Tracy Arno with Essence Recruitment spoke to local business owners about improving their recruitment practices during the Sagehill 2023 Employer Conference on Oct. 17. (Submitted photo/Becky Zimmer)

By Becky Zimmer

Help wanted

Sagehill conference helps local businesses tackle job market challenges

Oct 19, 2023 | 5:00 PM

Employee turnover has been an issue for the last couple of years and Humboldt businesses joined in the discussion at Sagehill Community Future’s Employer Conference on Oct. 17.

This is the second annual event for the Bruno-based business support firm with speakers once again focused on topics surrounding recruiting and retaining employees.

Steven Eger with Kn/a HR Consulting was the first speaker of the day and encouraged the many business owners and HR professionals to face their challenges of retaining employees and put a plan in place. Speaking with northeastNOW following his talk, Eger said taking action is an important step, and part of that is walking the walk, instead of just talking the talk.

“When there’s bad, poor, fractured relationships, people tend to vote with their feet and disappear. Compensation, while important, is often secondary to how I feel I’m being treated in that workplace.”

Eger has this discussion one-on-one with his clients and much of the time, he’s helping employers build the skills they need to maintain their positive work environments, he said.

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In the digital world, and following the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has become a perk that employees want.

According to a recent Forbes article, 57 per cent of employees would leave their current job for something more flexible, even 32 per cent said they would take a pay cut in order to work from home full time.

However, employees still want to feel part of a positive work culture with some saying they feel disconnected from their fellow employees. Most of all, people want to feel heard and valued, especially when employers are looking at ways of making their business a better place to work, said Eger.

“People want to know that their opinion is important and if they see you taking their advice, their suggestions and putting them in play, that’s going to strike some connection, build those relationships, and people are more likely to stay.”

As an inclusive employer, Dave Doepker works with Niamh Menz and Juanine Korte at Humboldt and District Community Services to offer a supportive work environment for his employees with disabilities. They spoke with Sagehill’s Susan Wehage about what this program has meant for employee retention and the working environment at Humboldt Sobeys.

It’s about working and understanding people, he said, and when it’s successful, it’s a win, win, win for his staff, his management team, and their customers.

Tracey Arno with Essence Recruitment spoke about recruiting in the digital age during her keynote talk for the afternoon.

The pandemic also created some challenging situations and the job market is still recovering from that, she said. Since March 2022, 200,000 people have left the workforce and the Canadian birth rate hasn’t been and will continue to not be enough to sustain those open positions, Arno told northeastNOW.

“If you would see people that were maybe 5, 10 years down the line thinking about their retirement, they were like, forget it. I’m going to retire now. And then what was happening was there was no succession planning happening. So now there’s this gap.”

And filling that gap in this new digital landscape is a new battle that people are trying to conquer. Half of new hires fail, she said, and that takes time and money away from your company, she said.

“You have to embrace this forever labor shortage and you should always be recruiting and not just thinking in the moment and recruit differently than you have been before.”

Gone are the days of hitting the pavement and finding job postings in the newspaper every Wednesday and within the digital world, businesses rarely have control over the information that is out there. With so many social media platforms and job boards out there, Arno encourages people to try new things or take a new approach to how they hire people.

“You have to cover all your bases in so many different ways of trying to get the right talent. It’s very competitive. So you actually have to always out beat your competitors. Like I said, marketing and HR, it’s not separate anymore.”

Arno had plenty of valuable information within her presentation on how businesses can make their postings more successful, from cutting back on trendy job titles, cliches and buzzwords, and even company-specific jargon that an outsider would have no understanding of, all the way to creating videos and ads that will catch the eyes of potential employees.

Sagehill staff told the audience that they are already working on their third annual event for October 2024. The conference also coincided with Small Business Week in Canada.

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becky.zimmer@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @bex_zim