Labour Shortage Will Be A Hot Topic At Tourism Summit In Moncton
MONCTON – As the Tourism Industry Association of New Brunswick (TIANB) opens its summit in Moncton Wednesday, workforce development is a key topic of discussion.
“The challenge is there are not enough people to fill the jobs. The young people are still leaving New Brunswick to get jobs outside,” said TIANB President and CEO Carol Alderdice.
The two-day summit features a day of presentations from government agencies to address things like the provincial tourism strategy, the environment, the new levy on accommodations, Indigenous tourism, and other things.
The second day will focus on the labour shortage and best practices surrounding attracting and retaining workers, among other things. Around 170 people expected to attend the summit.
The association will present its labour market survey and workforce development strategy on the second day.
The survey of more than 240 tourism organizations in the province, including government bodies, operators of tourism businesses and others, found that 45 percent were concerned that a lack of qualified workers could be an obstacle to their growth in the coming years. Two-thirds of all respondents indicated that it was already challenging to find qualified, reliable workers in the province.
According to Statistics Canada’s Job Vacancy Survey, there were 1,430 unfilled positions in the accommodation and food services sector, which makes up the bulk of tourism industry jobs, in New Brunswick in the fourth quarter of 2018. The job vacancy rate in that sector has more than doubled in the past two years and that rate is now the second-highest in New Brunswick compared to other provinces in Canada.
The shortfall of workers in New Brunswick’s accommodation and food services sector is expected to rise to almost 3,600 per year in full-year job terms by 2035.
Alderdice said one of the key challenges is that jobs in the tourism sector are still overlooked as a career option and the seasonal nature of some jobs makes it challenging to attract and retain workers.
“Those are the challenges that we’re going to be addressing with our plan, and trying to get 55+ involved as well, because there’s a lot of them out there that would love to work a few days a week if they could,” she said.
Alderdice says some solutions can be that businesses share seasonal staff, for instance, allowing summer staff to work at another business for the winter.
As survey respondents also indicated that a one-stop-shop for tourism jobs supported and promoted by TIANB would be ideal, the association is launching a new online platform with the province called Magnet. The platform has specific features that can help employers better understand their hiring pool and how they can adjust their offering to target more qualified candidates.
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