by Thomas Carey
In Part I of this post, I offered reflections on the discussion paper Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce prepared for Fall 2024 consultations led by the Government of Canada’s Minister of Workplace Development. Those reflections were based on our experiences in the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada, fostering collaborations with workplace and higher education partners to advance employee-led innovation in Canada.
This follow-up post complements those previous reflections with insights specific to another emerging focal point for our current collaborations within Canada and beyond: Developing a distinctive role for Canada in Workplace Innovation Skills for Industry 5.0.
(In a final February 2025 post in this series, we will reflect on the topic of Place-based Inclusive Innovation approaches to foster more innovative workforces in regional contexts.)
Workplace Innovation Skills for Industry 5.0
Industry 5.0 is an EU-wide initiative intended to
Provide a vision of industry that aims beyond efficiency and productivity as the sole goals and reinforces the role and the contribution of industry to society.
Place the wellbeing of the worker at the centre of the production process and use new technologies to provide prosperity beyond jobs and growth, while respecting the production limits of the planet.
Complement the existing "Industry 4.0" approach by specifically putting research and innovation at the service of the transition to a sustainable, human-centric and resilient European industry.
Industry 5.0 is highlighted in the Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce discussion paper issued by Canada’s Minister of Workforce Development:
Excerpt from Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce
The impacts of new technologies and Industry 5.0 are expected to be far-reaching and profound…With growing technology adoption, there is an emerging interest in putting people at the centre of production and uses of new technologies to improve prosperity beyond jobs and growth. This new approach will require investment and solutions to meet the evolving needs of workers and increase competitiveness in all sectors of the economy.
We believe that Canada is ideally positioned to become the North American leader in research and value mobilization with the European Union’s initiatives for Industry 5.0. To do this, we need to collaborate directly with leading-edge European Union research initiatives that are establishing practices and strategies to prepare workers to address and fill skills gaps. One of the key challenges will be to adapt EU research insights and exemplary practices for Canadian workforce contexts and to demonstrate value for industry partners.
The best discussions we have encountered on these issues are happening in the European research projects advancing Industry 5.0 within the EU’s Horizon Europe research program. We are building a collaborative relationship with the EU’s Bridges 5.0 project, whose mission is to “build accelerated pathways to Industry 5.0”, with a short-term focus on Workplace Skills for Industry 5.0. The Appendix below highlights some of this work with illustrative references from key projects in the EU Industry 5.0 research program
We have been building strong relationships with some of the leaders of this project, building on their participation in our 2022-23 project with the Future Skills Centre and Canadian workplace partners on Inclusive Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work. The Workplace Innovation Network for Canada has also been invited to become a member of the EU Workplace Innovation Network and to collaborate with Bridges 5.0 in future Horizon Europe research projects.
We are currently pursuing this opportunity in a collaboration project with Canadian workplace partners, Bridges 5.0 and other related EU research projects to advance Industry 5.0. The focus of the research is Workplace Innovation Skills for Industry 5.0: Research Review & Case Stories Development.
Our proposed approach involves stakeholder consultations with Canadian workplace partners to determine needs, priorities and opportunities for collaboration with EU partners on shaping Workplace Innovation Skills for Industry 5.0. We will leverage our Canadian strengths in workforce development – largely in manufacturing sectors – to develop initial case story examples and pilot tests. We have a pan-Canadian set of partners in postsecondary education ready to deploy the resulting research review insights and case story resources and to foster further adaptations for wider use in Canada.
As our first contribution to the EU work, we have proposed the development of Case Story learning resources to be incorporated into the Open Educational Resources on Inclusive Workplace Innovation being created and shared by our diverse academic collaboration from across Canada. These resources can be used with both New Workforce Entrants (in post-secondary education contexts) and Employee Upskilling (in workplace contexts).
This Case Story development is expected to initially focus on Inclusive Workplace Innovation for Industry 5.0 in Advanced Manufacturing contexts, using our connections to workplace stakeholders and to partners in post-secondary programs that are ready to be early adopters – and adapters – of the emerging EU Industry 5.0 Skills Models, with both postsecondary students and working learners (including partners in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia).
Finally, we should note that there are many points of intersection between the issues around Workforce Skills for Industry 5.0 sketched out above and other Skills Development issues described in the Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce discussion paper. For example, the role of unions in Workforce Skills Development is also highlighted within the discussion paper:
…Unions play a key intermediary role between employers and workers to support skills development that meets workplace needs. They provide technical training, skills upgrading and occupational health and safety courses, as well as training in foundational and transferable Skills for Success (such as, literacy, numeracy, communication, problem solving). They offer upskilling and mentorship opportunities for unionized apprentices and journeypersons. Unions source significant funding through joint labour-management contributions to training trust funds.
and in the research being carried out in the EU around Workplace Innovation Skills for Industry 5.0. Appendix II below contains selected examples of such research (plus a couple of examples from related Canadian research).
about the author
Dr. Thomas Carey is Principal Catalyst for Academic Partnerships with the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada. He is also currently an Executive-in-Residence for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) and a Research Professor Emeritus at San Diego State University (California, U.S.). Tom was previously a Professor and Associate Vice-President at the University of Waterloo and a Visiting Scholar at IBM Canada’s Centre for Advanced Studies.
Credits:
The “Industry 5.0” graphic above is an excerpt from the infographic Industry 5.0 – Human-centric, sustainable and resilient, European Commission: Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Publications Office, 2020, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/073781
Appendix I: Selected EU References on Workplace Innovation Skills for Industry 5.0
(Note that many of these are “grey literature” references, outside of established publishing channels and often not yet having been subject to third-party peer review.)
AI REDGIO 5.0 (2024) What is the role of humans and AI in collaborative intelligence teams for Industry 5.0? RU AI-REDGIO 5.0 Project Briefing Note.
Prospects5.0 (2024) Progress Towards Industry 5.0: A Smart Study on Analysis and
Identification of Practices, Drivers, Success Factors and Obstacles of Transitions Towards Industry 5. EU Prospects project report.
Hepworth, M. and Land, C. (2024) Empowering Human Skills: A Collaborative Approach to Technology and Workforce Integration. November 11, 2024. EU Up–Skill Project Report.
Bal, M., Dunne, A., and Lenaerts, K. (2024) Summary of Stakeholder Workshop for “Building strong alliances around Industry 5.0”. EU Bridges WP 7 Task 7.2, October 2, 2024.
EU Industry 5.0 Community of Practice (2023) Terms of Reference. June 1, 2023
Land, C. (2024). Work, Skill, and ‘the human’ at the centre of industry 5.0. EU Bridges 5.0 Webinar. May 31, 2024.
Schnobrich-Cakelja, J. (2024). Which competences will be needed by manufacturing companies in the future? EU Bridges 5.0 blog post, May 15, 2024.
D’souza, C. P., & Tapas, P. (2024). Diversity 5.0 framework: managing innovation in Industry 5.0 through diversity and inclusion. European Journal of Innovation Management.
Oeij, P. (2023) Workplace Innovation, Industry 5.0 Style. EU Bridges 5.0 Webinar, November 23, 2023
AI–Prism (2023) Smart manufacturing with human–robot cooperation: Social sciences and humanities applied to collaborative robotics.