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Region of Durham and DWA Launch Manufacturers Survey
Leave a CommentOshawa, ON –The Region of Durham Economic Development Department and the Durham Workforce Authority are partnering with Canada’s largest manufacturing consortium – Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium (EMC) to help local manufacturers, government, post-secondary institutions and other stakeholders to access vital industry Labour Market Intelligence and capability metrics, with the launch of the Manufacturing GPS survey for Durham Region manufacturers.
Beyond a traditional research sector study, Manufacturing GPS will assess the Human Capital/Resources and Labour Market Intelligence (LMI) needs for all local manufacturing sectors, focusing on the collection, analysis and ultimately better dissemination of LMI through a fully accessible platform.
Manufacturing GPS is a searchable LMI system, with benchmarking, skills and capability resources, reports and outreach portal to better help sectors by providing a crucial and unique tool for local manufacturers This macro-level LMI resource with the flexibility of micro-level detail, combined with EMC’s extensive consortium and online network will better position manufacturers on the global productivity map.
This project is funded by the Government of Canada’s Labour Market Partnerships—Sector Initiatives Program and will be fully accessible to four key target audiences: 1) Canadian manufacturing firms, 2) Job Seekers and Students, 3) Postsecondary Institutions, and 4) All levels of government.
There is no cost for industry to participate in the Manufacturing GPS survey. Participants will also benefit from no cost access to online skills development, training and other LMI resources being provided through EMC’s Canadian Manufacturing Network.
“Launching this survey for local employers will help provide manufacturers with Labour Market Information to inform action plans for employee/labour skills and capabilities planning,” said Heather McMillan, Executive Director of the Durham Workforce Authority.
‘EMC conducts annual nation-wide manufacturing LMI and salary surveys among its industry management. This survey and report will be tools that will help them assess the future skills composition and needs of their often-aging workforce.’ Said Eileen Kennedy of the Region of Durham Economic Development Department.
Manufacturers completing the full survey will be able to access the study data at: https://survey.manufacturinggps.ca/sites/LMI2017.
As companies complete the study, the site will update to allow you to build a more detailed view of your specific manufacturing area or the sector.
EMC Background
Development for Canadian Manufacturing Network helps employers to access up-to-date information, track industry trends on specific skills shortages with resources and tools, compensation rates for key occupations, HR productivity data, supply shortages and demand gaps and recruitment and retention strategies.
Another key outcome of Manufacturing GPS is the ability for a manufacturer to benchmark and see where they fit within their sector or region, but also put themselves on the map by promoting their capabilities to potential national and global customers.
Jobs First Durham
Leave a CommentOshawa – The DWA launched Jobs First Durham (JFD), searchable web aggregator of Durham Region Jobs from national, provincial, and local job boards to make searching for your next job in Durham Region easier and custom data reports that incorporate the existing DWA data portal and enhances the information available with features such as labour market graphs, tables, and more.
The DWA has launched two new monthly JFD data reports using locally collected labour market data. These reports will help job seekers better understand employer needs, making them invaluable for community and government organizations supporting economic and workforce development in the region.
The monthly Job Search Report for Durham Region is created by the DWA using data collected from three of our own job finding tools: Jobs First Durham job board, Jobs First Durham map jobs, and Jobs First Durham explore careers. The data will be collected with consent with the knowledge that it would be anonymous and posted publicly.
Durham Workforce Authority to Host First Data Walk Event
Leave a CommentOn Thursday March 28th 2019 the Durham Workforce Authority (DWA) will be hosting their first Data Walk, at the Tribute Community Centre in Oshawa. A Data Walk is an interactive way for community stakeholders, including residents, researchers, program administrators, local government officials, and service providers, to engage in dialogue around research findings about their community.
The DWA values dissemination of our labour market information (LMI), however thus far our focus has generally been on publishing results and sharing them in professional meetings and conferences. Researchers, program administrators, and policymakers are accustomed to presentations full of technical jargon and graphics that community residents and practitioners may perceive as intimidating, and confusing.
We would love to bring forth this data, and other relevant information to the community in a way that will help residents, and stakeholders gain a comfort level with the breadth and depth of the data, and how this solid research can be used for their own work. As such, we present the Data Walk event.
What to expect from this event
Attendants of the Data Walk will experience small group discussions based on rotating posters of locally sourced data information regarding: employment data, top occupations, top sectors, employer survey, employee survey, Durham under 30 survey, apprenticeship data, and immigration data. Each group will be lead by a member of the DWA, with an invitation for facilitated discussion and questions. Individual discussions of each data set will then be followed by a community conversation lunch, to examine suggestions and recommendations for the future.
Our biggest goal of this event is to share key data and findings with community residents and program participants. We also hope to:
- Foster a shared understanding of local labour market information possessed by the DWA
- Inform, engage, and empower Durham Region Community members to gain a level of comfort in the local LMI data
- Build the capacity of individuals who may not commonly approach community problems quantitatively to read and interpret data, apply it to real life, and assess and discuss how the data align with their personal experiences
- Explore other community data to tell Durham Region stories and,
- Gain insight about the results and what those results might mean for the community.
This event will be one of a kind in uniting community members, educating about Durham Region specific information, and receiving feedback and insight from unique perspectives. If you are interested in attending please register through our Eventbrite link below, we’d love to see you there!
https://dwadatawalk.eventbrite.ca
On The Road to Inclusivity Report
Leave a CommentIn late 2017 the Durham Workforce Authority (DWA), worked with the community to carry forward the important work undertaken by Durham Region Employment Network (DREN) in the Community Roadmap to address the employment issues related to persons with disabilities in Durham Region.
The original DREN Ontario Labour Market Partnership Grant report provided 40 recommendations across six themes. As the DWA moved forward with its own partnership grant, the DWA and its partners reviewed the DREN Ontario Labour Market Partnership (OLMP) report in detail and created three broad themes; Marketing and Communications, Research and Career Awareness. The DWA OLMP focused the recommendations into a proposed three-year plan, thereby consolidating activities in multiple themes of the original six. Pending funding, the DWA anticipates that it will complete 30 of the original deliverables over a three-year project plan.
The Durham Workforce Authority had contracted UOIT’s Social Research Centre to develop, administer and analyze an online survey to review the various elements of employment for Persons with Disabilities in the Durham Region.
A review of the project deliverables noted a strong need for customized local labour market information and labour market intelligence to underpin the Road Map’s recommendations. To that end, the DWA and its partners in consultation with DREN created a project plan that focused in the first phase, a heavy emphasis on the collection of customized local labour market information (LMI) collected from Persons with Disabilities (PWD) in Durham Region who have an employment goal, community outreach to engage both employers and job seekers.
The report can be found here.
Employer Survey
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The DWA is responsible for conducting labour market research and providing labour market information to the Durham Region Community.
Our communities have identified a growing need for data gathering at the local level to address the community response to putting workers in touch with jobs in their communities. Provincial and federal studies looking at the “skills gap” between the skills workers have and the skills employers need do not provide sufficient direction for addressing local responses to what is needed within the community.
The DWA would appreciate you completing the employer survey. The survey will shed light on how available resident skill sets and characteristics intersect with the skills sets and qualifications desired by employers. We anticipate that it will take no more than 6 minutes to complete the surveys.
The DWA will use these aggregated survey results to inform our annual community plan and will be shared with the community organizations to use in planning. Complete the survey at this link.
Durham Workforce Authority awarded Ontario Trillium Foundation Seed Grant
Leave a CommentFunds to research social and economic problems faced in south Oshawa
OSHAWA — The Ontario Trillium Foundation has awarded The Durham Workforce Authority (DWA) a Seed Grant of $62,000 over 8 months to develop a grassroots collective impact approach to community and economic planning in the Lakeview Neighbourhood of south Oshawa. Working with local partners, the DWA will implement a pilot project that will develop and test a locally driven, grassroots, approach to community engagement and collective impact, empowering resident in this neighbourhood to be engaged and involved in the economic and social planning process for their community. The anticipated outcomes of this project will be:
- To create opportunities for residents living in the Lakeview neighbourhood to be empowered to identify the most pressing and relevant social and economic concerns facing their neighbourhood,
- To implement a collaborative process through which residents may be empowered to lead the development of locally relevant solutions to these concerns, engaging local organizations, decision makers, and institutions.
- To develop a grassroots community development and economic planning model that supports collective impact, and that that may be deployed in other priority neighbourhoods in Oshawa and Durham Region.
“This project will explore the challenge of community grassroots engagement at the community level in a neighbourhood where individuals and families may generally be marginalized from the community and economic planning process,” said DWA Executive Director Heather McMillan. “These neighbourhoods, with high levels of poverty, and high social and economic needs, are often subject to community improvement planning and economic strategies, but rarely are the individuals and families who live there included fully in these planning and development processes.”
In the Region of Durham’s Health Neighbourhoods initiative[1], Lakeview (south Oshawa), was identified as one of five priority neighbourhoods in Oshawa, characterized a poverty rate of 26 per cent, and an unemployment rate of 14 per cent. The neighbourhood also consistently ranks near worst across multiple healthy neighbourhood indicators in Durham Region. In addition, this community, once the primary location of a strong manufacturing sector, has been particularly hard hit by Oshawa’s economic transition, characterized by the 2005 elimination of 3,900 jobs at GM plants located in this neighbourhood.
As a result of these characteristics and changes, this neighbourhood, and others like it, face significant social and economic problems.
“This project will develop and test a new approach to local community engagement in the planning process, building on a model of collective impact and grassroots leadership,” says Ben Earle, a director at Social Planning Durham, and one of the DWA’s lead partners in the project, “it is a great opportunity to engage and empower communities differently, hopefully leading to new ideas a strategies for community growth and positive change”.
Ontario Trillium Foundation Seed Grants support projects at the idea or conceptual stage to achieve a priority outcome of the Foundation. These grants provide from $5,000 to 75,000 for up to one year and are used for the development of new ideas and different approaches to achieving results in Ontario communities[2].
An agency of the Government of Ontario, the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) is one of Canada’s largest granting foundations. With a budget of over $136 million, OTF awards grants to some 1,000 projects every year to build healthy and vibrant Ontario communities.
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For more information call Heather McMillan, 289-600-5053
[1]http://www.durham.ca/health.asp?nr=/departments/health/health_statistics/health_neighbourhoods/index.htm&setFooter=/includes/health/healthFooterNeighbourhoods.inc
[2] See details on the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Action Areas and Priorities at http://www.otf.ca/what-we-fund/action-areas?redirected=1
Work searches to remember while job hunting in an online world
Leave a CommentNot long ago if you wanted to find work one of the first places you could go was the newspaper. Careers sections published in most daily newspapers every week had extensive listings of jobs. Classified sections also listed jobs — rows and rows of them.
These days however, newspapers are not the go-to places to find jobs anymore. The world has moved on from newsprint. Nowadays if you’re looking for work the first place you turn to is the Internet.
Before you start searching for work however, keep in mind you should have a resume ready. Many companies allow you to apply for work online so if you don’t have a resume you’ll be unable to apply for work. It’s also important to have a resume that you can add to sites such as LinkedIn. Employers will access different sites when trying to recruit new employees so make sure yours is posted to as many sites as possible. Once it’s online also make sure to keep it current, especially if you’ve added any jobs, skills or volunteer work you’d like to highlight.
Online searches
Remember, don’t be shy when looking for work. Social media is also important. Let your friends and family know you’re looking for work, get yourself a profile on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com). Networking is key and it’s important to get yourself noticed.
There are tons of websites you can access to search for work. One common site used by many job seekers is Indeed (www.indeed.com). It’s easy to use. Punch in the type of work you’re looking for and the geographical area and hit search. You can also get email alerts sent to you from the website when new jobs are posted. So even when you’re not actively searching, a dream job could potentially land in your inbox.
There are other websites that do the same thing as Indeed. Monster (www.monster.ca) and Career Builders (www.careerbuilder.ca), ZipRecruiter (www.ziprecruiter.ca), Simply Hired (www.simplyhired.ca) and Mighty Recruiter (www.mightyrecruiter.com) are also heavily used by job seekers.
If there’s a company you’d really like to work for you can always go straight to its website. Many companies have careers buttons on their sites. Click on ‘careers’ and you might get lucky. Some companies such as Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One also allow you to upload your resume even if there are no jobs currently available. That makes it easier to apply for jobs when they appear as your resume will already be on file.
Another website worth visiting is Employment Ontario (www.ontario.ca/page/employment-ontario/). The site provides an extensive number of resources to help you in your job search. The site provides a link to job boards and another to adjusting after a job loss. Have a question? Click the ‘Live Chat’ button and someone will answer whatever questions you have for them. If you need to upgrade your training or need apprenticeship information there are resources there to guide you through your search. You can even schedule an appointment online to meet with a counsellor in person for further help in your job search. Here’s how to contact Employment Ontario by phone toll-free 1-800-387-5656, TTY: 1-866-533-6339. By email contactEO@ontario.ca.
Community service providers
There are also a number of Durham Region Community Service Providers who can help you in your job search. Contact them by phone, online or in person at locations across Durham Region. See https://durhamworkforceauthority.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Durham-Service-Providers-August-2017.pdf for a service provider near you.
These days the Internet has made it much easier to search and apply for work. It also makes it far more convenient to connect you with service providers who will also help you in your quest for a new job. Keep in mind though while the Internet has made it more convenient to search for work it’s still no easy task landing a new job. There are thousands of people looking for work so competition is stiff. The ease of applying for work online has also placed a burden on recruiters and companies looking to hire as they have to go through a higher volume of applicants. So make sure your cover letter and resume are beyond reproach because the people sifting through resumes are looking for anything, even something minor, to whittle down the stack of applicants.
It’s 2018. Newspapers are no longer the go-to resources for jobs but one thing that’s always current is a solid resume and catchy cover letter. You want to stand out from the rest. Do that and your job search will be over sooner than you might think.
DWA executive director Heather McMillan completes fellowship
Leave a CommentDWA executive director Heather McMillan proudly displays her fellowship certificate with colleague Philip Johnson.
After a year of hard work at the Metcalfe Foundation’s Toronto Sector Skills Academy, the DWA’s executive director Heather McMillan can now add another title to her designation — Fellow.
McMillan completed the 10-month fellowship recently. The leadership program was a first of its kind in Canada.
Her thesis was on employer engagement. She worked with a committee of other Metcalf Fellows to map service provision for employers, educators from both secondary and post secondary, Employment Ontario Service Providers, Ontario Works and other community-based service providers to provide information and insight into planning a career ladder for those furthest from the labour market.
“It was an incredible amount of work but an incredible amount of fun,” McMillan said. “The 25 other fellows are leaders in their area of specialization and the connections and opportunities to collaborate will continue long after the 10-month program.”
As a result of the fellowship, McMillan will join the french workforce planning board headed by another Metcalf fellow.
Durham’s diversity champion program celebrates inclusion
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There’s a new certificate on the wall of the Durham Workforce Authority offices, recognizing the agency as one of Durham Region’s diversity champions.
In proudly displaying the certificate, the DWA joins 13 other organizations and individuals who’ve been celebrated as a diversity and immigration champion by embracing principles of inclusion, and committing to making Durham Region a welcoming community. Local organizations that have imbedded the principles of inclusion and diversity within their own environments can apply to the Region of Durham to be recognized with a certificate, which cites what the recipient has achieved.
The DWA, a founding member of the Local Diversity and Immigration Partnership Council, has been embracing the principles of diversity for a decade. The certificate notes the agency is recognized for: Developing policies and procedures that ensure a long standing commitment to diversity and inclusion; ensuring the work of the Durham Workforce Authority reflects the diverse needs of the community; promoting labour force attachment through the provision of local labour market data; and creating a workplace that respects and celebrates differences.
The DWA embraces the diversity plan and is open to change, says executive director Heather McMillan. Staff receive diversity training and the office is bilingual.
The intent of the diversity champion program is to “create a community of champions that recognize diversity as a strength,” says Audrey Andrews, the Region of Durham’s manager of strategic partnerships and initiatives. Diversity means including everyone, whether they’re young, old, LGBT, newcomers or women, she adds.
“It’s more about raising awareness,” she says, using the metaphor of upgrading a street intersection to make it more friendly to everyone using it, including pedestrians, cyclists, and someone pushing a baby stroller. “It’s not about an issue, it’s about a lens, a way of thinking. Who am I serving? What’s my lens?”
The Region of Durham’s diversity and immigration champion program is now in its second year.
For more information visit https://www.durhamimmigration.ca/Pages/home.aspx
Heather McMillan accepted into the Metcalf Foundation
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DURHAM — As the executive director of the Durham Workforce Authority, Heather McMillan works daily at advancing sector-based workforce development policy, services and training.
In short, she studies the skills employers seek from employees and helps bridge the skills displaced workers need in order to find new jobs. Given the changing needs of employers and the numbers of unemployed in Durham Region it’s a job that keeps her busy.
“Moving the labour market forward it is a priority of the DWA and finding effective strategies for people to maintain an attachment to the labour market is important for me,” McMillan said.
McMillan’s work recently caught the attention of the Metcalf Foundation as she was one of 25 people accepted into the inaugural Toronto Sector Skills Academy. The foundation, in partnership with Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program and with support from The Counselling Foundation of Canada and CERIC announced the inaugural cohort Oct. 1.
“I am absolutely thrilled to be chosen, this means that the DWA’s work will be enhanced through this fellowship,” McMillan said. “The work we do is a natural fit with Metcalf’s mandate. The fellowship will focus on career ladder projects and the DWA worked in partnership with the Literacy Network of Durham Region to research a project here.”
This leadership program is the first of its kind in Canada. it’s a 10 month learning and leadership program. for senior professionals who advance sector-based workforce development policy, services, and training in the Toronto region. Each cohort will work with peers from a variety of organizations to learn from experts, strengthen partnerships, engage in experiential learning with practical applications, and acquire new skills to explore, catalyze, and enable sectoral workforce strategies.
McMillan will be working on a career ladder project that will seek to provide micro credentials to provide literacy, numeracy and post secondary level training recognized by employers. Her focus will be employer engagement in the multi modal sector, a priority economic sector identified by the Region of Durham Economic Development Department. She will be working with a committee of employers, educators from both secondary and post secondary, Employment Ontario Service Providers, Ontario Works and other community-based service providers to provide information and insight into planning a career ladder for those furthest from the labour market.
McMillan’s report will be available to the broader community in late June 2017.
“It’s going to be an immense amount of work but it’s exciting because it has the potential to help both employers and people seeking meaningful credentials and employment in our region.”
To find out more about the Metcalf Foundation, Aspen Institute’s Toronto Sector Skills Academy visit http://metcalffoundation.com/stories/metcalf-stories/introducing-the-toronto-sector-skills-academy-cohort/