A new approach to addressing the skilled labour gap

The lack of skilled labour, though overshadowed by tariffs in recent months, continues to be a critical conversation and pain point for the Canadian manufacturing industry. In 2022, Statistics Canada reported 47.4 per cent of Canadian manufacturers struggled to find skilled labour, with 85 per cent reporting understaffing.

One of the highest demand skilled positions is machinists and CNC operators, with Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters outlining in their Keep Calm and Keep Training report that 40 per cent of respondents were in need of skilled labour to fill that role.

The Work-Based Learning Consortium (WBLC) is looking to address that problem, and they’re doing it with a program that keeps the needs of business owners top of mind.

“I was on the Ontario Aerospace Council, and in 2012 to 2013 around the board of directors table, they were commenting how they couldn’t get any skilled machinists,” said Rod Jones, Director at the WBLC. “So, I said, let’s build a training program.

“If you’re going to build something, you need a spec that tells you what the product needs to be, you need a managed process for producing it and you need a test and inspection plan at the end of it to affirm that you’ve produced what was required,” Jones said.

To fulfill the need for that spec, he went directly to industry experts, getting people on the shop floor to come to the table and share what a good CNC machinist level one needs to know in a real-world setting. This process facilitated the construction of a training program targeted directly to the needs of manufacturing leaders.

The CNC Machinist Level One Rapid Upskilling Program is designed to be completed outside of normal business hours, but still on the shop floor, providing several benefits to leadership, including being able to maintain normal levels of productivity while having their machinists learn skills specific to their business, their tools and their processes.

In addition, the program is government funded through Upskill Canada, powered by PaletteSkills, meaning employers are alleviated from the capital investment required to train staff.

“The program took our machine tenders and made them machine operators,” said Paul Raczynski, vice president of operations at Rapol Inc., a manufacturing organization operating out of Woodstock, Ont. that has already seen two machinists successfully complete the training program and is in the process of introducing two more based on the success level.

“Hiring someone with a lot of experience is tricky, especially getting somebody that’s got the experience that you’re looking for, because people do have experience, but it might not be a good match for you,” Raczynski said. “This was a really good opportunity for us to take some of our existing employees and upskill them.”

The WBLC’s training approach eliminates a common trend seen in manufacturing operations: an older machinist taking new hires under their wing and training them in the way they think the job should be done, which can lead to consistent blind spots across the entire team.

“Companies have always done training, but does it encompass everything that they [new hires] need to know? Probably not,” said Jones. “If you’ve asked George to show them the ropes, they learn what George thinks they ought to know, and they certainly don’t get the fundamentals, the basic knowledge. They may pick up bits and pieces, but they won’t have it mastered.”

When asked what he saw as the major benefit to the WBLC’s training approach, Raczynski said the organization was able to effectively match theory with practical training, something traditional education programs struggle with.

“A lot of times, when people go through school, it’s set up to be theory based, and many schools don’t have the breadth of awkward parts to work with so they will mostly work with fixtures that are already existing in the school or vices and chunks that are already existing when you get out in the field,” he said. “But there are a lot of projects that don’t fit in the cookie cutter pamphlet or template.”

Raczynski said the WBLC address this by having a constant dialogue between students and their instructor, answering not only the questions that arise during the training but providing additional guidance for problems students encounter in their day-to-day job requirements.

“What’s nice about the workplace learning approach is the instructors have their own experience, so when they [trainees] ask questions, they can rely on the fundamental background of the teachers to answer some questions and provide approaches that I maybe didn’t think of,” he said.

Jones said one of his goals with the program is to change the mindset business owners have towards training, making it a priority for leadership.

“We need to get companies to embed training as an ongoing part of what they do,” he said, pointing to a practice like preventative maintenance which, up until the middle of the twentieth century, was not a priority for manufacturing operations, despite its omnipresent adoption today.

“If you invest a lot of money in your machine tools, you try and look after them with preventative maintenance programs. Why wouldn’t we do something similar with your human assets,” Jones said.

When asked what he thought was the biggest benefit and reason for other manufacturing organizations to bring in the WBLC, Raczynski said it was the benefit he saw for his workforce with zero drawback for his business.

“For me as an employer, there is no downside,” he said. “I’m not spending money to potentially get some benefit, because they [trainees] definitely do get a benefit, and it costs me nothing.”

To learn more about the CNC Machinist Level One Rapid Upskilling Program and the other program offerings from the WBLC, visit workbasedlearning.ca.