The Skilled Workforce Shortage

Every company, every government agency, and every not for profit organization in North America is facing a situation never before seen; a severe shortage of skilled labor.

While it has already hit a number of economic sectors, most notably the construction and health care industries, a logical extension of our demographics points to a time when every organization in every sector will feel the impact.

For all employers this new reality calls for unprecedented strategic thinking which must include attracting more than one’s share of the available pool of labor, and building new relationships with existing employees.

This workshop will provide managers, supervisors and HR specialists with a clear understanding of the various factors that lie behind this phenomenon, the tools to predict how it will impact their organization and strategies that can be utilized to attract new staff and to retain existing staff by becoming what the author calls a ‘magnet’ company.

Participants will:

• Gain a new understanding of the powerful forces at work in reducing the supply of skilled and semi-skilled labor
• Begin to understand how the skill shortage will impact their industry and their department or division
• Learn how to develop inventories of existing staff; their needs, values and goals
• Be able to identify the probable needs, values and goals of their target candidates for new positions
• Learn the importance of developing a new ‘corporate brand’ as an employer, which reflects the needs, values and goals of their staff and the people they want to attract as employees
• Learn what they can do as employees to help develop a magnet company that entices prospective employees to seek out employment with them
• Learn to develop pro-active strategies to keep staff longer through harmonization of their needs and the company needs, and by creating a work/life balance
• Be able to build defensive strategies to offset ‘skills piracy’ from the competition.
• Learn how to become part of a magnet company that entices prospective employees to seek out employment with them
• Be able to determine what strategies their competition will use to gain a larger share of the labor market
• Be able to develop new efficiencies in productivity that can lessen the number of people required to carry out the work or the mandate
• Start to understand how to balance increased labor costs, increased prices and customer retention
• Understand the importance of supporting the HR function by focusing on new corporate skills strategies, marketing, communication and production.