Hot HR election issues

Important issues that need to be addressed in Canada’s upcoming 2011 provincial and territorial elections involve human resources.  These include the need to continue attracting skilled labour and the need to invest in post-secondary education based on current demographic and economic trends. 

Recent studies forecast a looming shortage of qualified workers owing to declining birth rates and the approaching retirement of the Baby-Boom generation (starting this year for people retiring at the traditional age of 65.)  This talent shortage is expected to deepen over the next 20 years, resulting in hundreds of thousands of unfilled positions. 

For example, a 2009 report by Dr. Rick Miner, former president of Ontario’s Seneca College, shows a huge pending gap between employers’ needs for talent and the skill set of those seeking employment.  In Ontario Dr. Miner predicts a labour shortage of 200,000—or 1.8 million people--by 2031 and also that 77 percent of the province’s labour force will require post-secondary credentials by then (compared to 60 percent currently.)  In short, Ontario will need both a larger and more skilled workforce than will be available.

A backgrounder to a provincial all-candidates debate organized by the Toronto Financial Services Alliance (TFSA) at Toronto City Hall on August 31^st, 2011 reports:  “Dr. Miner concludes that, with current trends, 450,000 individuals will not have the skills needed to fill vacant positions by 2016.  The figure is expected to increase to 700,000 individuals in following years, while vacancies requiring post-secondary skills will increase to over one million by 2021 and two million by 2031.”

The backgrounder continues:  “Over a 22-year period Ontario will need to train, re-train or recruit 1.73 million people.  This translates into an increase of 78,636 post-secondary graduates per year, an increase of four times the number of people admitted into the Second Career re-training program.  Another way of looking at this figure is that it would represent a 56% increase in the annual number of graduates from Ontario’s post-secondary institutions (currently approximately 140,000, including college diplomas, bachelor, master and doctoral degrees.)”

Additionally, studies by the Conference Board of Canada and others show that, at Ontario’s current birth rate, we will only replace those workers who leave the workforce, and that all net growth in the workforce will have to come from immigration.

So before you vote in the upcoming provincial elections (Manitoba – Oct 4th, Newfoundland & Labrador – Oct 11^th, Northwest Territories – Oct 3^rd, Ontario – Oct 6th, Prince Edward Island – Oct 3^rd, Sasketchewan – Nov 7^th, Yukon – Oct 11^th) it’s important to ask your local candidates what they propose to do to make training programs more accessible, especially for positions that will be in significant demand in the years to come.

 You also need to know things like what candidates plan to do, or plan to encourage the federal government to do, to attracted skilled immigrants, expedite processes for granting visas and credentials, and allow foreign students to find work here upon completion of their studies.

http://www.psc-cfp.gc.ca/plac-acpl/leave-conge/ann2-eng.pdf

http://www.printlink.com/resources_insight053.php 

http://www.printlink.com/resources_insight033.php

http://www.printlink.com/resources_insight013.php

Women still missing from senior management roles in Canada (sigh)

According to a report released yesterday by The Conference Board of Canada, the presence of Canadian women in senior management positions has stalled in the past two decades. Between 1987 and 2009, the proportion of women in senior management has changed little—men are still more than twice as likely to hold a senior executive position.

Anne Golden, President and CEO of The Conference Board of Canada, said:  “Increasing women’s representation at the senior level is not simply a matter of justice or fairness—although it is that. And it is not simply a “women’s issue.” Companies that fail to integrate women’s perspectives into their high-level decision making risk losing market share, competitive advantage, and profits. We already know what to do. Now we simply need to do it.”

A news release from The Conference Board dated yesterday added that the few women who rise to senior levels often attract substantial media attention, which may give readers the false impression that barriers to women’s advancement are a thing of the past.

Besides quantifying the current underrepresentation of women in management positions, the report (called Women in Senior Management: Where Are They?) also enumerates some of the challenges women still face in the workplace and suggests practices for overcoming the barriers.

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/newsrelease/11-08-31/Women_Still_Missing_In_Action_From_Senior_Management_Positions_In_Canadian_Organizations.aspx

Job stress? Try smelling lemons or lavender

Today medical experts at the Toronto Star report that aromatherapy massages are more effective at reducing anxiety and stress than plain ones.  They also recommend you buy lemons, grapefruit, and peppermint tea at the grocery store, then stop at the drugstore for lavender lotion or spray, since scientific tests confirm the benefits of all these fragrant items.  Apparently, lemons work as a relaxant (you could slice one into your bath water, perhaps), while peppermint can help you complete a must-do job when you can't focus by triggering alertness.  Grapefruit's scent curbs hunger, and peppermint enhances the effect, so regularly eating half a grapefruit followed by peppermint tea or gum will help shrink your appetite.  But the fact that really blew me away was that hospitals give anxious patients a whiff of lavender before sliding them into a narrow MRI tube, because it increases the percentage who get through the claustrophobic experience by a third.  Wonder what would happen if employers spritzed their most stressful work areas with lavender . . .  .
http://www.healthzone.ca/health/dietfitness/diet/article/1040238--you-docs-the-6-things-that-make-you-gain-weight

Canada attracts the brightest immigrants according to Maclean's report

To mark Canada's 144th anniversary on July 1st, Maclean's Magazine published a list of 10 reasons why it's the best time ever to be Canadian.  Reasons include that Canada leads the way in medical research, is more peaceful than Switzerland and Australia, and has the world's highest golf participation.  Also according to the Maclean's report, we're more entrepreneurial than the U.S.A., have the roomiest homes on earth, and (not surprisingly, given the previous reasons) attract the brightest immigrants.  
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/07/01/ten-reasons-why-there-has-never-been-a-better-time-to-be-a-canadian/ 

New polar mosque helps attract qualified professionals to Canada’s arctic

My May/June-2011 article with Edward Atkinson for "Above & Beyond:  Canada's Arctic Journal" explains the complicated logistics recently undertaken by Northern Canada's growing Muslim community to build their first mosque above the Arctic Circle.  From a human-resources standpoint, what I find especially interesting about their achievement is that Denny Rodgers, mayor of Inuvik, the community where they established the mosque, credits the new building with the ability "to help us attract quality professionals to move here, bring their families, and become part of the community."  You can find a condensed version of the full article at:  http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Earcticjournal%2Eca%2Findex%2Ephp%2F2011%2F05%2Fnew-polar-mosque%2F&urlhash=JhHS&_t=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-lnk&trk=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-lnk.

This week Canada elected a record number of women--but still not enough

In response to my 19-April-2011 post observing how women in politics operate differently than men, Jodi Krohn, CEO of Premier Press in Portland, Oregon, and one of my fellow members of the Girls Who Print Discussion Group on LinkedIn, wrote back:  “Co-operation, politics without personal attacks, understanding that there are multiple perspectives and finding a healthy balance, would be very refreshing.”

Makes you think, doesn't it? I recall that certain North American native tribes left the decision to wage war up to their Clan Mothers, who had the most to lose (i.e., their children) and were the least warlike faction of their society. Could we actually remake our whole political system along similar, more co-operative, nurturing, female lines--instead of the competitive, combative, male-dominated system we've got?

Speaking of male-dominated politics, by now most people know that Canada’s federal election on Monday 2 May 2011 promoted the national Conservative Party from a minority to a majority government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  But another, less publicized result of the election is that more women than ever before have been elected to Canada’s Parliament.  A record 76 women will now sit in our country’s House of Commons—or about 25 percent of the total 308 seats—a count slightly up from the approximately 22 percent of seats held by females in Canada’s last federal parliament.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/MSNHome/20110503/projected-female-mps-41st-parliament-110503/

Not that Canada can start congratulating itself for being egalitarian just yet.  While the record high number of female Members of Parliament is nothing to sneeze at, it’s also nothing to be especially proud of---since the country still ranks 52nd in the world when it comes to proportional female representation in political office.  We are also falling further behind as other nations take more aggressive measures to correct their political gender imbalances. 

Also take note that another telling revelation of how far we’ve supposedly progressed will be coming up shortly:  Let’s see how many females Mr. Harper will include in his new Cabinet ... .

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/voters-send-a-record-76-women-to-parliament-most-of-them-ndp/article2009244/?from=sec368

Why girls on the ballot are better

One of my goals for my March column in PrintAction was to raise awareness that Canada lacks the advantages it could gain from proportional representation of women in politics.  Note that the Toronto Star’s Katie Daubs has recently climbed on the same bandwagon.  Her April-17th article on Canada’s upcoming federal election observes that Halton Riding’s Conservative, Liberal, NDP, and Green Party candidates are all female and that the benefits of this all-girl ballot include greater co-operation among them, more policy discussion, and fewer personal attacks.

https://www.box.net/shared/gy0bmq180s

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/976140--halton-riding-for-once-gender-imbalance-is-a-welcome-sign?bn=1