The bank for Canadian entrepreneurs has made it official: there is a labour shortage in Canada. According to a study released in September 2021 by the BDC, 55% of Canadian entrepreneurs are struggling to hire the workers they need to sustain growth.
Recruitment and retention in a post-COVID era means relearning how to recruit on some level. It also means learning how to retain employees you’ve attracted. Worker shortages mean you might not get new hires who can just walk in and know all about your business. They’ll need some guidance and consistent training to get on board faster. That’s where your legacy employees come in, and employers must work hard to retain them, their skill set and their knowledge.
A short talent supply means you have to exert more effort to recruit good, qualified staff. Here are some recruiting tips: a good hire should not be based on luck. Know what you want and what you have to offer (this is huge because workers expect quality from the employers so they can give quality in return).
There are so many employers looking to recruit new staff that you need to stand out in the crowd, especially because the process for finding new staff has changed drastically over the last few years and over the course of the pandemic. Much like with sales, by putting your business in front of the right people, you’ll get your vacancies filled, your business will be more productive, and your new employees will thrive. Here are some recruitment tips to help you compete.
The Fleming Employment Hub, created by Muskoka-Kawarthas Employment Services, provides access to FREE training courses to support leadership and enhance the workplace. The Muskokas-Kawarthas Employment Service is a one-stop service for employers and job seekers to find opportunities for sustainable employment, build prosperity, and strengthen the regional economy.
This feature originally appeared in Eastern Workforce Innovation Board’s October 2021 Newsletter, with thanks to the author Diane Soucie.
There are many business resources available to employers who are hiring, looking for grants and funding, training opportunities, and more. But the seemingly simple job of finding all these resources is quite a long research process. To continue to facilitate recruitment and retention in eastern Ontario for all employers, we’ve compiled a list of 7 business resources to help you grow your business.
First Nations, Metis, and Inuit youth are the fastest-growing age group in Canada, but they are a demographic that is commonly excluded from the workforce. Indigenous people make up 4.9% of the population, and while 1.6% of this group who are aged 25-54 have a college diploma, most have 5-10 years of work experience. This gap in perceived expertise or training, along with bias and discrimination in hiring practices, might be some of the factors keeping Indigenous people from the workforce.
Rate the work-life balance of your employees, and their access to skills development and career planning, on a scale from 1 to 10. Chances are your rating is already pretty high. But if you knew that these factors are some of the most important for job seekers when they’re looking for a new job, would you say your rating is high enough?
Labour market information (LMI) is data gold for the eastern Ontario workforce. Besides providing timely and accurate information about the labour market in our region, the data is used to respond to community needs to optimize the workforce landscape for employers and job seekers in the future.
