In May, I invited WINCan’s Thomas Carey to lead a session for international graduate students at the University of Windsor, on what Canadian employers mean when they include being an “innovative employee” in a job description, and how students could develop and demonstrate the requisite innovation capability. This was the second session in our 5-part Improving Employability Summer Series which I was organizing in my role as a teaching members of the university’s Faculty of Engineering.
Tom’s session on “Becoming an Innovative Employee in Software and Engineering Workplaces” was an initial effort to engage students in considering what it means to be “innovative” in Canadian workplace contexts. In this post, I’ll share what prompted me to develop the series, the purpose of Tom’s specific session, and what we learned through the process.
Impetus for the Session
According to the Canadian Bureau of International Education, Canada is home to over 1 million international students with over 72% of these students intending to apply for post-graduate work permits. Nearly 5,000 students at the University of Windsor are international, representing more than 92 countries; approximately 2,800 students of these are registered in the professional programs in Master of Engineering (MEng) and Master of Applied Computing (MAC) programs, according to program data.
“Tech Sector” talent attraction and retention – in a range of STEM-related positions – has been recognized as an important contributor to the economic prosperity of the Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent regions. For example, one recent study noted that the tech sector in Windsor-Essex “has experienced a 24% increase in the number of jobs in tech from 2019 to 2023, while the national growth average is 21%, meaning Windsor is growing consistently and faster than average.”
I curated the Improving Employability Summer Series to try to address a noticeable gap in the bridge-building of these students from MEng/MAC to local employment. As a faculty member teaching Technical Communications and a former Tech Talent Strategist in the Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent region through WEtech Alliance (one of 17 regional innovation centres in Ontario), I have first-hand experience connecting with regional industry employers who struggle to find talent for their vacant roles, and with students who are seeking employment opportunities within their fields.
The series included five events to help students learn about what regional employers are seeking in both technical skills (e.g., Agile project development, accessible web design) and non-technical skills (e.g., communication, leadership, innovation) while creating a supportive co-curricular environment for the students to explore. The goals for the series were to:
encourage the students to consider the Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent region as a desirable area for them to work (i.e., retain tech talent);
increase the students' employability by engaging them in vital co-curricular activities such as training in specific technical skills (e.g., Agile) and non-technical skills (e.g., collaboration, planning a career pathway in Canada, inclusive workplace innovation);
enable students across both programs to interact at a variety of locations on UWindsor campuses;
support industry-community engagement with students; and
conduct research on the efficacy of such co-curricular offerings
As international students, the participants in Tom’s session reflect the variability of educational and workplace experiences reflected at the University of Windsor, and all were studying in the MEng or MAC programs at the university. The programs are designed as course-based (non-thesis) professional degrees and some students take the opportunity to engage in co-op placements during their studies.
Topics for “Becoming an Innovative Employee in Software and Engineering Workplaces”
Tom’s session helped participants identify what “innovation” means in a Canadian workplace context; namely, that it is “the social process of mobilizing new ideas to create better work and lasting value.” He began by showing the students job postings from several regional employers’ websites in the students’ fields that specifically included “innovation” or “being innovative” as a necessary skill for the roles advertised.
During the discussion, Tom helped participants to translate what it means to be “innovative” through case stories from “EngServ”[1] and Stantec where innovation projects have been successful in improving employee engagement and in developing new workplace processes and projects.
More specifically, he shared how workplace innovation projects are different than other projects; namely, that they purposefully manage varying levels of uncertainty and complexity, and they plan for iterative pivots and movement back-and-forth among discovery, definition, design, development, and testing. These types of projects are messy, but they continue to engage participants in expansive learning. Part of this process is changing how workplaces speak about the work they do. Citing successful business examples, Tom encouraged session participants to “test smart” (versus “fail smart”) and to recognize that seeming project failures (e.g., when prototypes are continuously missing the mark) are useful and surprising learning opportunities to improve the ideas underlying an innovation and to add to an organization’s knowledge base.
What We Learned
Many international students are concerned about how to define their work and their capabilities for a Canadian workplace context.
Demystifying the language and expectations about “innovation” in the Canadian context is a vital step in supporting international students.
Sessions like “Becoming an Innovative Employee in Software and Engineering Workplaces” can support students to feel more capable and to recognize that all of their experience is valuable in Canadian workplaces.
There are still many open questions about how to engage graduate students in co-curricular professional development, both in terms of building the case for the extra time commitment involved and ensuring that the value generated in the short term justifies that investment. (Another of our WINCan academic partners is experimenting with incorporating workplace innovation capability into co-curricular professional development for undergraduates.)
Encouraging Feedback and Future Plans
I continue to receive positive feedback about the session. As one piece of follow-up, I have pitched a full series to be offered each semester so that all the students in both programs can benefit from learning about and increasing their innovation capability before launching into Canadian workplaces. If the series is approved, then we hope that WINCan can include the University of Windsor series in the 2025 cohort of new programs to extend the diversity and impact of WINCan’s academic collaborations.
[1] The “EngServ” case story is also one of the cases explored and addressed in the WINCan and partners’ Future Skills Centre project, Inclusive Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work (November 2023).