Insights from the Igniting Potential: Youth Employment Summit
When many organizations share responsibility for a workforce challenge, leaders need to see how the whole system is functioning before deciding what to do next.
Across Saskatchewan, employers, educators, governments, Indigenous organizations, and community leaders are working to improve youth employment outcomes. Their efforts span different mandates, regions, funding structures, and parts of the education and employment system.
Challenge Factory partnered with the Saskatoon Industry Education Council (SIEC) to design a structured Summit that brought those perspectives together.
More than 125 leaders identified where they can act within their own roles, where progress depends on others, and which conditions remain beyond any one organization’s control.
The report reveals a central tension: organizations are making progress within programs and services, while the broader conditions shaping youth employment outcomes remain difficult to influence.
Insights from the Igniting Potential Youth Employment Summit – Challenge Factory & SIEC
Participants from across the system
The Summit created a shared evidence base from across Saskatchewan’s youth employment system.
125+ leaders
84 organizations
19 industries
4 Deputy Ministers
947 structured data points
What the report helps you see
Where progress is possible right now
The areas where organizations believe they can take practical action within their existing roles, resources, and mandates.
Where coordination is required
The issues that depend on employers, educators, governments, community organizations, Indigenous authorities, and other interest holders moving together.
Where broader system conditions constrain progress
The funding, coordination, labour market, data, and policy conditions that participants experienced as beyond the reach of any one organization.
What participants believe a stronger system requires
More connected pathways, earlier exposure to career options, consistent employer involvement, experiential learning, equitable access, and stronger coordination across the system.
A Summit designed to generate system intelligence
The Summit was structured to produce more than discussion.
Participants examined the youth employment ecosystem, explored how young people experience different pathways, identified where influence sits, and described the conditions of a stronger system.
Challenge Factory then analyzed 947 structured inputs across sectors, roles, and activities to identify recurring patterns, areas of influence, and constraints requiring broader coordination.
The result is a shared, directional view of how Saskatchewan’s youth employment system is currently experienced.
The report does not claim to provide a complete system diagnosis or a set of recommendations. It gives leaders a stronger evidence base for deciding what should happen next.
When a clear systems view is needed
This systems-based approach is useful when:
- many organizations are working on the same workforce challenge
- activity is widespread, but results remain fragmented
- leaders hold different views of the underlying problem
- a strategy or action plan is being considered without a shared evidence base
Challenge Factory helps governments and cross-sector leaders make complex workforce systems visible, generate shared intelligence, and identify where deeper diagnosis, stronger coordination, or more focused intervention may be needed.
Who this report is for
This report is for leaders working across:
- employment and workforce development
- K–12 and post-secondary education
- government and public policy
- First Nations and Métis organizations and authorities
- community and youth-serving organizations
- industry and economic development
Use it to examine where your organization has influence, how your work connects to others, and which challenges cannot be addressed through isolated action.
See what becomes visible when a workforce challenge is examined as a system
Explore why widespread effort is not yet accumulating into consistent system-wide progress, and what participants believe a stronger youth employment system would require.
Insights from the Igniting Potential Youth Employment Summit – Challenge Factory & SIEC
Partners
We gratefully acknowledge the Government of Saskatchewan for funding this project.
