10 tips to prepare for the future of work: A year in review

Our workforce is becoming more global and diverse. Your organization must think about how to establish a more diverse, inclusive and equitable talent pipeline.  

You can do this by unlocking untapped talent pools through blind recruitment and unconscious bias training. Looking beyond Canadian experience requirements for credentials and experience can bring more diverse experience to your team.

Consider the barriers that might be stopping your organization from initiating change – and consider the long-term benefits of equity and diversity in your workplace.  

"You need to invest in your employees. The economic and financial benefit, including the normative benefit, is really positive...and I think there's a way to unlock that for businesses if they are really determined.” - Dr. Bessma Momani, Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo

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Job opportunities that highlight how candidates can learn, make an impact and link academics to work enhance job attractiveness for Gen Z talent.  

Try reframing your job descriptions and interviews to reflect some of these key themes as they apply to your organization: company culture, programming language, food and games, employer values, compensation and opportunities for career development.  

By focusing on the strengths and benefits your company can provide, co-op students and emerging talent can visualize how they would fit into the organization. 

"The subject matter of the work really matters to me, including the roles and responsibilities that I’ll be able to take on. You can realistically work anywhere and have a good time, but at the end of the day, co-op for me is about what I’m actually going to be taking on." - Matthew Olsen, fourth-year Arts and Business co-op student, University of Waterloo

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This new remote workforce creates unique recruitment opportunities where talent pools are no longer limited by location. Recruiters now have access to talented candidates globally, including different time zones, countries, or rural or low-income areas. Also, recruiters are now able to consider skilled candidates who might have previously faced challenges commuting to work or accessing facilities – including persons with disabilities and neurodiverse individuals who may not thrive in a traditional work environment.  

It’s also important to recruit candidates with the skillsets required for a remote work environment – including communication, initiative, self-direction, time management, adaptability and familiarity with online communication software. 

“One of the things that we try to do is look across all of the data we are getting about our candidates. Our questions are a mix of evaluating them for their job skills and ensuring they are going to fit into our organization… and we’ve had good success recruiting remotely by doing all of those things and building up that experience.” – Jeff Wentworth, Co-Founder, Curvegrid 

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Many organizations have pre-existing programs for onboarding their talent, but a lot has changed over the last two years as we shifted to remote work. Employers report they hire co-op students for two main reasons: 

1. Access to a flexible workforce of talented students who can help get work done within the organization. 

2. A talent pipeline that begins with bringing students into work and determining if they could be a good fit after graduation. 

In order to reap the benefits of these hiring efforts, employers should ensure that proper thought and planning is put into place to support onboarding in a remote environment.  

"In our study, we did find a significant relationship between the remote onboarding of students and their performance, as well as a significant relationship between the remote onboarding they experienced and their commitment to the organization. The time that organizations are spending and investing in welcoming the student online, and helping them understand the organization and their role, is paying off in terms of students’ performance and commitment." - Judene Pretti, Director, Business Services, Co-operative and Experiential Education (former Director, Work-Learn Institute)

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Gen Z employees have a unique potential for innovation, so you’ll want to reconsider how you approach the way you design roles to offer: 

1. A highlight project: work that’s important to the organization and something that they might share as a report or presentation at the end of the term.

2. Daily or routine tasks: work that allows emerging talent to use their own experience and perspectives to identify incremental improvements for the organization. 

3. Side projects: work that is less time-sensitive but enables emerging talent to have opportunities for experimentation. 

Studies show that adults between the ages of 18 – 24 have neurological traits in common with successful entrepreneurs and innovators. Tailor roles to tap into the heightened brain capacity and entrepreneurial spirit of your talent to bring world-changing ideas to your organization.  

“The new generation of talent can really change the trajectory of a lot of businesses...and there’s an unparalleled capacity for them, as digital natives, to innovate. Significant impact can be made if we channel their creativity, resilience and open-mindedness.” - Chaitanya Bhatt, Director of Innovation, Loblaw

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When we think about employer and student perspectives during the work term, there is some potential for tension. Students want to contribute to the organization while learning new skills and expanding their professional network. Employers have new students coming into the organization every four months and must spend time and resources training and supporting their students.  

One way to resolve this potential tension between the goals of the employers and the goals of the students is to vary the complexity and criticality of the assigned tasks. 

According to students’ Rate My Work Term responses, they are more likely to recommend a co-op job or organization to a friend or fellow student when they had opportunities to make meaningful contributions at work and opportunities to develop new skills. 

“I believe offering meaningful work and a meaningful opportunity to contribute – and supporting your employees through that process – is a huge contributor to retention. In my opinion, it is something that would be the most important criteria in deciding whether to recommend a job to friends or other students or deciding whether to go back to a job myself.” - Jonathan Lee, Political Science and Business Student, University of Waterloo

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Values matter to the next generation of talent, especially in the context of work. In our Future Workforce Survey and Management Guide, we identified a "values gap" between Gen Z employees, their future employers and the organizations they work for. 

Almost 50% of Gen Z survey respondents said they would be unlikely to accept a full-time job if it matches their skills but not their own personal values. Identifying where your organizational values align with the next generation of talent will allow you to effectively recruit and retain employees. 

“It’s important for organizations to keep a pulse on the alignment between next gen values and their organizational values. A lack of understanding about next gen values and what motivates them may lead to retention issues and then difficulty retaining next gen talent may leave organizations frustrated with their efforts.” - Judene Pretti, Director, Business Services, Co-operative and Experiential Education (former Director, Work-Learn Institute) 

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As our workforce changes, company culture must push beyond offering spaces where team members can socialize and have fun.  

We analyzed 37,000 co-op jobs that were posted on WaterlooWorks over the last three years. The analysis found that job descriptions with keywords related to the company culture received a higher number of applicants. 

The top keywords related to company culture were collaboration, challenge, change, people, social, fun and creative. 

“We see our students and grads as cultural co-founders of our company. It’s very important that the students and new grads we bring in don’t just fit with our culture but that they’re able to enhance the culture – and be the light bearers of that culture – as we know that they will, in no short time, be the future leaders of our company.” - Margaret McBeath, Director of Company Strategy, People and Culture at Nuclear Promise X 

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It's important to understand the key skills that employees will need to navigate and thrive in a constantly changing workforce. We analyzed more than 74,000 job postings to determine which skills are most in-demand for co-op employers. 

That analysis identified that many postings focused on soft skills like communication, problem-solving and interpersonal skills. These soft skills were often paired with more technical skills like software development, data analysis and machine learning.  

At Waterloo, we’ve established the Future Ready Talent Framework to help our students and employers understand, identify and practice the skills needed to succeed in the future of work. 

“Academics, for me, is where I’ve been able to form my foundational knowledge and basic technical skills, while work terms have really enabled me to gain practical and hands-on learning experiences. It allows me to make mistakes, establish competencies and figure out what I like the most. My work terms have also enabled me to build valuable non-technical skills. This epitomizes the value of future-ready skills since they can be applied to any job in our workforce.” - Kavir Gopaul, Mechatronics Engineering co-op student, University of Waterloo 

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Think about the ways you can upskill your existing employees, so they’ll have the skills to thrive in a constantly evolving workforce. By creating a workplace that balances education, experience, environment and exposure, your organization can vary how you upskill team members: 

• Incorporate forms of experiential learning that connect human emotion and relevant experiences. Doing so is important for committing learning to memory. 

• Use work-integrated learning to provide opportunities for employees to develop their skills during day-to-day work—making learning more applicable and efficient. 

• Blend a mix of digital and hands-on experiences to ensure learning is more accessible and scalable. 

• Offer professional and personal development that contributes to workers’ ongoing future employability. Doing so helps ensure that workers can perceive their learning as valuable and helps them remain relevant in an evolving world of work. 

To meet the upskilling demands of the future of work, your organization must think deeply and critically about how you train your teams. What worked in the past simply will not be agile enough to adapt to the current rate of change. 

“It’s important for us to think about the ways in which we need to upskill our existing workforce to help them navigate the future of work. While many of us have been anticipating change for quite some time, COVID-19 has thrust us directly into conditions that highlight a greater need to adapt and prepare in order to sustain and succeed.” - Anne-Marie Fanon, Director, Work-Learn Institute 

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