Skip to content

Trucking industry needs to recruit Indigenous people

New report highlights approach to diversifying the trucking workforce
HR Trucking

The number of Indigenous workers in Canada’s trucking and logistics sector is “well below” the average for the national workforce.

With the trucking industry experiencing a driver shortage, for Trucking HR Canada, Indigenous people represent an “untapped labour pool.”

The national industry organization has released a new report, Indigenous Recruitment and Retention: A Roadmap for Canada’s Trucking and Logistics Industry, to support employers in their efforts to better attract and retain Indigenous employees.

The organization said employers in other industries have seen the benefits of successfully hiring Indigenous people.

Trucking HR Canada is engaged with Indigenous communities and interviewed trucking and logistics employers to better understand their perspective as well as the opportunities and barriers that exist for recruitment and retention.

The report highlights those findings and outlines practical steps to support a more diverse recruitment and retention efforts by way of community outreach, recruitment and hiring, orientation and onboarding along with a section on available training resources.

“Indigenous peoples are the fastest growing demographic in Canada. In light of the current labour shortages industry employers are facing, implementing innovative recruitment and retention initiatives to reach out to these communities is not only the right thing to do, it is a business imperative,” said Trucking HR Canada CEO Angela Splinter in a June 5 news release.

Trucking HR Canada is a national partnership organization that identifies human resource issues, supports recruiting to meet industry demand, promotes careers in the field, and provides a national forum for the exchange of ideas and best practices.