Small- to medium- enterprise (SME) employers often find themselves stuck: employers can’t justify the expense of staffing a human resources (HR) department, but doing the HR work – including hiring, recruitment, and retention – themselves requires a lot of time and energy and can often be cumbersome for business owners who aren’t trained in HR practices.
Just as the trades require specialized training, so does human resources. But what can employers do? How can employers get unstuck and justify the cost while still finding human resources support?
Get unstuck. Get hiring help from the hidden workforce:
Fran Hanover, BR&E Coordinator for the City of North Bay’s Economic Development Office, has a solution:
"The purpose of Business Retention and Expansion or BR&E is to strengthen the connection between businesses and the community, and help those businesses grow. Economic Development Officers (EDOs) gain insight into business practices, plan future actions, and identify challenges through the use of direct interaction, events, surveys, and research. EDOs take this data and use it to provide services, programs, and products to address problems."
City of North Bay Used BR&E to Give Human Resources Support
As experts in your business and industry, you may feel as an employer that you know how to hire and recruit, but unless your expertise or “skilled trade” is in HR, that may not actually be the case.
Hanover used the BR&E process to find a way to help employers get better at HR, by contracting an HR consultant to conduct a gap analysis across 35 City of North Bay businesses. Some of those 35 businesses saw immediate results. “One of our businesses had been searching for over a year to fill a key position,” Hanover said. “But they felt that there was no one out there.” Then, the HR consultant came in and hired someone within a few weeks. Through this BR&E process, these City of North Bay businesses were also given an introduction to the value of HR and were taught the recruitment process from start to finish:
- job ads
- phone screenings
- interviews
- onboarding
- benefits packages
An Eastern Ontario Connection to Human Resources Support
Eastern Ontario’s own City of Belleville conducted its own BR&E process this past year and the Belleville Local Immigration Partnership (LIP) provided input. The result: improved solutions and results.
What can you learn from your LIP?
The BR&E process showed how newcomers can be better integrated into the community and work, what employers need, how to help employers hire newcomers already in the community, help newcomers better understand the onboarding process, and help employers understand how to recruit and retain newcomers who are transitioning from temporary to permanent residency.
Connect with highly skilled newcomers in the region:
So, How Does This Help You?
Hanover was surprised to learn that many manufacturers in her region had never worked with an EDO. It meant many employers had no access to the important human resources support and other resources they needed.
If you’re an eastern Ontario employer, don’t wait any longer. EDOs exist to help your business grow. Reach out to Ontario East today!
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