A new Environics Institute survey reveals that Canadians generally take a favourable view of technology in the workplace. Two-thirds of Canadians in the labour force report that computer technology has changed the way they do their jobs, with most rating the effects of technology as positive or neutral.
The 2020 Survey on Employment and Skills, conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research in partnership with the Future Skills Centre and Ryerson University‘s Diversity Institute, follows up on preliminary findings released in May of this year. The Survey found that a majority of workers described their jobs as easier or even more enjoyable, thanks to new technology, while only a minority said their jobs had become less enjoyable, more difficult, less well-paid or less secure.
As welcome as those results might seem, they come with a qualification: the effects of technology in the workplace are uneven. Men are more likely than women to report higher income and higher job security as a result of new technology, and managerial workers are more likely than those in sales and retail to have experienced an increase in earnings.
Some highlights:
- Most Canadians say that new computer or information technologies have changed the way they do their jobs, and this change is more likely to be seen as being positive than negative.
- A majority of college and university graduates in all major fields of study say that their programs prepared them very or somewhat well for the jobs that they have worked in after graduation. However, the proportion of graduates saying they were very well prepared for their jobs is higher among those who completed their studies before 2000 than among more recent graduates.
- Canadians have become much more skeptical about the wider economic benefits of new technologies. Only half as many Canadians today as in 1985 expect the introduction of more automation and new technology into the workplace to lead to a stronger Canadian economy and lower prices for consumers.
- When Canadians think about what is needed to succeed in the modern workplace, they have in mind a broad range of skills—such as those related to communication, collaboration and leadership—and not just technical know-how.
- The most common way for Canadians in the labour force to personally learn new work-related skills is by learning from co-workers on the job.
- Two in five Canadians think it is likely that they would receive a grant from the government to help pay for training so they can improve their work-related skills.
Read the complete survey here.
