It doesn’t take much more than a short drive around the Peace Region to notice a common thread: "help wanted" signs.
Some are posted on large billboards outside office buildings. Some are placed discreetly by cash registers. But they all tell the same story of too many jobs and not enough workers.
Jeannette Karasiuk, client services coordinator for WorkBC Fort St. John, said in her 10 years working there, she’s never seen this much help wanted at the same time.
“Right now we have over 300 job openings, and that’s the employers that are willing to post,” said Karasiuk. “There are lots of employers that aren’t posting jobs, just because they aren’t getting any applicants.”
The owner of Windsor Plywood in Dawson Creek, Rudy Van Spronsen, said his company is rarely able to fill positions with skilled employees.
"What that means is we have to put a lot more effort into training, since we don't have any people with past experience," he said, adding that's especially true for sales associates, yard and delivery staff.
And starting positions at Windsor Plywood pay well above minimum wage, he said.
"People with experience in our industry, there are very few. We get people who have experience in similar industries, but even in those cases its few and far between," he said.
For a company that isn’t in oil and gas, like Canfor, it’s a constant problem. The company had a booth set up at the Fort St. John job fair recently, with a smiling human resources manager Tracey Byam sitting behind the table.
“We’re not oil and gas, we’re forestry, so sometimes people don’t think about us. So it’s nice to be here front and centre,” said Byam, who added that recruitment and retention was a problem for the company.
Other companies came to the job fair from hours away to try to find any skilled employees to work for them. Powerstroke Well Control is based out of Grande Prairie, but they’re desperate to find workers.
“Even though I do post Kijiji ads in Grande Prairie, I do get lots of response from B.C., so I was just wondering if we came over here, what response it would get,” said Katy Watson, an HR administrator for Powerstroke, which employs nearly 100 people.
She said retention was definitely an issue on the Alberta side of the Peace as well. “I’m having trouble retaining people, just because in Grande Prairie they can go up the street and find a job as well,” Watson said.
Although numbers can vary wildly, the unemployment rate in the region has hovered around 4%, which the Federal government considers to be “zero unemployment.”
“There’s lots of opportunities in Fort St. John and the region – people don’t have to go anywhere,” Byam said. “They can take chances and try different jobs, different industries, so it really pushes you to do things better every day and to make sure you take care of your people.”
Some of the ways that Canfor takes care of its people, she explained, is by talking to their employees, and including them when they talk about changing processes, really trying hard to engage their employees.
“That’s what keeps people interested in the job they’re in,” said Byam.
The Fort St. John Association for Community Living (FSJACL) also had a booth set up at the job fair, both looking to recruit workers and talking to recruiters, hoping to find jobs for their clients.
The FSJACL is a nonprofit that provides services, including employment assistance, to adults with developmental disabilities.
“It’s hard because with the oilfields, it’s all on-site, but even in the offices and stuff, they look for certain positions,” said Sheri Ashdown, supported employment coordinator for the FSJACL. However, she said that they’ve been more successful in the past year than ever before, some companies even calling them asking for labour.
The FSJACL employs approximately 50 staff of its own, but Trina Blank, HR and office supervisor, said they could use 20 more.
“Out of every 10 interviews I do, usually only five of those people actually start working for us, because they end up going somewhere else or something happens,” said Blank. “HR is a full-time job in this industry.”
Some companies have found a mix that helps them retain workers.
Shelley Milne, who owns Action Health and Safety in Dawson Creek, said her company manages to bring back workers year after year – despite the part-time, temporary nature of paramedic work.
They recruit locally where they can, and provide crew housing for out-of-town hires, she said.
"Once they're here, they tend to stay long term," said Milne, who added that some employees have been with the company as long as 18 years.
"We're a long-term company – we have a solid reputation and treat workers fairly, so people come back to work for us over and over," she added.
Another solution for some is to hire temporary foreign workers. But that’s easier said than done, especially since the Federal program that oversees hiring overseas labour underwent some changes that were designed to ensure that the program was a last resort for employers.
Linda Patterson owns the Dairy Queen in Fort St. John with her husband. They wanted to get temporary foreign workers into staff positions that locals weren’t taking, but said the process wasn’t going very well. They originally applied to get two workers for the kitchen – a year and a half ago. They’ve been back and forth with paperwork ever since.
“What we found is that we would get one official immigration person, and then the paperwork got shuffled, and then the paperwork got shuffled. Oh, it was wretched,” said Patterson.
New changes came into effect over the summer, raising the administration fee from $275 to $1,000 per worker, limiting the percentage of foreign workers a business is allowed to employ, and making the process for verifying that foreign help is needed more rigourous.
But Patterson said she doesn’t even know where they stand with their previous application. “We’re still a little confused,” she said.
Dairy Queen managed to staff the restaurant with foreign students, Patterson said, as they don’t require a special visa as long as they work under a certain number of hours per week.
According to a CBC report, the number of applications for foreign workers was down 75% for July and August from the same time last year.
“I’ve had a ‘Help Wanted’ sign on my front counter and on my door for ... basically four years,” Patterson said. “It’s been tough, it really has. My husband says it’s probably going to get worse, but right now this summer we’ve been lucky.”
There was one company who had a booth at the job fair that wasn’t worried about the labour shortage.
“It’s not difficult to recruit – we get lots of applications in every single day,” said Amber Achtemichuk, personnel recruiter for Precision Drilling Corporation. “Last week I had two gentlemen who just finished orientation in Red Deer that have relocated to Fort St. John to work for us, for our rigs out here.”
She said it’s normal for the company to offer incentives for workers in other provinces to relocate, helping them with hotel costs, or connecting them with other people in the area.
“We’ll offer transportation to get them to whatever region needs the hands,” said Achtemichuk. “Obviously if we can’t get them work here, we’re going to try our best to get them to work in a different area. We try to keep them as busy as possible.”
Alaska Highway News
