What is the State of Canada’s Digital Skills Training?

After the rapid increase in demand for digital roles the past two years, it became evident that the training approaches for these roles differ across the country’s workforce. Recently, Jelly Academy ran a study, sponsored by Innovate BC, to evaluate the state of digital skills training in Canada and how individual businesses are approaching this form of training.

State of Canada’s Digital Skills Training Research

To collect data on this topic, Jelly Academy surveyed over 500 businesses across Canada in industries from industries such as Digital Applications, Agriculture, Manufacturing, Retail, Food & Beverage, Financial Services, Clean Tech, Education, Advanced Health, Oil & Gas, and many more. Questions in the survey covered how these businesses are approaching digital marketing training and education opportunities, and what financial offerings they have for skills-focused opportunities.

The study pulled some key findings surrounding the state of training and highlighted potential discrepancies between different training. A mere 7.44% of respondents said they are actively providing digital marketing training resources. From this percentage of participants, 39.74%, provide partial funding to their employees to enroll in required training, 37.73% provide full funding, and 22.53% offer no funding at all. While the study couldn’t identify the exact reasoning why some businesses offer no funding at all, it could be due to lack of awareness surrounding available government funding opportunities, or potentially unknown individualized reasoning within the companies.

Of the respondents surveyed that said they do offer training, 40.84% are sourcing it via external programs, and 32.05% provide it through internally developed offerings. The remaining 27.11% of respondents stated that they have the expectation their employees acquire credentials and relevant training before commencing their role versus offering it once hired. This points to a clear differentiation between businesses and can lead to lack of industry standards when it comes to training the workforce.

Despite having these differences amongst participants, the majority of all those surveyed stated that they had plans in the future to implement digital marketing training if they weren’t already. Prior to these businesses initiating training, it would be valuable to build out a standardized training model in order for the industry to have consistency amongst digital marketing candidates.

Suggestions that Jelly Academy presented in their study to achieve this level of standards, included having public and private stakeholders support in developing a regulatory framework . Additional funding programs are also valuable, such as the Canadian Digital Adoption Program, Ontario Go Digital, and WorkBC. Companies utilizing these available opportunities would be a huge asset to getting more employees trained.

When it comes to actual training programs, clear guidelines for what offerings and skills are accepted as industry-recognized, would be a really valuable intervention from stakeholders. Similar to increasing access to available funds, it would be beneficial to boost knowledge on already recognized courses. Some existing programs that employers can enroll their employees in now include Jelly Academy, Meta Blueprint, SEMRush, Google Grow Certificates, and Hootsuite Academy.

The digital workforce is only going to expand, and creating standards will be a really important piece of the puzzle. Having standardized training helps employers ensure they are acquiring appropriate candidates, and helps employees expand their own knowledge and feel confident in such a large industry. To learn more about the key findings and recommendations made by Jelly Academy, read the study here.