Labour Shortage From The Front Line: ‘I Didn’t Sleep Since Yesterday’
SAINT JOHN–As he answers the phone, Mohamed Khirallah cautions he may need to step away at any time to help a customer.
It’s understandable territory for any small business during operating hours, but it wasn’t what Khirallah had in mind when he opened Rôticana Coffee’s new Saint John location back in January.
He also has not slept in 24 hours.
As he covers the day’s shift in Market Square, he says things “are going great.” But his attempts to grow the business are being squelched by a common problem facing nearly all businesses this year.
“Unfortunately, as with everyone in the province or in the country, we are facing a short staff problem,” Khirallah told Huddle, July 11.
He said his main challenge has been finding people to work shifts at his Saint John café.
“That’s why I’m taking a shift myself, and that’s why I’m standing at the café, and that’s holding me back from other responsibilities,” he said.
While he’s happy to do it here and there, the staffing shortage has been chronic not just for Khirallah, but also for many of his friends and fellow entrepreneurs. He said he’s heard many stories of restaurants in New Brunswick reducing hours because of staff shortages.
Many are going even further, advertising higher wages or hefty signing bonuses to attract line cooks and service people, often with the highest bidder winning out. Khirallah said he’s never seen this kind of thing before in the business.
A competitive playing field
In May and June, Khirallah put out another hiring notice for his Saint John location.
“I got only eight or ten applicants at the most. Honestly speaking, only two or three were qualified for the job,” admitted Khirallah. “[But] when I interviewed them and I gave them the offer, they said okay and then they just disappeared. I believe they might get a better offer from other people or other places.”
Khirallah has big plans and hopes to open a new Fredericton café in HSBC Place, at the former site of The Happy Baker, by the end of July.
Later next month, he expects two large machines to be installed at Rôticana Coffee’s Hodgson Road production headquarters in Fredericton. Each will assist in the production of single-serve brewing capsules of Rôticana’s coffees.
But with hiring prospects bleak, Khirallah’s pressing thoughts are occupied with who will operate the machines once they arrive.
“I am looking for high lead technical people to operate the packaging equipment, so it raises a lot of concerns,” he said. “If I am facing this with restaurants, what am I going to do with the factory?”
It is a question he admits he has no answer for. He said that when the machines arrive he’ll need at least three to five people to run them.
The hires he plans to make for both machines will require unique skills and specifications, which he said will come with a real cost in training. He worries any investment in training will lead to more disappearing acts and further setbacks.
The café is currently seeking help, with Khirallah offering full- or part-time roles in an effort to be as flexible as possible.
The human tax
Despite his own worries, Khirallah knows he’s just one case study in today’s labour market.
“It’s more severe all over Canada,” he stated. He said he needs a total of 10 new employees over the next few months to reach his staffing targets.
“I didn’t sleep since yesterday for even 10 minutes,” he said. “I am working maybe 18 or 20 hours a day, just to try to cover because there’s no one to work or do the job.”
He said he can’t close the cafe because the optics would be very bad, knowing he has good products and a growing list of clients to serve.
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According to Khirallah, small business stakeholders across the province are fully aware of what’s going on and know it’s not an individual problem for any one business.
“I have emails, phone calls from my friends who are running businesses all over the province, sharing the same problem and trying to find a way to come over it.”
He said problems with inventories, supplies, logistics, and shipping can be overcome, although many times at an increased cost.
“But when it comes to human resource, what should I do? Should I advertise I’m going to pay $20 an hour to get someone to work for me? I don’t think I should,” he said.
Khirallah feels sharp wage hikes simply to recruit more employees would only harm someone else’s business.
“I don’t want to do this, because if we start doing this it’s going to be like a bloodbath.”
Five percent of all payroll jobs need filling
In a commentary last month on the province’s labour shortage, Saint John Region Chamber of Commerce CEO David Duplisea likened the current market to “one cylinder in New Brunswick’s economic engine seizing, just as everyone is preparing to turn the corner.”
Duplisea pointed to Premier Blaine Higgs, who said at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon this spring there were nearly 16,000 employment vacancies in New Brunswick, roughly five percent of all jobs in the province.
At the same time, there were more than 63,000 people on the unemployment rolls, including 9,000 prospective workers under age 25. That gives New Brunswick the highest percentage of people under 25 accessing Employment Insurance benefits in Canada.
“How did we get here from a social structure standpoint?” Duplisea lamented to Huddle.
“We have 25 active files that we’re working on–and that includes everything from minimum wage escalation, tax reform, all of that. The number one concern is the labour shortage.”
He described a skills disconnect between what jobs require and what some of the skill sets of available workers actually are. He said it’s part of a larger problem: a misalignment of the education system with workforce needs.
Narrowing the disconnect
Duplisea said a massive part of solving the disconnect is having a renewed immigration strategy for job creation.
“There’s a lot of barriers for immigrants,” he said. “Whether it’s how long it takes to get health care, or how many hoops they have to jump through, we’re still lobbying the federal government to increase our allotment of immigrants that can come into the province.”
What Duplisea has heard most from members is bureaucracy and red tape being common barriers, something he thinks covers far more issues than labour shortages.
With plenty on the line for companies like Rôticana Coffee, Duplisea agrees the labour pipeline needs to move faster.
“He’s not alone,” Duplisea added. “We’re doing absolutely everything that we can to help businesses like Mohamed’s and the rest of our membership.”
Tyler Mclean is a Huddle reporter based in Fredericton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].