not tied to employment, such as a guaranteed annual income, which could further foster this entrepreneurial culture and act as a safety net for aspiring entrepreneurs to safely and confidently pursue their careers of choice.

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