James McKenna Wonders, Where Have All The Workers Gone?
MONCTON – James McKenna was 24 and doing sales and marketing for an oil and gas company when his father, former Premier Frank McKenna, called him back in 2002 with a pitch to move home and help him run a business he’d just purchased in Shediac, Glenwood Kitchen Ltd.
“All of his children were living in different cities across Canada and he wanted to coerce us to come back to New Brunswick and I was the only one who accepted the offer,” said James McKenna in a recent interview. “I wasn’t married and didn’t have kids at the time and it was an easy move for me back home. It’s been a wonderful, wonderful opportunity.”
For decades Frank McKenna has been a tireless advocate for developing the province’s economy and its labour-force, enticing his own kids to move home just one of the things, big and small, that’s he’s done to help over the years.
And now his son, James McKenna, is doing that work himself, trying to bolster his 120-strong workforce though immigration (bringing people from across Canada and abroad) and creating opportunities for under-employed or unemployed people right here at home.
It’s a huge challenge, says McKenna, to fill available jobs with skilled and motivated people. He’s one of many employers across the province experiencing the labour shortage first-hand.
“This is a problem being experienced by a lot of different business owners. Everyone is having the same challenge,” he said.
On November 12-13, McKenna is taking part in the Workforce Summit 20/20 in Moncton where government representatives, non-profit experts, academics and entrepreneurs from small and large companies will work to find solutions to the problem.
McKenna is clear on what he hopes to gain from two days of keynote speeches, panels and brainstorming sessions.
“Here’s what we think the problem is and here’s what we think the solution is to help you,” he says.
On the first day of the summit, McKenna is part of a panel on “Employer Best Practices,” a discussion that will include Susan Wilson of J.D. Irving, Limited, Andree Cassie Savoie of Imperial Manufacturing, Stephanie O’Donnell of Groupe Savoie and moderator Thomas Raffy from the Conseil économique du Nouveau-Brunswick (CENB).
“Glenwood Kitchen has a reputation around town for being able to find and retain employees,” says McKenna. “I often get asked, ‘what are you doing [right]?’ It’s a challenge for me as well, finding good people. And if you find them how do you keep them?”
At Glenwood Kitchen, a residential wholesale manufacturer of kitchen cabinets, McKenna has created a culture of change that keeps people engaged.
“need to keep it fresh, do different things,” he says. “You can’t always keep the same processes and programs. You have to constantly change and adapt to your employees’ needs.”
He’s also done specific things like implement wellness programs like the Virgin Pulse Global Challenge.
“We bought Fitbits for about 80 of our employees and we’re monitoring how much exercise we do in a day,” he says. “It’s really motivating our employees. It’s friendly competition internally and with people across the world.”
The company also has a pension plan, currently valued at around $3.5-million, that’s managed by the employees themselves.
“We introduced that about 10 years ago with the understanding that we want our employees to stay here and have a reason to stay,” says McKenna. “We want to financially motivate them to stay here. We also want to help them as they get older, so they can have a good retirement.”
While McKenna has spent time developing strategies and programs for retaining employees, he is most concerned these days with hiring the right people in the first place.
At the upcoming summit, he’ll be keenly interested in the panel called “Finding Talent,” which will feature Robin Drummond from Greystone Energy Systems, Tania Soucy-Howe, Guy Lamarache and Kathy Ouellette from Post-Secondary, Education, Training and Labour (PETL), and moderator Michelle Duffie of Lounsbury Group.
Like many employers, McKenna is recruiting new employees from outside the province to fill a variety of roles, including custom wood working, machine operating, engineering, and book keeping.
We’re experiencing the same thing as everyone else,” he says. “We’re not getting as many people coming in our door looking for work, which means the talent pool is reduced. Anybody who is skilled and willing to work hard, I would probably hire you and find a place for you in our company.”
McKenna has many employees who have moved from B.C. to work at the company because they can’t afford the increased housing costs out west.
He also employs immigrants from the Phillipines who originally came here to work at fish plants. One man from Brazil was hired though the Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program; one of the guy’s friends is now on his way from South America to work for Glenwood too.
McKenna says immigration is part of the labour-force solution, but he is perplexed that so many New Brunswickers are currently unemployed. He says that’s the biggest problem business owners face, and he hopes many of them come to the Moncton summit two weeks from now to help figure out the solution.
“I don’t understand what the issue is and that’s why we’re having the summit,” he says. “Nobody understands the issue, really. People say we need to bring immigrants in and that’s great but where are the eight per cent [of people already here] that aren’t working?”
The Workforce 20/20 Summit will be presented by The Chamber of Commerce for Greater Moncton and 3+ Economic Development Corporation. To learn more and register for the November 12-13 summit at the Delta Beausejour in Moncton, visit the event web page: http://workforcesummit.ca