November 2013 Inside this issue: GM’s Report New Members Events 2013 Save the Date Presidents Message Cont’d Member Expert Article
CHAMBER at a glance
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a publica on of the Brandon Chamber of Commerce
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Skills Crisis!
C fi ng.
risis is a strong word. However we at the Chamber believe that for our membership it is exactly
So all of the feedback from our membership and the rest of the country indicates the crisis, what do we do about it? All of this forms the impetus of the forma on for the Brandon Chamber Workforce Development Commi ee. Your board and execu ve have had many discussions on this topic over the past several months and we felt we needed to start somewhere to support our members in this top of mind issue. We felt that everyone was out there trying to do what they could for their own employee issues but maybe if we were to collec vely put our efforts together we could accomplish more. This commi ee will be made up of HR professionals, small and large employers in Brandon, educators and others. No one in Brandon has put a group like this together in a room together with a view towards some common goals. Quite frankly many of them compete, either for contracts within the community or for like people resources, so ge ng everyone including our membership to agree that perhaps collabora ng will be more beneficial in the long term and to achieve greater goals will be the ini al focus.
Consider this, it’s es mated there will be 1.5 million skilled job vacancies in 2016, and 2.6 million by 2021 in Canada. Those are staggering numbers. Our membership, in our latest Business Climate Survey cited skilled labour as the largest business concern going forward, and the aforemen oned numbers do not hold promise of that changing for the next decade or three at least. This is not breaking news, nor is it unique to Brandon business. At the recent Canadian Chamber of Commerce Annual General Mee ng it was recognized that the key barrier to Canadian Business compe veness is the skills gap and the conference focus and policy resolu ons keyed in on this area. We had the opportunity to speak with dozens of Chamber representa ves from across the country and it is the common concern and barrier to growth. Remove the occurring and impending oil sector growth from the equa on and we would and will be in the same situa on, as the rest of the country is also indica ng. Add that oil sector growth back in and The commi ee is in its infancy, but in the situa on is only more exaspera ng. addi on to agreeing on the collabora on it has iden fied some key areas to focus
on. Craig Senchuk, Among those Chamber President are; be er communica on of needs to all educa on levels, advocacy on educa on, immigra on planning, coordina on of employers to recruit collabora vely, promo on of Brandon lifestyle, spousal employment ini a ves, be er access to students and ge ng employers engaged to name a few. We think that three key players; employers, government and educators, have and will con nue to play a role in developing solu ons to the situa on. The ini a ves will be far reaching and plen ful but consider just three of these involving the above stakeholders. Employers are and need to con nue to focus on up skilling their exis ng workforce. The labour market reality is that adjustments take me to affect supply of the workforce. Employers cannot afford to stand s ll and many are stepping up the efforts to close the skills (Con nued on page 6)