In recent years, the skill shortage in Canadian manufacturing has grown at an unparalleled rate. In 2022, Statistics Canada reported 47.4 per cent of Canadian manufacturers struggled to find skilled workers, and 85 per cent reported understaffing, compared to 39 per cent in 2016.
“We are in the midst of a historically tight labour market, and the manufacturing industry tends to be one of the lower-paying sectors of the economy,” says Patrick Poulin, president and managing director of Randstad Canada.
According to Poulin, “Canadian manufacturers must tap into a large local talent pool and have access to contingent workers to manage peak season and last-minute shifts in order to remain competitive.”
Photo courtesy of Randstad.
Poulin says a new solution from Randstad can help by digitizing the contingent hiring process. This would allow employers to reach out to a new pool of potential employees while allowing employees to plan their work around their lives.
Flexibility around work is becoming the new normal, he says. The Randstad app makes it simple, quick and efficient for job-seekers to take on seasonal work during the holidays, try out an employer who might eventually be looking for a full-time hire, or plan work arrangements around family care obligations, educational pursuits and other work.
“It makes things way easier for the job seekers to find a job and for the employers to find great talent,” sums up Poulin.
Automating the process of finding help fast
The app has worked well for Ryan Whitfield, Calgary operations manager for Peak of the Market Ltd., a prominent Western Canadian produce wholesaler and distributor. While the Calgary location has been around for more than 10 years, the production division of the company is fairly new, he says: “We aren’t consistent with worker shifts yet. We might need candidates for five days one week and only for one or two days the next week.”
In the past, Whitfield says, if he needed to fill a shift quickly, he would either call or email his chosen temp agency. But if the communication took place outside of business hours, he wouldn’t likely get a response until the following business day. “That morning, the agency would have to frantically call their candidates and arrange for transportation,” he says. “In the meantime, we’d lose out on two to three hours when we needed to have people there.”
The Randstad app has simplified and streamlined that process, by allowing Whitfield to post available jobs directly on the app from his cell phone, regardless of the hour. The posting triggers an email to a pool of temp employees who can accept the job immediately with a few keystrokes. Whitfield doesn’t have to manage the payroll, deductions and insurance for the temp – Randstad handles that.
“One time, I worked a really busy 11-hour day, and I realized when I got home that I hadn’t put in for the temp services we needed the following day,” he says. “With the app, I was able to post the jobs at 9:00 p.m., and we still had a full team show up the next day.”
The draw for contingent workers is that they’re able to connect directly with secure, flexible employment. “They can say, ‘I wasn’t planning on working tomorrow, but sure, I’ll pick up an extra shift,’” explains Whitfield. An added bonus: they get paid on the first business day following their shift. “It works out for both parties,” he adds.
Ensuring a good fit
Photo courtesy of Randstad.
Randstad provides contingent employees to many sectors of the economy, but as Whitfield points out, the app has been designed to help employers narrow down the pool of employees according to the specific needs of their industry and their business, as well as their individual skills, preferred travel distance and availability.
When you post a job, you can include a description and list whether the employee needs special attire or tools, as well as the scope and duration of the job. “You can also list desired experience and skills – like if they have to be forklift certified,” Whitfield says.
It’s also helpful, he says, that you can designate “preferred” employees – usually people you have employed in the past and know to be good workers. “When we post a job, our preferred people get pinged first, and they have about 20 minutes to respond before the position is posted to the rest of the pool,” he says.
If workers have proven unreliable or don’t follow company policy, on the other hand, you can remove them from your pool of potential employees just as you would unfriend someone on Facebook. But that’s rare, points out Poulin. “We verify all the talent to make sure they’re ready for work,” he explains. “And of the jobs we get now, we have a 95 per cent fill rate, and the average time to fill is less than 60 minutes, with some shifts filled in as quick as five minutes.”
A chance to attract new talent
Apart from solving the immediate problem of filling vacant shifts so your operation can run smoothly, Poulin says the Randstad app can attract a new pool of workers traditionally underrepresented in the manufacturing industry.
He says traditional talent pipelines are still needed in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturers must consider upskilling their existing employees. However, with the significant skills shortage, they also have to evolve their recruitment strategies.
Randstad’s app, he says, gives manufacturers access to a broad pool of talent they might otherwise not have reached. “We just started the app a couple of months ago, and we have almost 20,000 candidates who have downloaded it right now,” says Poulin.
As Whitfield points out, the app can also enable management to narrow down the field of candidates for a full-time position. “It gives us more reach. And it gives us a chance to have a closer look at individual employees without having to make a commitment,” he says. “Anyone can put their best foot forward in an interview, but is that how they are consistently?”
When you’ve actually seen a potential employee at work, he says, “You know if they’re good and you can say, ‘Hey, are you interested in a full-time position?’ We actually just did that – we brought on one of the temp workers full-time.”
In the end, says Poulin, the app provides employers with one more simple, quick, and efficient recruitment tool.
“Manufacturers commonly have last-minute changes in production and distribution,” he says. “It’s important for them to be able to access great talent over the short term. That’s the reason we built this app for our clients – to make sure we were able to be extremely quick and efficient in making the connection between companies and potential workers.”
For more information, visit randstad.ca/randstad-app/find-jobs.