My perspective - It may take a village

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Published on Friday, December 4, 2015

By Kate Jackman-Atkinson

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

Employees are a vital asset, but finding qualified employees is a challenge faced by many Canadian businesses. For a great number, it’s the single largest challenge they face. 

In a 2014 survey, 38 per cent of Canadian small business owners said that finding qualified employees would be their biggest challenge in 2015. For them, staffing was a bigger challenge than getting new customers (34 per cent), increased competition (20 per cent), government regulations (16 per cent) or taxes (15 per cent). 

The business owners also reported that their major focus for 2015 would be hiring new employees. This priority tied with cutting expenses to take the top spot. Most weeks, this truth can be seen in the help wanted section of the paper.

Given the issue’s importance, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) monitors this challenge.  They recently released their latest Help Wanted report, which looks at job vacancies across the country. The most recent report found that approximately 326,600 full time, part time and temporary positions remain unfilled across the country due to a lack of qualified candidates. This number accounts for 2.6 per cent of all jobs in Canada. In Manitoba, the vacancy rate fell slightly to 2.5 per cent, representing 10,400 unfilled positions. The rate has been more or less holding steady in this province.

Industry also plays a factor in vacancies.  In the Help Wanted study, service sector vacancy rates rose modestly, while goods producers have seen a decline. Vacancies in micro businesses, those with one to four employees, were more than double those in large enterprises, those with 500 or more employees.

This pressure isn’t expected to ease up. In June 24, 2014, Canadian Business published a report titled “Why hiring the right employee is about to get even harder”.  The article pointed to a shrinking workforce.  Stats Canada reports that over the next decade, the number of people entering the workforce (aged 15 to 24) will drop below the number of people exiting the workforce (aged 55 to 64). The most optimistic outlook points to a return of one new worker for every retiree in the late 2020s. The ratio of people entering the workforce to those leaving has been on a steady decline, with a couple of peaks, since 1931. 

These realities combine with other challenges faced by rural businesses.  Not only do they have a smaller pool of prospective employees from which to draw, but they also face additional challenges when it comes to recruiting employees from outside the community.

Despite these challenges, meeting staffing needs is vital to the success of rural areas. Properly staffed companies provide employment to residents and economic well-being to communities. Addressing this challenge will require a multi-faceted approach. 

Businesses are struggling to find qualified employees and this problem can be addressed in a variety of ways.  For some businesses, it will require higher level initiatives to interest people in pre-employment training or education in a certain field. For example, it might require talking to high school students about a particular industry or profession.  For some businesses, it will require investing in new employees through in-house training.

 For some business owners, addressing the challenge will require more formal or informal education about human resources.  Most small business owners aren’t experts at HR functions and may struggle to know in which areas they can compromise from their ideal candidate. They may not yet be skilled at developing pipelines to attract talent or recognizing potential. 

For some businesses, the problem can’t be solved and it will mean doing more with less by changing processes, improving efficiency or missing out on growth opportunities.

For rural communities, addressing this challenge will take a village. It will require a concerted effort at marketing the community as place in which people want to re-locate, and more importantly, stay.