Getting Windsor-Essex ready for the future

On March 12, an event held by WEtech Alliance called Getting Windsor-Essex Ready for the Future of Work and Learning will be held at St. Clair College Centre for the Arts.

WEtech Alliance and a group of community partners, Workforce WindsorEssex and Communitech have joined forces to help ensure Windsor-Essex workers, organizations and communities continue to succeed as technology transforms the workplace.

The initiative for the event started in the Waterloo region with Communitech and the keynote speaker is Simon Chan, the Vice President of Talent Academy and Future of Work at Communitech.

Justin Falconer, the senior director at Workforce WindsorEssex said work is changing and transforming at an unprecedented pace and it is happening as a result of artificial intelligence, which is changing how people do jobs.

“We’re holding the event to get employers to come meet us in the middle on working to address these issues as a community,” said Falconer. “So, how can we as a community help ensure people are upskilling for these opportunities instead of being displaced by them.”

In the event, four main things will be talked about: The big trends impacting the future of work and learning, how careers and workplaces are being redefined, the potential implications for communities and regions and a case study presented by Chan on what Waterloo is doing there and how it has worked.

“Whether or not we have the conversation, the future of work is changing so it’s better we have these conversations now,” said Adam Frye, the director of business innovation at WEtech Alliance. “We set our organizations or communities or region up to be very successful in the future by just making the changes we need to make and being well educated on what’s going on around us.” 

The goal of the event is to see if there is any interest in the room to continue the conversation for the future of work in the community.