Change Management
By Sandra J. Day

The ability to adapt to meet the needs of the fast changing work place is a vital skill in order to obtain and maintain employment. One can get an idea of the degree of change a young worker entering the workforce today will face by taking a look at the workplace over the last 40 years. The advent of technologies, to name a few, as diverse as widespread jet travel, automated voice mail, credit and debit cards, automatic teller machines, desktop micro computers and the Internet have had a profound impact on virtually every occupation. A less apparent but even more profound impact is a worldwide marketplace where anyone can sell virtually any product or service to anyone else worldwide.

Internet sites such as Commission Junction, in the United States, currently allow for example a person in Prince George to sell everything from airline tickets to consumer electronics, for a company in say the United States or Europe to a client in India or Japan and vice versa. There is no requirement for any capital investment or even in many cases any kind of volume. The eBay site has created a worldwide marketplace for virtually any product or service where none existed before in a matter of only a few years. The implications for both business and their workers of this kind of worldwide competition by what amounts to in many cases multinational small businesses have yet to be seen.

It is very difficult if not impossible to predict the kind of change that a young person will face in the workplace of the future. What is apparent is the kind of tools that a young person entering the workplace will need. The ability to adapt to change requires both an awareness of the kind and degree of change that is actually occurring, together with a lifelong continuing willingness to learn. These kind of skills are vital regardless the type of work or the overall level of formal education. It is our goal at Jump On Board to broaden the horizon of the participants to the realties of the fast changing worldwide workplace. This will provide them with skills and ideas that will significantly increase their chances of obtaining and maintaining employment in the fast changing workplace of tomorrow.