CSJ provides wage subsidies to employers from not-for-profit organizations, public and private sector organizations with 50 or fewer employees. The purpose is to create quality summer work experience for young Canadians aged 15 to 30 years.
Who can apply?
Not-for-profit organizations, public and private sector employers with 50 or fewer fill-time employees.
When can you apply?
You can apply for funding now until January 12, 2023, to hire young Canadians next summer. Full-time job placements will be available starting April 2023.
Yearly, Service Canada and Members of Parliament (MPs) establish national priorities to prioritize job opportunities for youth facing barriers in finding work – this year the priorities are:
Youth with disabilities;
Black and other racialized youth;
Indigenous youth;
Small businesses and not-for-profit organizations that self report as having leadership from groups that are under-represented in the labour market;
Small business and not-for-profit organizations in environmental sectors
The return of in-person career fairs in the London Economic Region has seen much traction. Now it’s Western University’s time to shine!
hirewesternu Winter Career Fair is back. On February 2, 2023 from 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m., you’ll be able to connect with student and alumni talent spanning across 12 faculties and over 200 programs.
At this fair your organization will be able to promote new graduate, work integrated learning (internship, co-op, practicum), summer and part-time opportunities.
Retention and Upskilling in the Workplace: December 7, 2022, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Join us on December 7th, from 11:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. to learn how local employers are partnering with adult upgrading programs to support employee retention and upskilling.
Tamara Kaattari – Executive Director of Literacy Link South Central – will share how these local relationships have developed and how employer and employee needs are being translated into skill-building programs.
About Literacy Link South Central
Literacy Link South Central (LLSC) is a literacy information and referral network servicing counties of Middlesex, Oxford, Elgin, Brant, Haldimand and Norfolk. LLSC supports all literacy programs equally and inclusively, respecting diversities in service delivery based on their individual community needs.
Caregivers in the Workplace: November 14, 2022, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Are you or someone you know caring for a family member or friend while trying to meet demands at work? Are you an employer looking for strategies to better support and retain your employees?
In collaboration with the Ontario Caregiver Organization (OCO), EMO Workforce Planning and Development Board presents “Caregivers in the Workplace.” Participants will learn more about caregiving experiences, explore the best strategies for building a caregiver-inclusive workplace, as well as tips for finding better balance between work and caregiving needs. You will also gain access to free resources and services.
About the Ontario Caregiver Organization
The Ontario Caregiver Organization (OCO) exists to support Ontario’s 4 million caregivers; ordinary people who provide physical and emotional support to a family member, partner, friend or neighbour. We support caregivers by being their one point of access to information, so they have what they need to be successful in their role.
New Report Shows Area Nonprofits Face Steep Workforce Recovery
Local organizations to present data Monday revealing a struggling nonprofit sector is having difficulty attracting, hiring, and retaining qualified workers.
LONDON, ON. October 28,2022 – A collaboration between the Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board (WPDB) and Pillar Nonprofit Network (Pillar) reveals that employers in the London region’s nonprofit sector have been facing severe human resources challenges, including greater difficulty in hiring and retaining qualified workers than other employers. Sector employers and advocates have long noted precarious work and wage disparity as challenges in the sector, and the findings show that these conditions are being felt locally. Analysts from the two organizations plan to co-present their findings in a webinar Monday, October 31.
In March 2022, the WPDB released a “results reveal” of responses from the most recent regional EmployerOne Survey, available on the WPDB website here, where employers were able to report on year two of the pandemic and assess their prospects for this year. Subsequently, Pillar and the WPDB released a more specific analysis of care economy employers’ responses showing the specific workforce challenges faced by that subsector, results that help explain headline stories about service cutbacks at hospitals and bolster the case for investment in care workers.
As promised at that time, the two organizations have now analyzed the responses of nonprofit employers in London and the surrounding counties, showing that workforce conditions are challenging for all sectors and especially difficult for nonprofits.
Among the key findings:
Almost two-thirds of separations in the nonprofit sector were layoffs, whereas layoffs only accounted for 14% of separations in other sectors.
Only one third of separations in the nonprofit sector in 2021 were quits as compared to 72% quits and retirements for other employers, 15% dismissals, 12% temporary layoffs, and only 2% permanent layoffs.
Hires by nonprofits were less likely to be for permanent positions (46% vs 62%) and more likely to be contract positions (38% Vs 21%). Additionally, if permanent, nonprofit positions were less likely to be full-time and so still more precarious for hirees.
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of nonprofit employers indicated that they see retention as “a concern” for their organizations.
Only 36% of nonprofit employers indicated regular increases in salary – the third most selected – as a retention strategy, whereas other employers chose salary increases most often (46%).
Nonprofit employers were more likely to identify “inability to compete with other employers (wage, benefits, profile)” than other employers, with 21% of respondents selecting this reason, second among all the choices. For other employers, this was the 4th most chosen reason at 16%.
“Since there’s wide disagreement about whether things like ‘The Great Resignation’ are really happening in Canada, we wanted to see whether those big workforce narratives were happening in the London region and how they might affect the local nonprofit sector and our member organizations,” Pillar writes on its news page. “Among the things we found is that when organizations lost employees, it was mostly due to layoffs and so, we might presume, with some reluctance on both sides. That is, local nonprofits weren’t able to support the workforce they had. This is something sector organizations have been struggling with for years and that has been made so much worse with the disruption of the pandemic.”
Emilian Siman of the Workforce Planning and Development Board highlights the value of being responsive to community requests like this. “The growing partnership between Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board and Pillar Nonprofit Network during 2022 led to the discovery of otherwise hidden and very valuable labour market information collected locally through the Employer One Survey. The most recent gem, polished together, is a comparative analysis of this survey’s responses of nonprofit vs. other employers. This kind of insight is much appreciated by local leadership and the public because of the decisional support it provides. In time, we expect more to result from this wonderful collaboration.”
“As with our combined report on the challenges facing care economy employers,” the Pillar news post reads, “the new information can help inform regional recovery. In combination with data we’re collecting locally from our members and province-wide data we’re collecting with the Ontario Nonprofit Network, we’re seeing a funding and regulatory environment that creates the conditions of precarious work. It means that, despite some good intentions in policy-making, like $10-a-day daycare, micro-sectors that require highly skilled and credentialed people but can’t provide decent work will face a steeper recovery curve. The good intentions will have to be backed up by funding and policy support or we won’t get the good outcomes we’re envisioning.”
Pillar plans to use this data to inform advocacy to all levels of government, especially London City Council and the London Community Recovery Network.
Pillar Nonprofit Network strengthens individuals, organizations and enterprises invested in positive community impact in London and Southwestern Ontario. Through a heightened equity lens, we support charities, nonprofits, for-profit and nonprofit social enterprises, social innovators, and social financiers by sharing resources, exchanging knowledge, and creating meaningful connections across the three pillars of nonprofit, business, and government. We believe that a connected network sparks collaboration and helps to build an engaged, inclusive, and vibrant community. Learn more at pillarnonprofit.ca.
About Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board:The Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board (WPDB) works to provide stakeholders with quality labour market information to make decisions which result in a thriving, viable economy. WPDB has over 20 labour market information tools on their website to assist all of whom we serve within the Elgin Middlesex and Oxford region to make better, more informed decisions. View the tools and past reports at www.workforcedevelopment.ca.
Thinking back to our first Labour Market Information Made Easy session, we had around 30 minutes of questions about how to use our tools. Our attendees wanted MORE INFORMATION, and we LOVE IT!
Our tools are for you, and we want them to serve our community. Hosted by Jessica Gowers, this session will have an outline of the different tools, but we’re prepared to go off the rails! Ask questions as they come up, let’s make it more of a discussion! Bombard us with your questions, uses, potentials, requests, and MORE.
The Child Care Sector Analysis was released today, July 11, 2022.
The purpose of the report is to provide commentary on the child care sector with the data figures. The conclusions made in this report are by our Data Analyst, Bashir Adeyemo. The data itself comes from the 2022 EmployerOne Survey.
London Area Employers in the Care Economy Facing Significant Labour Challenges
Local organizations collaborate to reveal struggling care sector is havingdifficulty attracting, hiring, and retaining qualified workers.
LONDON, ON. June 7,2022 – A collaboration between the Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board (WPDB) and Pillar Nonprofit Network reveals that employers in the London region’s Care Economy are feeling significant human resources challenges, and are identifying greater difficulty in finding, hiring, and retaining qualified workers than other employers. Sector employers and advocates say it’s a sector defined by precarious work that needs immediate emergency supports and long-term regulatory change on the road to recovery.
In March 2022, the WPDB released a “results reveal” of responses from the most recent regional EmployerOne Survey, available on the WPDB website here. Since then, WPDB has released a more specific analysis derived from the EmployerOne results on the Care Economy. The Care Economy analysis was requested and done with the assistance of Pillar, many of whose members are child care, health care, and other Care Economy employers and workers, and will soon be complemented by an analysis of survey participants from the nonprofit sector.
“We’re hearing grand narratives like ‘The Great Resignation,’ and our provincial nonprofit network has declared a ‘human resources crisis’ for the whole nonprofit sector, but we wanted to prioritise a study of Care Economy organisations because of the current attention to micro-sectors like health care and child care in talks of recovery and rebuilding,” says Paul Seale, Manager of Membership Engagement at Pillar. “We wanted to see how these stories are showing up in our region and what might be needed here to support recovery of these critical social and economic drivers.”
Among the key findings:
Care Economy employers who participated in the survey identified greater levels of challenge than employers in all other sectors in finding workers (91% vs 82%), hiring workers (94% vs 82%), and retaining workers (74% vs 69%).
Retention is of greater concern for Care Economy employers (75%) than other survey respondents (59%).
Notably, “hiring qualified workers” is regarded as a greater challenge for Care Economy employers than “finding” them, suggesting that qualified care workers may be hesitant to join or rejoin the care workforce where conditions are challenging and wages are suppressed, either chronically, through funding disruptions, through legislation, or all three.
More Care Economy employers regard financial constraints as challenging (81%) than other respondents (66%) when asked to identify the degree to which they were concerned about a variety of challenges to their organisations “as the economy returns to a normal state of activity.” This finding jibes with recent findings from a Pillar micro-survey indicating that, at least for nonprofits, financial positions have worsened during the pandemic,
The employer response comes as no surprise to Care Economy employers, including those in the personal support and licensed childcare sectors. Stacey Sutton, Senior Coordinator at PHSS comments, “This report will be helpful in raising awareness for fair wages for Personal Support Workers and Developmental Support Workers as we continue to find it challenging to recruit and retain skilled employees in our sector.”
Kara Pihlak, Chair of the Licensed Child Care Network’s Advocacy Sub-Committee comments, “The Childcare sector has been struggling with recruitment and retention of qualified staff for decades, and the problem has only been exacerbated by the Covid -19 Pandemic.” The results of the survey reflect this challenge, with 35% of respondents noting the most difficult position to fill as Registered Early Childhood Educators and Assistants working in Licensed Child Care. “These positions are difficult to fill due to the low wages and complex working conditions,” Pihlak says. “To support the care economy, all levels of government must invest in the childcare sector, with specific emphasis on decent pay and work for staff.” (The WPDB has also completed an analysis of last year’s survey results for child care sector employers, available here, and an analysis of this year’s responses from child care sector employers is forthcoming.)
Emilian Siman of the Workforce Planning and Development Board highlights the value of being responsive to community requests like this. “The recent collaboration between WPDB and Pillar helped reveal significant labour force challenges that otherwise would have remained hidden in the aggregate data from all responding organisations,” he commented. “With Pillar’s insight into recent and ongoing Care Sector labour challenges, WPDB has been able to frame relevant analyses highlighting the urgency of London area community action to reduce the risk of further weakening this sector. The labour market information (LMI) produced through this collaboration will enable government and policy makers to calibrate their support toward a growing and vibrant Care Sector. This is an excellent example of how locally collected information can be enhanced through collaboration to offer great decisional support.”
“This information does help us to better describe the ‘perfect storm’ that’s blowing through the Care Economy,” Seale comments. “In combination with data we’re collecting locally from our members and province-wide data we’re collecting with the Ontario Nonprofit Network, we’re seeing a funding and regulatory environment that creates the conditions of precarious work. It means that, despite some good intentions in policy-making — $10 a day daycare, for example — regulated micro-sectors that require highly skilled and credentialed people but can’t provide decent work will face a steeper recovery curve. The good intentions will have to be backed up by funding and policy support or we won’t get the good outcomes we’re imagining.”
For example, Pihlak says, “A strong childcare system supports the growth and development of children 0-5 and allows for working parents to participate in the labour market, and so strong investment must be made in our Registered Early Childhood Educators and Assistants, as they are the heart of the childcare system.”
You can review the WPDB report here, further analysis from Pillar here, and Pillar’s previous writing on precarious work and Decent Work here.
About Pillar Nonprofit Network:
Pillar Nonprofit Network strengthens individuals, organisations and enterprises invested in positive community impact in London and Southwestern Ontario. Through a heightened equity lens, we support charities, nonprofits, for-profit and nonprofit social enterprises, social innovators, and social financiers by sharing resources, exchanging knowledge, and creating meaningful connections across the three pillars of nonprofit, business, and government. We believe that a connected network sparks
collaboration and helps to build an engaged, inclusive, and vibrant community.
About Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board:
The Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board (WPDB) works to provide stakeholders with quality labour market information to make decisions which result in a thriving, viable economy. WPDB has over 20 labour market information tools on their website to assist all of whom we serve within the Elgin Middlesex and Oxford region to make better, more informed decisions. View the tools and past reports at www.workforcedevelopment.ca.
The EmployerOne 2022 Results Report was released today, April 27, 2022.
The purpose of the report is to provide commentary with the data figures. Previously, we’ve provided the public with the Results Reveal webinar, as well as the slide deck to the webinar. If our viewers wanted to use our data, they’d have to go to the slide deck, re-listen to the presentation, or contact our Data Analyst. Now, you can access the Results Report with conclusions made by our Data Analyst, Bashir Adeyemo.
This project is funded in part by the Goverment of Canada and the Government of Ontario
Help Us Serve You Better
We are collecting data to better understand who is looking for work and what kind of opportunities jobseekers are searching for. This data is completely anonymous and non-personally identifiable.
