The labour shortage horror stories just keep on coming. McDonald’s in Jasper and Wendy’s in Brooks, Alberta closed for good, due to lack of staff. A hotel in Fort McMurray had 11 of 15 front desk staff raided by a new Wal-Mart, offering them $4 more per hour. And BC Premier Gordon Campbell has announced that his province expects to be short 84,000 workers by 2010, when the province will be front and centre of the world on the Olympic stage. In the face of adversity, employers and recruiters are beginning to think laterally.
Not that long ago, the labour pool consisted primarily of young people. But those young people are scarce these days. As Don Sroka, who owns a dozen Alberta Smitty’s restaurants, says: “Sixty years ago people had six children. Forty years ago, they had four. And 20 years ago they had two. The people just aren’t there!”
Even if they were, they are a challenging group to deal with, according to Dr. Linda Duxbury, a key speaker at ARFEX, the Alberta Restaurant and Foodservices Association’s (ARFA’s) annual conference. Work is not the be all and end all for them. They will take instruction, but don’t like the Baby Boom generation.
Dr. Duxbury’s solution is to take a page from Home Depot’s book. The hardware giant has partnered with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to recruit and hire older workers at its 1,700 stores. Home Depot says it values the strong work ethic, maturity and leadership those workers can provide. Seventy-eight per cent of workers want to continue working in some capacity in their retirement years, according to a recent U.S. survey by Towers Perrin. And apparently part time, flexible and seasonal jobs — such as our industry offers — are just their cup of tea.
Both Alberta and BC are lobbying strenuously to get more foreign workers. In Edmonton, a group calling itself the “Pieces of Eight” committee, headed by Barbara Smyth of The Sroka Group and Carolyn Bennett of Alberta Human Resources and Employment (AHRE), meet every six weeks to discuss solutions to the worker shortage. Starting with eight members (hence the name), they have now grown to include 27 people, including representatives from chains such as Boston Pizza and Chilli’s.
As PRN went to press, Don Sroka was meeting with MPP Peter Golding on the subject of foreign workers. “There is so much red tape,” he says. “I have 150 chefs from five star hotels in other countries begging for five months to get in. I have 12 locations with 727 positions, and we’re 150 staff short. That’s 12 per store — that’s how serious it is.”
In BC, go2, a British Columbia tourism industry human resource association, has a whole section of its Web site devoted to “untapped labour sources.” It also heads up a province-wide campaign, called MOVE ON UP which includes radio and print advertising, public relations initiatives, attendance at provincial career fairs and presentations to high schools, colleges and agencies representing immigrant, aboriginal and other under-represented labour groups.
go2 says that recruiting foreign workers from overseas is difficult due to current immigration policies, and suggests recruiting immigrants that are already in BC. That province’s Premier, Gordon Campbell, has suggested leveraging the language skills of these existing immigrants, specifically those who speak Chinese and Indian dialects, to help attract tourists from the burgeoning middle classes of China and India.
On the positive side, the federal government’s announcement that it will allow foreign students to work off campus offers some hope of a new labour pool for operators located in college and university towns.
Hiring disabled workers is another alternative. Certainly, unemployment rates are high among this group. ARFA pegs the number at 40 per cent of the disabled who are ‘willing and able to work”. In BC, go2 puts the number of disabled workers at 500,000 or 14 per cent of the province’s population, “of which 68 per cent of men and 59 per cent of women are not employed, representing a huge pool of potential resources.”
ARFA and AHRE have headed up an Edmonton initiative over the past few years to employ disabled people. To date, they have placed 110 disabled people in industry jobs, many of whom have stayed with their employers for one to three years.
Hoi-Sin Wee, general manager of the Buchan Hotel in Vancouver’s West End has spoken in glowing terms of his experience with finding and retaining staff through BC’s Development Disabilities Association (DDA).
“They are incredibly dedicated to their work,” Hoi-Sin says. They obviously “look forward to coming in to work. They’re sincere about it.” Often they don’t read or write, so colleagues at the Buchan lend a hand. All this promotes a supportive work environment.
Among the “untapped labour sources” mentioned by go2, is the aboriginal population. Demographics are more favourable among this group. “The Aboriginal population represents the largest untapped labour force in the country and is growing at a rate twice as fast as the non-Aboriginal population,” the go2 Web site states. “The youth population is well-educated and technologically literate, and youth-at-risk make up one third of the labour force aged 15 to 24.”
Chip, chip, chip. We are chipping away at the rock that is the labour shortage. But it’s hard slogging. And there are no miracle solutions.
But there’s always the good old fashioned strategy of creating a work environment that will make good workers come and stay.
“This industry is conducive to fun,” said Joe Becigneul of Connect Logistics at Dr. Duxbury’s ARFEX seminar. And Dr. Duxbury urged hospitality industry companies to emulate West Jet, with its lively and funky approach to customer service, or Lick’s, the Toronto-based homeburger chain where counter staff are encouraged to sing and throw food items down the line to their co-workers.
So how can we fill those empty positions? With a lot of lateral thinking. With creative and flexible employment situations tailored to the needs of untapped labour groups. And by working to hook people on the fast-paced, energetic, lively and people-oriented world that makes up the hospitality industry.
Excerpted from. ‘Chipping away at the labour shortage’ by Colleen Isherwood, Editor, Pacific/Prairie Restaurant News, June 2006.
