Jeff McMaster, workforce development consultant with the Province of Manitoba, was up in Thompson on March 24 and spoke to the Thompson Chamber of Commerce about the opportunities Workforce Development Solutions can offer businesses in the city.
The group's work development team is designed to support businesses with human resource planning, training development and delivery. Resources and funding support are also made available to businesses through what the group calls Industry Workforce Development (IWD). The program, administered by IWD, helps local businesses by doing a "needs" assessment of the company and developing a human resource plan and strategy for the organization. Once the initial assessment is complete, the team will work with the company to develop a human resource and staff development strategy.
After the strategy has been created, a workforce development consultant - in Thompson's case, McMaster himself - will bring together different partners to deliver support and services that could help the company address its needs. The partners can include government departments and agencies, third party service providers and external consultants.
McMaster says that one of the problems that small and mid-sized businesses often have is hiring the right people for the right jobs at the right time.
"Often that has to do with your ability to generate accurate job descriptions, to do job analyses and describe what a job actually entails - what essential skills are required to perform a task, etc.," he explains. "We're very, very interested in assisting with the training of existing employees as well the important thing to us is that the employer has the freedom to select the type of training, the employees to be trained, and the institution or method of the training."
According to the IWD, the benefits of using the system is that the company will be supported throughout the entire process and not sent out in search of service on their own. IWD will also provide options to employers to help them with current issues and also offers follow-up services to ensure that the company's needs have been met. The integration of services provided also allows the workforce development team to connect the employer to a multitude of training programs and human resource development services, which include support from Employment Manitoba, Apprenticeship Manitoba, Industry Sector Associations, Workplace Education Manitoba, other federal and provincial government departments, services and programs and external consulting services.
