Gerry Parker
Human Resources Manager
Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada
Mr. Parker, what is human resources development? Could you describe the main principles of human resource development?
Human resource development is all about people. It is about ensuring that you have the workforce that you need to do the work that needs to be done. It is about ensuring that skills that people have match an organization’s needs. Often people are described as human “capital”, which is a funny way to think of them. But if you think of a capital project or capital investment when you are putting a lot of money into developing something, it is the same thing with people: putting the money into the people and developing their skills over a long period of time, and then seeing the return on those investments.
Could you describe Canadian best practices for labor market analysis?
In Canada we have a lot of data available on the market. We are trying to understand what is happening in the various parts of the country. I will give you an example for British Columbia where I live. The north-eastern part of British Columbia is very isolated: there are no big cities there, only small towns. There are a lot of people needed to work in the healthcare field and in the hospitals but they don’t have enough skilled people living there. Understanding that there are a lot of jobs in that area for people with healthcare skills is important. It enables people going to school to decide «okay, if I get these skills where am I likely to get a job?». You can look on the websites on the internet and see if there is a good chance of employment in that area. The problem is that people don’t necessarily want to move away from big cities and live in isolated areas. In Canada, some students can get some scholarships and bursaries to go to university but mostly people pay for their own education and it can be quite expensive. A lot of people take out student loans for a certain period of time. There is a program where, if you agree to go work in isolated areas, such as the north-eastern part of British Columbia in healthcare, the student loan can be forgiven. So you don’t have to pay the loan back if you go work there for a while. It is a great way to not only develop people and their skills but also have them go to areas where that kind of work is needed. Another part of labor market analysis is to understand the population, the age, the sex, how many people are retired, how many people are of working age in your region, etc.
Is there a shortage of skilled workforce in Canada?
In certain areas of Canada, there is a severe shortage of skilled workforce, for example, in trades. When the economy is going well, there is a lot of construction and development. It is very difficult when you don’t have enough electricians, plumbers or carpenters. We are supporting apprenticeships through the government: people go to work for companies for a number of years and they get money provided to them, while the companies get a tax break so that they hire people and develop the workforce. On TV programs we have commercials from the government. The provincial government has a current program called “WorkBC”. What they are doing there is they are promoting all these things we are talking about. They have a woman featured in a commercial. She was an unemployed single parent and she was provided with an electrical apprenticeship program by the provincial government and then hired by a company. And not only did she become an electrician, but she carried on and developed her skills. She is now a master electrician. She was being featured quite prominently in commercials, trying to encourage other women to get into what is still a very non-traditional role in Canada. I have known many women in Canada who are working in many different trades such as plumbers, electricians and mechanics. In Canada, electricians are paid very well. For example, if you work in an administrative support role in an office, you will make, maybe, half as much as an electrician makes.
Are there any programs aimed at encouraging foreign nationals to go and work in Canada?
There are some federal programs that support that. In fact, it is very important because we don’t have enough people in our population. We are not making enough babies. In Canada most families are very small, with 1-2 children. It is very seldom to have large families. We are not seeing our population grow. In British Columbia, over the next 10 years we are going to have 1.1 mln jobs become available. In our schools we are producing about 650 000 people. So we have a shortage of almost half a million people for jobs. So we need people to come and work in British Columbia.
Where will they come from? The nice part about western Canada is that the weather there is very good. Often people from eastern Canada move to western Canada. But we need people to move from all over the world. The main challenge that people from other countries seem to go through is ensuring that their level of training matches the Canadian standards. For example, a person may be a nurse in the Philippines, but when they come to Canada their training and education is at different levels. They have to go back to schools and take Canadian courses. We have some government programs to assist people in paying for their courses.
One of other things that we are doing is ensuring that people who have disabilities are provided with jobs. Someone in a wheelchair might not be able to move around very easily, but they are still quite capable of a lot of other things. We have a number of programs that are designed to ensure that jobs are made available to match the skills to the work that need to be done. A lot of our programs are focused on supporting people with different disabilities, whether it is a mental illness or physical disabilities. They are still some things that they can’t do. For example, a lot of people in Canada make their own wine. A lot of people need wine bottles for that. Where do you get wine bottles? A lot of the restaurants sell wine. What do they do with the bottles? There is a government program where a company goes to the restaurants and collects the bottles. They bring them back to their government-supported business and people with disabilities wash, clean and sterilize the bottles and later sell the bottles to people who are going to make their own wine. In such a way people with disabilities can make a living. It is very important to treat people with dignity and respect. We also have a lot of programs where we provide people with money known as disability income or social support. But people have pride and self-esteem. They want to do something of value. Ensuring that you have opportunities for people to get into the workforce and do what they are able to do is very important.
here is another government program that is called the Association for Community Living where they help people with disabilities. People with disabilities are employed to work on a farm and help grow the hops on that farm that is used to produce beer. Many such programs are initiated at the grassroots level. They are very local. Where I live we have Sunshine Coast Economic Development groups such as “Community Futures” and a new group is just being started. They are looking to create jobs. Not only was the farm started where they are now producing their own beer, they are producing a lot of beer and they are selling it in liquor stores and pubs. I find that a lot of Canadians do not want to do menial kind of work and prefer other jobs that are much better paid than working on a farm. It is a great match of ensuring that work that needs to be done can be performed and also that the people with disabilities have the opportunity to get involved and do something meaningful.
What about education in Canada? Are Canadian schools funded by the government?
In Canada schools are part of the provincial government. Everybody who works in the school has their salaries paid by the government through taxes. We have local school districts usually with ten to twelve schools: there are kindergartens and schools from grade 1 up to grade 12. Students are about 18 years old when they finish school. The teachers earn a very good salary. Though we have a growing number of schools, there is a growing shortage of teachers. We do not have enough of them.
We see a lot of people emigrating to Canada. In Canada, we saw a baby boom right after WW II. In North America a lot of people were born from 1946 up to 1964. Now we see the next generation come along. But we are not making enough babies. For a while we even had to shut down schools. Now we are making more schools again. It is part of human resources development.
As to universities, Canadian universities are very proud of the work they do. One of the things that our universities do is that they measure and report on how their graduates do. It is very important for their reputation to only not turn over a lot of graduates, but to ensure that those graduates have very good jobs once they are finished. In general, it is difficult to get into university as there is a lot of competition. For this reason, distance learning is becoming very popular. Distance learning enables people to live where they want to live and take classes. I went back to school 10 years ago to get a master’s degree. It was a two-year program. I did that when I was working full time. I would just go to university for about a week or two three or four times over the two years’ program. The rest was on the internet. It is a very good way for schools to offer a lot of programs because they don’t have everyone in the classroom all the time. In British Columbia, we have British Columbia Institute of Technology. Historically, it was the main place for trades. Now it is quite diverse. They are offering programs for aerospace technology. It is the largest such school in Canada and is located close to the Vancouver airport.