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w at er lo oc hr on ic le .c a W at er lo o C hr on ic le | T hu rs da y, Ju ly 5, 20 18 | 16 ...from community developments to a look at rising stars on the local business, dining, sports and entertainment scenes.We're proud to introduce you to the people & businesses that make up the community of Waterloo! GET A LOCAL PERSPECTIVE ON SHOPS & SERVICES To advertise in the Waterloo Chronicle call 519.579.0301 BUSINESS Visit waterloochronicle.ca for more coverage Changing the way em- ployers think about immi- grants can be good for busi- ness and will be important to competing economically in the years ahead, a Great- er K-W Chamber of Com- merce luncheon heard Thursday. "No longer are we doing immigrants a favour by welcoming them to our ar- ea," said Murray Gamble, owner of the C3 Group of Companies, an innovative engineering and advanced construction technology organization based in Wa- terloo Region. "More and more, we will need to compete with other jurisdictions to attract im- migrant talent, and you need to be aware of that," he said. "If we don't, we'll not only lose employees, but employers as well, to larg- er, more culturally diverse centres." It's already happening, labour experts warn, and by 2031, the Canadian work- force is projected to be fac- ing a shortage of close to two million workers. "We know immigration will play a key and signifi- cant role in addressing these gaps," said Karen Spencer, who chairs the Im- migration Partnership, a community co-operative that aims to help newcom- ers thrive by bringing down barriers. Businesses need to be proactive, she said, and the partnership's Hire Immi- grants campaign that got underway in March is just one way of raising the pro- file to let businesses know about the resources avail- able to help them success- fully hire new Canadians. Spencer said 22.6 per cent, or about 120,000 resi- dents, in the local region are immigrants. Statistics Canada projects this could grow to over 30 per cent by the year 2036. About 3,000 "permanent residents" arrive in Water- loo Region each year, she said. More than half pos- sess a post-secondary di- ploma or degree, along with a wide range of talents and skills. Carol Simpson, the exec- utive director of the Work- force Planning Board of Waterloo Wellington Duf- ferin and a member of the Immigration Partnership's work steering group, said the talent shortage has been real for a while now, and people need to start dealing with it. The planning board's key focus is to gather rele- vant labour market info from a variety of sources to see how it can be used to ad- dress gaps. "Looking at employ- ment trends, it's important to note that employment is growing," Simpson said. "Yet employers are having a very difficult time filling vacancies and many are struggling to meet their production needs." Simpson said the types of jobs currently being cre- ated in our community are mainly entry level posi- tions in industries such as manufacturing, health care, hospitality, transpor- tation and agriculture. Some manufacturers have been connected with Syrian refugees to help fill vacant positions and pro- vide newcomers with an opportunity to enter the workforce. In the mean- time, the general managers of some hotels are having to clean rooms these days, Simpson said. "So there's interesting changes hap- pening within employment numbers." Whereas in recent years, people without a high school education experi- enced higher levels of un- employment, and the num- ber of people unemployed with a degree went down, that trend has flipped, she said. Though the unemploy- ment rate is relatively low, there are still 16,000 to 17,000 people actively looking for work in Water- loo Region. Convincing educated workers to take entry level opportunities could help address some of the short- age, but there are many lin- gering skill gaps, too. Large construction com- panies are bringing in for- eign, temporary drywallers from Portugal when there's clearly a demand for per- manent employees. New Canadians with the full cre- dentials to be pharmacists can't find work. And many companies are looking to fill roles they don't provide training for, Simpson said. During the third quarter of 2017, there were roughly 13,000 online jobs posted in the region. About 1,000 of those were tech-specific, but when Simpson looked the other day, only 27 per cent required university education or higher. The rest required high school or less, or on-the-job training. "So it's a very vibrant job market right now with lots of opportunities for differ- ent people," she said. "We're just in that phase right now where we're building up the bottom end of the pyra- mid." During a Q-and-A ses- sion with chamber of com- merce president Ian McClean, Gamble said he believes the political cli- mate in the U.S. could pro- vide a "once-in-a-genera- tion" opportunity for Cana- da. Gamble criticized poli- cies aimed at blocking peo- ple fleeing war zones or crime, who are perceived to be stealing jobs. "Those people are still going to try to get in the country because they're re- ally desperate," he said. "The people they're go- ing to drive away are the re- ally talented people. So they're really shooting themselves in the foot." Decades ago, the major- ity of Gamble's staff either grew up in Ontario or went to post-secondary school here. "We never said we would be a significant employer of immigrants," he said. "The truth is, it just happened." In early 1990s, Gamble was looking to add a couple of engineers and inter- viewed grads from Univer- sity of Waterloo, but ended up choosing a newcomer from Vietnam whose En- glish wasn't perfect. Today he's one of the most respect- ed senior partners with the firm, and more important- ly, he defined what an im- migrant employee could do for the company. Gamble has since hired many other newcomers from all over the world in- cluding Germany, the Mid- dle East, Africa, Asia and South America. Advantages of hiring new Canadians can include a more worldly knowledge, and decreased employee turnover, Gamble noted. "As a relatively small en- trepreneurial organiza- tion, we just had one philos- ophy about hiring: Hire the best candidate for the job, regardless of their gender, what they look like or where they came from," he said. "I strongly believe the less we approach hiring with preconceived notions about who the ideal candi- date may be, the more suc- cessful we became." Various organizations can provide guidance to help companies connect with the immigrant popula- tion to find the right fit. Vis- it immigrationwaterloore- gion.ca for more informa- tion. 'Hire Immigrants' K-W biz crowd hears The Workplace Planning Board of Waterloo Wellington Dufferin is highlighting the Immigration Partnership's Hire Immigrants ad campaign, which encourages local businesses to consider new Canadians to help fill employment gaps. Twitter photo BILL JACKSON bjackson@kitchenerpost.ca