FAQs

Navigar is a smart online skills development planning tool that’s free to PIPSC members.

Whether you want to advance in your current career or pivot to a new profession, Navigar provides the information you need, and a skills development plan tailored to your goals.

With data-backed industry insights into available careers and the future of work, plus knowledge of more than 40,000 available resources: courses, books, audiobooks etc. Navigar helps you plan and advocate for your career development.

Our partners have asked us to use a personal email address to keep your Navigar account separate from any current or future training (personal or  through your employer).

But there are other good reasons for your training information to be linked to a non-work email:

• It ensures that you will continue to have access to Navigar even if you change your job or email address (as long as you’re still a PIPSC member.)
• It ensures  your personal training information remains private. (You can still print out a training plan to share with your employer.)
• Some learning platforms can only link an email address to one email account, so it doesn’t compromise  your employer’s ability to provide you with training through your work email in the future.

If you don’t want to use a personal email address, you can request a PIPSC email or create a new email address dedicated to training, e.g My_IT_Training@gmail.com

To activate your Navigar account go to the Navigar App and select the ‘Create Account’ tab to activate your Navigar account. 

• You’ll need to use a non-work email address not linked to any other active or inactive Pluralsight Plan (even as a secondary email)
• If you don’t want to use a personal email address, you can request a PIPSC email or create a new email address dedicated to training e.g My_IT_Training@gmail.com.
• If you need to update your email on file please let us know at Navigar.ca/contact-us.

The Navigar Skills Learning Platform is a web application that combines expert data on the future of work with PIPSC’s knowledge of labour markets and your deep understanding of your job and career goals.

Navigar helps you create a personalized learning plan, based on your current skills to help you move forward in your career.

Members of the IT Group have had access to Navigar since October, 2024. The cost of accessing all of our training partners is covered by the IT Training Fund that was negotiated into their collective agreement.

As Navigar rolls out to all PIPSC members in 2025, we’ll be advising each group on a case-by-case basis of exactly what their members have access to and if any cost is involved.

Navigar is built in AWS and was designed to autoscale. All backend services (Lambda functions, GraphQl APIs, etc) are serverless – these will scale in real time to whatever capacity is needed to support the load.

Data is stored in DynamoDB tables, which have a predictable response time of 5ms for any indexed data. Scaling to 75,000 members will not be a problem.

Navigar is built on AWS in the Angular Javascript framework. It communicates with the backend through Amplify and GraphQL queries.

The data is stored in a heavily indexed DynamoDB instance, queried with OpenSearch. Authentication is through user pools in Cognito. The data is fully end-to-end encrypted, and managed internally with a serverless architecture using Python in Lambdas along with SNS and SQS.

We have installed a number of monitors to alert us of CPU/RAM over-usage and to highlight any bottlenecks if they occur. We will also continue to revise the caching and indexing as we monitor the system.

Finally, we’re using Point-In-Time recovery on the DynamoDB tables. This gives us a rolling 35 day backup of the data, in addition to the ability to manually trigger table backups.

There are two components in Navigar’s front end that are on our near term roadmap to accelerate.

The searchable catalogs of courses and careers both retrieve the full catalogs before the search can be used. This results in a fully browser-cached – and therefore fast – search and filter functionality, but at the cost of an initial load of a few seconds. This was a good tradeoff when the catalogs were small, and is still quite within UX limits, but we have decided to implement lazy loading, targeted local caching, and backend filtering, to ensure it scales well as the catalogs grow.

No, Navigar is a skills learning platform, designed to help PIPSC members get from where they are in their careers to where they want to go, focusing primarily on growth skills e.g. conflict resolution, creative thinking etc.

Research shows that growth skills are the key skills required to future-proof your career, and will complement any profession-specific training you are pursuing.

Navigar identifies the skills required to bridge the gap, matching relevant courses and training materials to support your career path and goals from Skillsoft (Percipio) and the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS). Language training is also available through goFLUENT.

You can use Navigar to plan your career development in several ways. It allows you to:

• Explore and discover career options relevant to your current skill sets, as well as new career paths.
• Learn about different skills and what courses you need to up-level a specific skill.
• Gain knowledge about the future of work and how to prepare for coming changes. For example, Navigar publishes data-based insights about how trends such as automation and AI will impact specific jobs and lead to the creation of new jobs.
• Identify and visualize the skills and knowledge gaps between where you are in your career today and where you want to go next.
• Prepare a skills development plan and place for you to record all your training.

Navigar was designed to take the guesswork out of planning and pursuing a career; more than 70% of PIPSC members want tangible proactive steps on career development

It was developed based on input and feedback from PIPSC members. We engaged with PIPSC members to understand the challenges they face in planning and navigating their careers. PIPSC members and staff have provided critical input throughout the development of Navigar.

Navigar helps PIPSC realize its vision to provide outstanding career support and advancement to our members so they can thrive in the workforce.

Members of the IT Group have had access to Navigar since October, 2024. The cost of accessing all of our training partners is covered by the IT Training Fund that was negotiated into their collective agreement.

As Navigar rolls out to all PIPSC members in 2025, we’ll be advising each group on a case-by-case basis of exactly what their members have access to and if any cost is involved.

Yes, Navigar’s planning features and insights are free to PIPSC members thanks to funding from the Future Skills Center (FSC) a federal initiative to fund innovation projects to strengthen access to high-quality career advice, skill building resources, and learning.

The training courses that Navigar recommends are offered through our learning partners, starting with skillsoft (Percipio), goFLUENT and the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS).

CSPS courses are offered for free to Federal public servants, and courses through Skillsoft and other learning partners will be available at specially-reduced prices for Navigar users or for free through a special purchase by a member group.

Each learning provider’s pricing and fees will apply. Some may be subscription-based, others may be priced per course, and yet others will be free (for example, courses from the Canadian School of Public Service (CSPS)).

PIPSC works with learning partners to negotiate great deals on courses for PIPSC members.

One advantage of having a concrete skills development plan from Navigar is that you can share it with your employer. It will help you and your manager quantify and justify your training needs and budget.

Our partners have asked us to use a personal email address to keep your Navigar account separate from any current or future training (personal or  through your employer).

But there are other good reasons for your training information to be linked to a non-work email:

• It ensures that you will continue to have access to Navigar even if you change your job or email address (as long as you’re still a PIPSC member.)
• It ensures  your personal training information remains private. (You can still print out a training plan to share with your employer.)
• Some learning platforms can only link an email address to one email account, so it doesn’t compromise  your employer’s ability to provide you with training through your work email in the future.

If you don’t want to use a personal email address, you can request a PIPSC email or create a new email address dedicated to training, e.g My_IT_Training@gmail.com

To activate your Navigar account go to the Navigar App and select the ‘Create Account’ tab to activate your Navigar account. 

• You’ll need to use a non-work email address not linked to any other active or inactive Pluralsight Plan (even as a secondary email)
• If you don’t want to use a personal email address, you can request a PIPSC email or create a new email address dedicated to training e.g My_IT_Training@gmail.com.
• If you need to update your email on file please let us know at Navigar.ca/contact-us.

The Navigar Skills Learning Platform is a web application that combines expert data on the future of work with PIPSC’s knowledge of labour markets and your deep understanding of your job and career goals.

Navigar helps you create a personalized learning plan, based on your current skills to help you move forward in your career.

Navigar is built in AWS and was designed to autoscale. All backend services (Lambda functions, GraphQl APIs, etc) are serverless – these will scale in real time to whatever capacity is needed to support the load.

Data is stored in DynamoDB tables, which have a predictable response time of 5ms for any indexed data. Scaling to 75,000 members will not be a problem.

Navigar is built on AWS in the Angular Javascript framework. It communicates with the backend through Amplify and GraphQL queries.

The data is stored in a heavily indexed DynamoDB instance, queried with OpenSearch. Authentication is through user pools in Cognito. The data is fully end-to-end encrypted, and managed internally with a serverless architecture using Python in Lambdas along with SNS and SQS.

We have installed a number of monitors to alert us of CPU/RAM over-usage and to highlight any bottlenecks if they occur. We will also continue to revise the caching and indexing as we monitor the system.

Finally, we’re using Point-In-Time recovery on the DynamoDB tables. This gives us a rolling 35 day backup of the data, in addition to the ability to manually trigger table backups.

There are two components in Navigar’s front end that are on our near term roadmap to accelerate.

The searchable catalogs of courses and careers both retrieve the full catalogs before the search can be used. This results in a fully browser-cached – and therefore fast – search and filter functionality, but at the cost of an initial load of a few seconds. This was a good tradeoff when the catalogs were small, and is still quite within UX limits, but we have decided to implement lazy loading, targeted local caching, and backend filtering, to ensure it scales well as the catalogs grow.

Yes, Navigar is or will be available for active PIPSC members in good standing.

IT GROUP MEMBERS
Thanks to the IT Training Fund (Collective Agreement), members of the IT Group members training is free to them.

They can access Navigar now with the non-work email address that we have on file by visiting Navigar login page and selecting the ‘Create Account’.

As Navigar rolls out to PIPSC’s other constituent groups in 2025, each member will receive an invitation to join Navigar at the email address that we have on file for you.

Navigar generates a skills profile based on the current job you have identified. The source of this skills profile is  a global database of jobs and skills that have been mapped to your job title.

To get the most from Navigar, you should review your skills profile and update it to ensure it’s accurate. For example, you may have acquired skills from a previous career, an acting role, or a secondment.

By updating your job and skills information in Navigar, the tool will provide the most relevant information for your career planning.

Navigar’s powerful engine gathers, analyzes, and consolidates data from several sources, including:
 

• Labour market trends from Canadian census data.
• Global workforce trends and predictive analysis from Faethm.
• Job-skill requirements for specific roles, also from Faethm.
• PIPSC’s deep knowledge of the Canadian public sector workplace based on its 70,000 members.
• Information about tens of thousands of courses from learning providers, such as Percipio, the Canadian School of Public Service (CSPS), and others.
• Secondary research from a variety of reputable sources, including the World Economic Forum, International Labour Organization, and more.

Navigar considers your current skills profile to recommend roles that you could pivot too with minimal (less than 5 years) of training. Recommendations may include:

• Roles that require similar skills but at a higher degree of expertise.
• Roles with increasing responsibilities, such as Specialist, Manager and Director.
• Other jobs and careers that require skills you already have plus skills you may want to develop.

Navigar compares your current skills profile to the skills profile of your target career.

Navigar then generates a learning plan that addresses the gaps between the skills you have today and what you’ll need to advance in your target job.

Navigar reviews a large inventory of courses available from training providers, Skillsoft (Percipio) and the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS), and curates the offerings into your personalized Learning Plan.

For all members, Navigar offers more than 40,000 courses and training materials from our learning partners:

• Skillsoft for growth skills like strategic planning,  leadership etc.
• Pluralsight for AI training for all roles.
• goFLUENT Language Training in 14 languages including English and French.
• The Canada School of Public Service (CSPS). 

If a group receives training funds, Navigar can include specialized training providers for them. 

Over time, Navigar will partner with other learning providers to expand its training options  to members.

Navigar stores its members’ user data in a document storing cloud platform.

PIPSC implements security measures such as encryption, access controls, and network security to ensure that data is protected from unauthorized access, theft, or loss. PIPSC uses encryption to protect data in transit and at rest.

One of the ways we protect your data is by hashing it. Hashing is a process that converts your data into an unreadable, scrambled format. This means that even if someone were to gain access to our system, they would not be able to read your data in its original form.

We use industry-standard security measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, alteration, or destruction. This includes using encryption technologies, firewalls, and other security measures to safeguard your data.

We do not sell or share your information with any third parties unless required by law.

If you have any questions or concerns about our privacy practices, please contact us.

By using our application, you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in this privacy statement. We reserve the right to make changes to this statement at any time, so please check back periodically for updates.