Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER SEPTEMBER 2018 8 NEWS ipm Institute of Professional Management 2210-1081 Ambleside Drive, Ottawa, ON, K2B 8C8 Tel: (613) 721-5957 Toll Free: 1-888-441-0000 valid until October 12, 2018 Corporate Group Subscription O er IPM's Online Management Encyclopedia & Workplace Today™ Details at : www.workplace.ca/hr-reporter.html $240 regular $800 ... save $560! Order a 12-month corporate multi-user online subscription to Workplace Today™ Online Journal and IPM's Online Management Encyclopedia by October 12, 2018 and pay only $240 (70% o !) This o er includes unlimited users from the same organization. Workplace Today™ Journal – Bene t monthly from well- researched legal information, detailed case studies on timely issues and concise reporting on today's labour trends. IPM's Management Encyclopedia – Canada's rst and only online management reference tool. It provides step-by- step How To's for routine management tasks. Put the power of these skill-based How To's directly into the hands of your management team. Canadian vacancies growing In Canada, job vacancies are cur- rently at 3.1 per cent — the highest rate recorded since the Canadian Federation of Independent Busi- ness (CFIB) began observing the trend in 2004. Nearly 400,000 jobs across the country have been vacant for four months, said Ted Mallett, chief economist at CFIB in Toronto. "In every part of the country, you will fi nd businesses struggling to fi nd the right worker," he said. "We have to fi nd ways to move the labour up to the position or the skill set for the jobs that are available." Strategy could also include turning to new equipment or au- tomation, said Mallett. "They're not going to carry on with that kind of issue indefi - nitely," he said. " ey can't just keep banging their heads against the wall. ey will make some adjustments." Pressure continues to mount on wages as a result of labour short- ages, though the issue is more complex than that, said Mallett. "It's not just a wage issue," he said. "You can't just magically say, 'OK, we're going to off er wages X per cent higher and that will solve our problem.' at probably won't solve the problem, because their causality is much more complex than that." Small fi rms are more prone to struggle with prolonged vacan- cies, according to Mallett. " ey're the ones with perhaps the least fl exibility in the kind of people they need. ey need gen- eralists — people who can fi ll a wide variety of roles — whereas a large enterprise can aff ord to get specialists in certain areas." Quebec's challenge Quebec is facing an especially high rate at 3.9 per cent, with 109,600 jobs going unfi lled, said a recent CFIB report for the second quarter of 2018. British Columbia's vacancy rate is 3.4 per cent, while Ontario's rests at three per cent. e issue is relatively new to Quebec, and employers aren't used to dealing with these types of issues, said Mallett. "It's a big shift in the kinds of things they have to pay attention to." The loss of 230,000 workers age 45 and younger over the last 30 years has had "signifi cant long- term eff ects on the availability of labour," said Marcel Boyer, distin- guished senior fellow at the Mon- treal Economic Institute. More people leave Quebec for other provinces, rather than vice versa, with the majority relocating to Ontario, he said. "It's totally a major challenge today for Quebec society, gov- ernment, firms to understand why we're losing our population, our youth, to the rest of Canada," said Boyer. For Quebec employers, the path to a more dynamic labour market is via greater openness to competition, increased wages, and shifting organizational cul- ture towards more fl exible career development, he said. While wages have yet to in- crease, the scarce labour market should change that in the next six months, said Boyer. Automation is also a major part of the way forward, he said. "When you begin to have prob- lems with labour — with the la- bour shortage or recruiting labour — you will invest more in robot- ization or advanced technologies that will make whatever work- ers you have more productive. And, therefore, you will replace the number of workers with an increased productivity due to in- creased investments in advanced technology," said Boyer. "Quebec should be the leader in Canada for automation and ro- botization within fi rms because of its particularly strong labour shortage." Advice for HR Human resources can brace for this by conducting a talent as- sessment of what labour will be needed based on business strategy up to 2030, according to Guarino. " ey need to execute work- force planning at a level of sophis- tication that they probably have not done before," he said. "Once they've done that… they (will) have a fairly good idea of the critical skills that are going to make or break the ability to ex- ecute their business strategy." Recruitment tactics will also re- quire a review, said Guarino. "Your employer brand needs to be just as important as your cor- porate brand," he said. As HR departments become more strategic in nature, employ- ers and senior leadership may be required to increase the group's budget, said Guarino. " e days of underfunding hu- man resources and thinking that you'll pay salaries and you'll have people are over," he said. "In some cases, it means doubling or even tripling the discretionary portion of the HR budget." is approach will drive better talent acquisition, increase re- tention and enlighten workforce planning, allowing proactive busi- nesses to "suff er less of the pain than others," said Guarino. Looking to industry peers to isolate issues specifi c to your busi- ness is also benefi cial in terms of boosting retention and reducing turnover, said Mallett. " ere's an awful lot of time and eff ort that goes into bringing people on and training them up, getting them to the most produc- tive level possible," he said. Small business more prone to struggle TALENT < pg. 1 Concerns about partnership However, Pohler has a few con- cerns about the partnership. For one, CPHR Canada does not include Ontario, while SHRM ended its relationship with the HR Certifi cation Institute in the U.S. in 2014, meaning there's not one major designation across both countries, which can limit its ef- fectiveness, she said. And with no mutual recognition between CPHR and HRPA, that should be a priority, said Pohler, "because there are more Canadi- ans who move between Ontario and the rest of the provinces… (than) across national borders." Additionally, SHRM is not a regulatory body, unlike Quebec, while the other CPHR Canada members are pursuing self-regu- lation, she said. " at might not be a major con- straint but I know that it could be," said Pohler. "I know that that is one of the reasons why Quebec… be- came a member association rather than fully within the framework of the exam." But this is more of a diff erentia- tion or arbitrary distinction, said Alonso. "We've seen scenarios where certain professions police them- selves and others don't. In the United States, there's just not been a need for the HR profession to be policed the way that other profes- sions might be. Eventually, it is an opportunity that we see as natural progression in terms of profession- alization but it's just not something that's been called on at this point." Ariganello also doesn't see a challenge with the self-regulation piece as this is very unique to Can- ada's professions, he said. "If a SHRM member decides to get their CPHR, then we would regulate that member and they must abide by our code or any other piece of legislation in place. Similarly, the SHRM body also has a code that their designated mem- bers must abide by, even though they do not have legislation. ey still, in the simplest form, oversee and regulate the member." The Chartered Professional Accountants, for example, have several MRAs with other inter- national accounting bodies and some of them do not have legisla- tion, said Ariganello. However, they do regulate the member, "so self-regulation doesn't always mean legislation." SHRM members must abide by CPHR code HRPA in 'exploratory' talks Ontario's Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) cancelled its membership with the former Canadian Council of Human Resources Associations — now Chartered Professionals in Human Resources (CPHR) Canada — in 2014, and is not involved with CPHR's partnership with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). SHRM asked if CPHR Canada wanted to include HRPA, but Ontario did not respond to CPHR's query about getting involved, said Anthony Ariganello, CEO of CPHR Canada. "(SHRM) didn't want to have a separate deal with Ontario and Canada," he said. "They want to talk countries." It's an area that SHRM views as a future opportunity, said Alex Alonso, the organization's chief knowledge offi cer. "What I'd like to see more than anything else is to have unifi cation of the Canadian associations at some point." Since HRPA is the professional regulatory body for HR in Ontario, it operates in accordance with the Registered Human Resources Professionals Act, 2013, said a statement from the organization. "Therefore, any agreements we might enter into must serve the fulfi llment of our statutory objects which are to protect the public through governance and regulation." Recently, HRPA and SHRM have "activated exploratory discussions about opportunities for collaboration, but there are no formal plans at this stage," said HRPA. AGREEMENT < pg. 2

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