• Français
Future Skills Center logo
Français
Polygon Created with Sketch. Home | Research
Research

Skills for the Post-Pandemic World Series

The future of work continues to be a major area of focus for the Future Skills Centre and our partners at the Public Policy Forum and at the Diversity Institute. Indeed, the advent of COVID-19 has steepened trajectories and intensified shifts associated with trends long discussed in the discourse around the future of work, meaning that this work has become more relevant than ever.

The Skills for the Post-Pandemic World project tackles key questions facing policymakers, employers, training providers and workers. It is urgent that society turn to face the fundamental changes in the labour market precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and many players must rise to meet the new conditions of a post-pandemic world.

The pandemic has dragged the future of work into the present: digitization, work from home, and many other long predicted developments are here now, and likely to stay.

Building on the collaborative success of the Skills Next series, the Public Policy Forum (PPF) and the Diversity Institute (DI), and with new support from Microsoft, join us once more to face these rapid societal shifts head-on, with research looking at the future of skills, training and retraining in ways that will chart a path forward as the pandemic continues to unfold.

The goal of this series is to build a robust policy ecosystem that supports the mobility needed for workers and employers to navigate the new reality. The key shifts being created and accelerated by the pandemic, as well as the key research themes for the series, are identified in a scoping report that serves to introduce the project. These eight themes are each explored in separate report focused on the following key topics:

Stay tuned for more information on upcoming convening and consultation events, as well as forthcoming reports.

For more information, please contact Andrée Loucks, Policy Lead at aloucks@ppforum.ca.

The Skills for a Post-Pandemic World series is funded by the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre.

Related Research

Bread field harvesting
Research

Technology and Agriculture: Adoption and Barriers

  • December 2025
  • Diversity Institute
Without explicit educational support, small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) and diverse-owned agribusiness may be left out of the AgTech revolution. Skills-based supports are needed to maintain market competitiveness and ensure technology literacy and adoption issues are equalized—not accentuated—among groups.
2 Related Reports
Two farmers examining soy crops
Research

Supporting Rural Agriculture Entrepreneurship: Reframing the Discourse

  • December 2025
  • Diversity Institute
This research examined how agriculture sector stereotypes impair the growth and sustainability of the sector. Rural agriculture entrepreneurs face several challenges more than traditional businesses.
2 Related Reports
Worker checks a car during factory assembly
Research

Learning from Place-Based Approaches on the Road to Net Zero : International Lessons in Skills Training and Workforce Development

  • December 2025
  • Institute for Research and Public Policy (IRPP)
Global and Canadian efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and shift away from fossil fuels have created a central policy question: How can workers, sectors and regions adapt and develop the skills needed for a low-carbon future?
1 Related Reports
View all Research