How Retirees And Students Help Hopewell Rocks’ Staff Tackle Busy Seasons
MONCTON – At the popular tourism spot Hopewell Rocks, a team of staff that’s diverse in age has been working “very well” together, said manager of interpretation and reception Paul Gaudet.
Gaudet shared his story in a room of about 170 attendees of the Tourism Industry Association of New Brunswick’s summit in Moncton Thursday during a Q&A session.
“It was out of necessity. Our business is growing. It was very, very busy. Particularly one area that’s growing is in the tour bus business,” he told Huddle after the session. “We have 1,300 tour buses in a short period of really from mid-June to the second week of October. And out of those, about half of them we give tours to, so we need extra people.”
Gaudet needed more bodies to inform tourists and visitors from all over the world when it’s time to leave the beach area when the tides are coming in. That’s where he saw an opportunity for retired professionals.
Last year, he added two retirees to his team to help with the beach sweep, which takes about four hours each day.
“They were absolutely delighted to do that. It got them out of the house, it’s fresh air. They knew that even though we have to come at all times of the day – sometimes it’s mid-morning, sometimes it’s midday, sometimes it’s late in the day – they were delighted with the prospects of doing that,” he said.
“They’re retired professionals so they caught on quick. They’re ultra-dependable. They’re knowledgeable. They’re very trouble-free employees.”
He currently has seven retired professionals on his team, most of them working full-time during the months that the site is open. They work alongside six students, as well as seven members of the team who are between 30-to-50 years old. In the peak time between late June and August, Gaudet has a full team of about 20 people.
He said the mixture is beneficial to the team. The young students are “gung ho,” healthy and have new ideas to bring. Most of them return for three to five years. The working-age people are the “bulwark of the workforce” who stay throughout the whole season. And the retirees have a lot of experience to share, and the flexibility to work when needed.
“The students, they have fresh new ideas, there’s lots of laughs and we get along very well…I can’t imagine a homogeneous network of people all around the same age. This way, it’s give-and-take and in-and-out, it’s a great atmosphere,” he said. “They learn from us, they learn from the retirees and we certainly learn from them.”
Workforce Development Plan
Leveraging youth, as well as those aged 55 and above, is something recommended by the New Brunswick Tourism Workforce Development Plan for 2019-2024.
“In general, the tourism industry workforce is younger than many other industries, if you compare it to forestry or manufacturing or trucking… Having said that, there is a fair amount in the workforce that is over the age of 55,” said David Campbell of Jupia Consultants, who led the development of the plan that will be implemented by TIANB.
Immigrants are becoming a larger part of the tourism industry workforce (7.5 percent compared to 5 percent for the province overall). They’re expected to make up approximately 25 percent of the tourism labour force in the next 15-to-20 years, Campbell said.
But there are challenges with the seasonal nature of the sector that could hinder immigrants from helping fill jobs. Only around 33 percent of the 36,400 tourism industry labour force work full-time, year-round. At the same time, the job vacancy rate in the largest part of the tourism industry – food services and accommodation – is high at 5.6 percent.
“[Seasonality] does create specific challenges when we’re looking at growing this sector particularly in the area of, for example, immigration because most programs that bring immigrants tend to require year-round jobs,” he said.
Meanwhile, those aged 55 and above aren’t participating in the labour market as much.
“We have the lowest participation rate within the 55 and older, so that means it should be a real opportunity to encourage folks that are over 55 to stay in the workforce but maybe more on their terms, with more flexibility, so maybe they can work seasonally, they can work part-time,” Campbell said.
“With more and more people now living until their 90s, the idea of retiring at 55 still sounds appealing, but 40 years retired is probably not that appealing for most people…But if we’re 60 or 65, if we’re going to work, we want it to be on our terms. The tourism industry needs to respond to that.”
Because tourism careers are still often overlooked, Campbell says employers also need to do a better job at marketing them and showing young people a pathway to management or self-employment.
“Young people, in particular, don’t necessarily want to work the same job for 30-40 years the way people did a generation or two ago,” he said. “Really what we’re trying to do is set the groundwork for trying to encourage young people to start in the industry but then show them a pathway to where they might end up if they stick with it, they work hard and they advance in their career.”
Gaudet says his team has a good model to replicate, but in order to find good talent, one still needs to look everywhere.
“You have to go to job fairs, you have to find out where these people are, they don’t just pop out of the woodwork,” he said, adding that he has spoken at schools and to community clubs.
The four objectives of the five-year strategy are:
- Promote tourism careers, including through industry-focused regional job fairs;
- Boost tourism education and training in New Brunswick;
- Strengthen human resources practices within the industry by promoting TIANB’s training program; and
- Target specific demographic segments including immigrants, indigenous workers, bilingual high school students, international high school students, and 55+ workforce.
There will be reports and updates on an annual basis.
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