Amrit Ahluwalia (Western University) on Higher Ed and Industry: Fueling Growth Through Talent Pipelines

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Amrit Ahluwalia to discuss the critical role of regional talent pipelines in driving economic mobility and the challenges of fostering effective collaboration between higher ed institutions and industry partners.

Transcript

*To view the CAUCE Executive Guide, see here.

Voiceover: Welcome to Illumination by Modern Campus, the leading podcast focused on transformation and change in the higher education space. On today’s episode, we speak with Amrit Ahluwalia, who is Executive Director of Continuing Studies at Western University. Amrit and podcast host Shauna Cox discuss the critical role of regional talent pipelines in driving economic mobility and the challenges of fostering effective collaboration between higher ed institutions and industry partners.

Shauna Cox (00:02):Amrit. Welcome back to the Illumination Podcast.

Amrit Ahluwalia (00:05):Hi Shauna. How you doing?

Shauna Cox (00:07):I am so good. We are thrilled to have you here yet again on our podcast to explore that critical topic of creating regional talent pipelines. So let's kick off the conversation with why is the talent pipeline such an important consideration for businesses looking to establish operating facilities?

Amrit Ahluwalia (00:27):Yeah, absolutely, and I want to guess give a little context to the discussion before diving into that because I think it is such an important topic and it comes back to this kind of core question about what we're doing in Canadian continuing education in general to support our economy and to support some of the changes that are happening in cities and regions across this country. University continuing education plays such a core role in the work that different communities are trying to do to create economic mobility, to improve local salaries, to create more job opportunities, and it tends to fly under the radar. So I just want to shout out very briefly, my colleagues at K Canadian Association for University continuing education. We published this year kind of an ebook or an executive guide, call it What You Will, just kind of overviewing a lot of these transformations that are happening in the Canadian economy that are being driven by or supported by Canadian Continuing Education.

(01:26):And this is kind of a core topic there. One of the things that we see in London is a massive, massive increase in transformation in the manufacturing sector sector. So we have a huge Volkswagen battery plant that's going in about 20, 30 minutes south of town in a community called St. Thomas, and it's going to employ tens of thousands of people and it's going to transform the face of electric vehicles in Canada. It's going to create so many opportunities, not just for jobs in this region, but then for economic activity in this region via so many engagements with suppliers and the creation of supply chains that are going to span the entire province. There's huge opportunity. And one of the things that made this community so attractive to them was this kind of two-sided coin of what the university can offer. On the one hand, we have groundbreaking research facilities, we have transformative work happening in the automotive sector.

(02:29):We have research happening in chemistry and engineering in all these fields that are core to the work that happens at that kind of a facility. And on the other side, we offer incredible training and upskilling because the only way that you can build a workforce that's adaptable in a market that's constantly transforming is by ensuring that they have access to the learning facilities that are going to help them keep pace with that change. So we're finding that we can start to play a really, really key role in educating the labor market and creating in partnership with our colleagues at the local college, which here is Fanshaw can start to create the capacity to educate people to be work ready when these kinds of facilities open up. And ultimately, we tend to talk about things like attracting businesses or attracting industries in the theoretical lens. So we talk about it through the lens of like, ah, we're going to attract a business here and we're going to create tax incentives to make it easier for them to set up shop.

(03:41):And we do quite a lot in London to attract really, really great industry to this community. But the business will not set up shop here if they cannot employ enough people that's going to make the thing work. And as technology changes, as businesses become more and more complex and more and more challenging to operate in, it's not just a matter of anyone can just walk in off the street and start working. Generally speaking, there's a lot that goes into being able to be successful in any role. So it's not just a matter of setting up a building and hoping for the best. You also have to ensure that you have a talented workforce that's going to support the success of that business. And this is where talent pipeline starts to become a huge priority for prospective employers.

Shauna Cox (04:27):And you mentioned the complexity that an industry have in and of itself and higher ed, that's its own ecosystem there. Higher ed is its own complex ecosystem on its own. Now when you're looking at these talent pipelines and you're bringing things together, you're bringing two very complex ecosystems and trying to bridge them clearly with all the multi components and stakeholders and everything that goes into that. It's not just an overnight thing. So what are some of the most common challenges that you're seeing industry face when they're trying to collaborate with those higher ed institutions?

Amrit Ahluwalia (05:05):Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's I think a long and storied series of challenges that exist when industry and higher ed try to collaborate. And I think an important starting point is to recognize that both parties typically want the same thing, but we tend to have very specific cultures and very specific environments that can make those collaborations challenging. So ultimately I think part of what we're trying to overcome is from industry's perspective, post-secondary institutions can be complex places to work with. Universities for the most part have grown very organically over in some cases hundreds of years. Western University specifically, again here in London, we were founded in 1878, we're coming up on 146 years of history. And what that means is that you have really deep expertise in a number of critical fields. You have a very real impact on the transformation of a society and of a community.

(06:11):What that also means though is that the ties that combined a very cohesive business don't necessarily exist between the various parts of our organization. So one issue that many employers will typically have is when they're trying to work with a university, they might need six different contacts in order to get one project off the ground and they might need to work independently with those six different bodies. And there's sort of this perception that within the university they operate almost totally independently, which in some cases is true. In some cases it's not. But that's absolutely the perception that universities have a tendency to have every department cavalierly doing what it will. So I'd say that's probably the most common challenge that industry tends to have when they're trying to work with a university is just this sort of real lack of understanding as to sort of how to actually build a relationship with the institution. The other, and it's a little more operational frankly, but once you have the partnership in place, one challenge that an employer will tend to point to is that why do I have to give my employer social insurance number for them to register in a training

Amrit Ahluwalia (07:35):Or why can't you just bill us? Why can't you just send an invoice? Universities, especially in the more traditional side of the academy, tend to be set up to serve an 18-year-old who's coming in for a four year degree program. And there's a very sort of robust and rigid way that you sort engage those students, that you bring them in, that you serve them, that you…the corporate training sphere, that's not the nature of the relationship. So either an institution will sometimes try to sort of shoehorn the business into the same operational ecosystem that they serve 18 year olds with, or they'll try to build something from the ground up that's not particularly cohesive, not particularly effective, relies a lot on human effort, and as a result, you have a lot of errors that can be part of that. So I think those are, from the strategic perspective, I think it's figuring out who's the right person to work with. From the operational perspective, it's recognizing that you have sort of a very distinct way of doing business that doesn't necessarily map to what industry is actually looking for from a training partner.

Shauna Cox (08:46):In talking about the broader institution, I want to expand on some points you made there and deep dive into the continuing ed space. Obviously that is your area of expertise. So why do professional and continuing education divisions typically avoid these pitfalls?

Amrit Ahluwalia (09:04):Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it starts with this perception that the folks we serve are customers.

(09:09):I think that mentality really changes the way that we build our operational ecosystems. So rather than looking at our corporate partners as just any other student and sort of running them through the same gauntlet that we tee up for everyone else, we want to work with our corporate partners to understand what are your learning needs and how can we build or tailor a series of offerings to really serve those needs at points in time that are necessary. So in the design of the programming itself, it's ideally oriented to the stated learning outcomes that the employer is trying to achieve for their teams. Then from the customer experience perspective, we're oriented to an e-commerce style checkout system. We really want to make the process of finding, registering and paying for courses as seamless as possible because to my mind, if someone has six hours, say in a week that's available to them to not be at work, to not be taking care of their family, to not be doing the things they need to do, but they have six hours in the week that they're going to dedicate to school, the last thing I want is for four hours of those six hours to go to administrivia, if you have six hours to dedicate to your learning, those six hours need to be dedicated to learning.

(10:33):I will accept that half an hour may go to bureaucracy, but it can't be a significant chunk of that six hours. So I think those are at a cultural level. Those are the few of the ways that we start to overcome those issues. And then that plays out in a better customer experience, a more streamlined engagement for the learner themselves, more streamlined engagement for the employer. I think one of the unique ways that continuing ed divisions tend to work is by positioning ourselves and thinking of ourselves as relationship managers for the institution. So as opposed to creating an environment where an employer needs to have six individual relationships with six individual stakeholders in different parts of the institution, all of whom work differently, we very much see our job in continuing studies at Western, certainly as a single point of contact for the employer. Our job is to wrangle and simplify the experience with the university.

(11:34):Our job is to bring the expertise and the knowledge of the institution to bear and to contextualize it in a way that makes sense for the employer. The employer's job is to be the employer. That's what they're there to do. Our job is to make the university make sense for them. So I think as we start to really think about how we're going to redefine our culture as it relates to corporate engagement and as it relates to professional education, that starts to play out in these very operational channels that are ultimately going to create an environment that for employers that they actually want to work in, that they want to be successful in, that they look to us as a learning partner rather than to private providers or to hacking it together and hoping for the best they actually want to work with us because we make that easier for them. And at the same time, the university has a huge amount of knowledge and expertise. The university exists for the production of new knowledge and expertise and being able to create access to that, but in a way that's contextualized for the things that the employer needs is transformational. So we also want to make sure that that's a front and center component of our differentiator as a learning provider. And ultimately it plays into this bigger question of is how does the university support its local community. 

Shauna Cox (12:52):Well, at looking at industry and looking at higher ed, at least on the surface, it's a very natural partnership that can happen. And as you mentioned, all of those reasons with the customer mindset and really focused on the student experience, the continuing education division really lends itself to being that firsthand of the institution that is extending itself out to partners and things like that. So we kind of laid out the surface there, but I want to get down to the tactical, tangible items that the listeners can take away with them and ask, how can these professional continuing education divisions that are so set up for strong partnerships with industry work to attract businesses and industry to their regions?

Amrit Ahluwalia (13:42):Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the coalescence of all that work, right? This is the rubber hitting the road. We're becoming an EV hub, so I'm going to be very car oriented for the next decade or so. But the reality of it is we need to be part of those conversations. We need to be working with our local chambers of commerce, our local economic development committee councils, to make sure that there's visibility to what a continuing education division can do to create and sustain a workforce. I think we're, again, very, very fortunate in London. The London Economic Development Council is really, really, really actively engaged with post-secondary providers in this community and position us as a differentiator for the community when it comes to attracting businesses. And we've been incredibly successful at attracting businesses to this community. There's excellence in advanced manufacturing and AgriFood in technology.

(14:49):We have incredible and scaling businesses in this community that were attracted here because of our capacity to educate and sustain a labor force. Anyone who's heard me talk for more than five minutes knows that at some point I'm going to raise Moore's Law, which is the idea. I know that one all too well. I have to hope. So, computing powers doubles every 18 months, and as generative AI becomes more and more and more powerful, there's actually a thesis that 18 months is too slow, that computing power is going to be doubling in significantly faster than that. And so we've historically talked about this idea that in order to keep pace with the rate of change of technology, employees need to be engaged in continuous learning just to keep pace with their jobs. That's more important than ever. And the reality of it is that when you're talking about an augmented workforce that's able to leverage technology and work with technology and collaborate with technology, you're almost in this situation now where every single employee at every phase of the employment chain is a manager.

(16:02):Every single person's a manager because you're now managing a team of technology tools that are helping you to achieve the outcomes you need to achieve in order to support the whole, in order to support the broader process. Even if you are working on a shop floor, you're managing multiple machines, you're managing machines, you're not the machine itself. And that's a huge, huge, huge variation from the way that work has happened historically. So what it takes to start creating a labor force that's able to be immediately successful in that environment first and then is able to continue to adapt to changes over time requires a very different approach to talent development and labor management than we've had historically. So from our perspective, all the good things we do to work with employers to create programming that sustains them to ensure that programming is relevant becomes more important than ever. As we start to think about what the future of work looks like, because it's really, the technical skills are important, and they've always been important. They will always be important, but the nature of technical skills is totally transforming the reality of technical skills is that the skills themselves are going to continue to evolve very, very, very fast. So it's not even necessarily about teaching people how to use tools, it's about teaching people how to learn how to use tools themselves.

(17:31):Because if you are reliant on a six week course to learn how to use a tool, six weeks is what? 10%, 12% of a year. So if it takes you 12% of a year to learn how to use a tool in an environment where technology change, computing power doubles in a year, it's not fast enough to keep pace. So what we have to be doing is teaching people learn how to understand the nature of the technology itself so that they're able to, as technology changes, keep pace with that adaptation on their own terms, and then recognize when a formal learning engagement is required to help them upskill. So it all kind of comes back to this core question of what are we as post-secondaries doing to make sure that industry, when they're considering a place to set up shop, knows that they're going to have a learning partner that's as focused on their success as they are. And that's where professional continuing education divisions can take a leading role.

Shauna Cox (18:38):Absolutely. Well, those are all the questions I have for you. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. I know you did mention in the beginning your year review with the OR CA's year in review on important topics such as the regional talent pipelines. CA is of course a good partner of the evolution, so listeners can stay tuned and maybe throughout the next couple months, a year or so, they're going to be hearing more on these important topics that you guys have also covered. So again, thank you so much for your time, but of course you know the rules before I let you go, we're going to need a restaurant recommendation. And I know that you've been on here multiple times, it's not as easy to just pick a place. So wish you all the best. Where do people need to go?

Amrit Ahluwalia (19:29):Absolutely. I mean, so every time I've joined you since joining Western University, I've shouted out the same restaurant, which is Pizzeria Madre in London, Ontario, and I will continue to shout out Pizzeria in London, Ontario. It's one of the best restaurants I've ever been to, period. Full stop. Right? That's at its point. Now, I do feel like I owe you a different restaurant recommendation.

And I'm going to go back to in Toronto, I lived at Midtown. That's where our offices, our evolution offices are headquartered, was right in Midtown. So at Young and Eglinton, if you walk about two blocks north, there's a restaurant called Gratzi, and it is just so comfortable and so warm and so inviting, and they just do pasta and it's all they really do well. It's not the best restaurant you'll ever go to. It's not going to knock your socks off. Toronto's a town with incredible Italian food, and frankly, you can probably get fancier better or more polished meals elsewhere, but you won't get a better bowl of pasta in a better sort of more comfortable environment than you will get at G Grazi. So that's a weird restaurant recommendation because the reality of it is if you really look, if you Google, you will find better food in Toronto. If you just want to feel cozy and comfortable and happy, go to Razzi and get a bowl of pasta vodka.

Shauna Cox (20:54):Yeah, amazing. Well, I mean, to me, when you go to a restaurant, part of it is the atmosphere and the experience and then the good food, obviously. But atmosphere really plays a big part of it, so. Awesome. That sounds great. I appreciate the different restaurant recommendations.

Amrit Ahluwalia (21:12):Thanks for inviting me on, Shauna, I appreciate you.