Vancouver Island Industry and Community Collaboration on Workforce Diversity – Labour Market Partnership Project

Dialogue and discussion is an important starting point for making change.  Harbour Digital Media (HDM), acting as a guide and consulting resource for Vancouver Island manufacturers, found, over a three year labour market partnership (LMP) process, that companies on the island were experiencing increasing difficulty in attracting skilled workers.  This labour market issue extends to other regional industries such as tourism, information technology (IT), and the marine sector. 

Through its prior experience with LMP and workforce development projects in a number of Vancouver Island communities, HDM has found that the process of engaging human resource professionals and senior leaders in dialogue with their colleagues and other stakeholders is critically important to growing their understanding of issues related to the attraction, recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce.

This project will address this critical labour market and HR planning issue by focusing on the following objective.  This project will:

• Provide a process through which HR planning approaches and best practices can be shared among Vancouver Island companies and stakeholders.   This process will include hosting two day-long workforce diversity forums.  These forums will include representatives from a range of businesses including those from the manufacturing, tourism, IT, and marine sector, community organizations, indigenous communities, and post-secondary instititutions.