KEY CONCEPTS: job satisfaction; relevancy in learning
Continuing from our last post on Haines Junction, we thought it important to highlight the importance of education for reducing the barriers to work and productivity. In fact, knowledge and skills development is not a disability employment issue, but rather it is just good business sense. Most employers agree, retaining quality employees and motivating staff to work for the wider benefit of the business, day in day out, people need to find meaning in their work. Sometimes, meaning in the work comes through pursuing a career and professional development path – to advance personal skills and expand earning potential and employment opportunities. In short, job satisfaction is key. And a big part of job satisfaction comes through feeling meaningful progress in work.
Professional development, training, and creating readiness-to-work is the business of our education providers (In addition to learning for learning sake, of course).
When we talked about education and the job of supporting individuals, businesses, and communities in identifying learning needs and ways to increase access and upward mobility within the workplace, education providers highlighted the importance of relevancy: relevancy of the course material and instructional methods for both the learner and prospective employers.
Providing education and training in the communities, like Haines Junction, Destruction Bay, Burwash Landing and Beaver Creek is very different than in the big city of Whitehorse. Communities with populations of as little as 50 has vastly different education and employment needs than larger centres like Whitehorse. Even the larger communities like Haines Junction itself, with a population this year of 822, require a specialized learning and professional development offer: one that is responsive and agile, and can adapt quickly to the changing employment demands. Changes in the employment landscape are effected by seasonal fluctuations as well as the boom and bust cycles of the natural resources and energy sectors. A relatively small change in the wider economic outlook for the region has significant implications for smaller communities, particularly when the population of the town changes with these cycles.
With this in mind, education providers strive to work closely with employers and individual learners in an effort to maximise the relevancy of the curriculum offer, with both the short and longer term employment demands in mind.
But, while this model of adaptable education services is at the core of successful provision, the education establishment can find it difficult to ensure the course get to the candidate in a timely way. Simply put, as with other issues regarding disability employment supports, employers and job-seekers/employees are not always aware of the educational opportunities that are available – and to no fault of their own. The education providers recognize this barrier, and are engaged in a continuous process of awareness raising, marketing and community consultation in order to ensure employers remain informed about professional development opportunities to help raise existing and prospective staff performance and, by effective, productivity.
One education provider discussed a model of community and business consultation which has helped support the development of sector specific training courses for anticipating staffing needs. This model of education providers working closely with business on the wider project of sustainable community development appears to be the key for increasing accessibility and equity in the workplace. By identifying ongoing labour market demands, employers and people with disabilities can respond to needs and deficits early, and on a continuous cycle of professional development which might help to reduce dips in productivity arising from goodness-of-fit of employee and workplace demands.
We like to believe that if there was such a thing as a panacea to resolve the disability employment problems in the workplace, then education would be the fix-all. And while this is perhaps an idealize view of the powers of education, what we can say for certain is learning always open more doors, more opportunities, for everyone.
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