By NICK STEWART
A unique partnership between the North Bay Chamber of Commerce and various social services boards across northeastern Ontario is hoping to help match regional employers with up to 600 workers in the next year.
Through GetTrainedWorkers.com, the project partners work together to link participant businesses with qualified recipients of Ontario Works (OW) or Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) in the catchment areas of Nipissing, Cochrane, Timiskaming, Parry Sound and Muskoka.
Having received $580,000 from the provincial Ministry of Community and Social Services’ annual Employment Innovations Fund budget, the one-year pilot project is one of the ministry’s largest.
“When people say that there are no jobs in Northern Ontario, they’re wrong,” Patti Carr, manager of the North Bay Chamber, says.
“Every sector’s looking for people, this is just one tool we’re hoping to use to be able to fulfill the employment needs of businesses in the region.”
After registering on the site, businesses will be contacted within 24 hours, at which point their status as a business is verified. They may then choose how many resumes they wish to receive, and the manner in which they wish to receive them, be it via phone, fax or email.
Their desired employee specifications and requirements are then broadcast throughout the program’s northeastern network, where OW and ODSP caseworkers filter through their pool of clients to determine eligibility.
Though the length of the process varies depending on employer need and subject availability, Carr says some people can expect results in as quickly as a week from their time of registration.
This can represent a considerable savings of time and effort on behalf of business owners, for whom the matching service is completely free, according to John Hewitt, the program’s regional coordinator.
What’s more, it leverages the business strengths of the North Bay Chamber with the existing infrastructure of the various social services boards, thereby streamlining the process.
“For a lot of the smaller businesses in the region, one person acts as human resources manager, shipper, receiver and a million other jobs,” Hewitt says.
“If they’re looking to hire someone, they might not have the time to go through a million resumes. By passing it through this system, they can set it and forget it and focus on running their business.”
In its first six weeks, the program has connected 10 people with jobs in Northern businesses.
Though specific company examples could not be given as a result of confidentiality agreements, one woman was recently hired as a coach and truck maintenance operator in Timmins.
This kind of hiring in a “non-traditional role for women” is an example of the kind of progress the program hopes to achieve, Hewitt says.
Organizers hope to be able to considerably accelerate the job matching rate in the coming months in order to reach its target goal of 600 hires by June of next year.
Hewitt says this goal should be quite achievable, given the level of interest the business community has shown towards the program. To date, more than 150 businesses have registered, garnering a total of 320 job listings.
As an example of the number of potential workers available to the program, Hewitt points out how there are 500 eligible clients of OW or ODSP in the North Bay area alone, though the exact number is constantly fluctuating.
In order to help achieve the project’s goals, organizers are not restricting job offers to individuals in the immediate area.
Instead, individual job offers go out to the project’s entire northeastern Ontario catchment area, leaving the opportunity open to eligible individuals throughout the region, who are encouraged to relocate if necessary.
What’s more, the project may even supply OW and ODSP clients with funding for equipment or even training if necessary.
“We don’t want to have to tell an employer, ‘We found someone that’d be perfect, but they were missing a small bit of training,’ and we don’t want to have to turn away an otherwise qualified applicant for the same reason,” Hewitt says.
