Projects

The Centre for Workplace Skills engages in research and publishes materials meant to have a tangible impact on Canadian businesses and workers.

The Centre’s projects capture and disseminate best practices in workplace skills development.  Our goal is to put such knowledge in the hands of workplace decision makers who can implement best practices in the field. MORE>>

Smart Sessions

Smart Sessions are participatory workshops designed to address the skills-related challenges that Canadian employers face. Each session focuses on an issue of priority to local business communities.

Presentations stress the importance of workplace learning, share the experience of companies with effective learning approaches, and identify homegrown resources that employers can use to address local workplace learning issues. Participating employers are encouraged to engage one another in discussion about their own approaches and solutions. MORE>>

Effective Work-related Learning in SMEs

Investing in Skills: Effective Work-related Learning in SMEs offers insights on effective work-related learning programs that have been implemented in 45 Canadian and international SMEs.  This report is designed to help Canada‘s million-strong SMEs develop their own work-related learning programs and make good business decisions about work-related training investments. MORE>>

Worker Adjustment in Canada: Understanding Effective Practice

“Worker adjustment” is any process put in place to provide services and resources to workers who have lost their jobs or who are in danger of losing them.

This project identifies and documents 8 effective worker adjustment practices in Canada, and pays special attention to the critical factors influencing success or failure. Workplace decision makers will benefit from the guidance, critical information and insight it provides. MORE>>

Effective Learning Practices for Unions

Canada’s labour unions are major decision makers when it comes to workplace learning, and are significant providers as well. In this report, we identify and document effective Canadian and international practices in worker-led workplace learning supported by unions. MORE>>

Work-related Informal Learning

“Informal learning” is the most common way that people acquire knowledge and skills in Canadian workplaces. Finding innovative and practical ways to better support workers’ informal learning is a key preoccupation of forward looking organizations of all sizes. But while our theoretical knowledge about informal learning has made great strides over the last number of years, approaches to actively promote, support and evaluate work-related informal learning are only starting to take root in Canadian workplaces.  MORE>>