I followed the Associate Director of coop and partnerships at the listen School of Engineering at York University
I see well host for today’s webinar um
it’s my pleasure to introduce to you the
electricty Human Resources Canada eh RC and their empowering futures program and
Mark chipeska who will be leading the webinar today
electricity human resource Canada is helping industry educators unions and
policy makers keep the lights on in Canada by preparing and empowering a world class workforce for the entire
electricity industry AHRC is the most trusted source of a chart insight
programs and tools to help the sector programs like the empowering future student work placement program are a
perfect example of the work EHR C does to attract workers to the sector a sector facing a retirement of 20% of the
workforce by 2022 mark is the director of programs at HRC and brings almost 10
years of labour markets intervention and intelligence development and implementation experience to the electricity sector
mark has also worked in high tech international development assistance and
received an undergraduate degree in government from st. Lawrence University in upstate New York and an MA in human
security and peacebuilding from Royal Roads University in beautiful Victoria
British Columbia mark Lee’s the empowering futures program at HRC
those keeping things [Music] let’s please ask your questions on the
fly by using the Q&A function on the bottom task bar we will try to respond
to them in order and if we do not get to all the questions in the one-hour time
slot we will follow up with answers to the questions that we weren’t able to get to Haley is also here from C will as
technical support and so everyone has any technical issues please use the chat
function on the lower task bar to connect with Haley and she’ll work with you on your audio or video issues
participants will not have audio on this and so you will be just listening and
then texting your questions to the Q&A also of note C Wilbur will record this
session so that members will have access to it later on if there’s information
that you weren’t able to record so having said all that it’s my pleasure to
introduce mark mark let’s take it away okay Bob thank
you so much and thank you see.well for the opportunity to to connect with you all today across the country I’m
speaking to you from Ottawa and it is a absolutely beautiful October day here so
why don’t we start off with a little bit about us so HRC we are the thought
leaders change agents in strategic labor planning for Canada’s electricity sector as Bob mentioned we develop
comprehensive labor labor market intelligence with concrete recommendations for action we translate
this LMI to actionable programs such as the empowering teacher program we know
the sector needs better youth representation and we know youth need more job ready professional skills so
we’ve developed this program to respond to both of those needs our members and board of directors are composed of some
of Canada’s largest utilities unions educational institutions and we have
observers from the federal federal departments such as banner camp or Natural Resources Canada so the goal
today is mostly to talk about the empowering futures program but I will mention some of the other things we’re working on in tandem so overall
objectives for our version we know that there are a number of partners obviously but for our version of the program
placing current students in net new wage subsidized placements nationwide we now
have placements in almost every province in territory across Canada it’s a bit of a virtue of you know having electricity
literally everywhere across the country so that’s one of the benefits of our organization they’re developing we’re
also developing a professional skills training program that could be taken while they’re still studying in school
or plug and play can be used by employers who wish to train students on
the job as part of their own morning and I’ll talk a little bit about that as well the last piece of it that I’ll
spend a little bit of time talking about today too is working on match students
to company openings whether they be co-op or other working creative learning opportunities
some of the numbers from the impact we’ve had last just this year this fiscal year we’ve already got 255
students in the program total number of students we’ve been ruled since we started back in February 2018 425
actually so we’re we’re well over our numbers for last year only six clear we
last year we had 45 employee we had total of 45 employers in the program
this year you can already see that that number is well in excess of that and the same is true of education positions last
year we were we had 43 for secondary institutions across the country and now we’re again well over that number and
our hope in working with all of you is to continue to create those engagement
to create those opportunities for students across the country we’re a little lower on our numbers for
underrepresented groups than we would like to be only slightly we had in working with 40 60% we’re at about 38%
39% so we’d like to see more students the different underrepresented groups represented in our program so you know
women in stem first-year students indigenous students in comers to Canada and students with disabilities we’ve in
working with some of the others with partners we have identified some of the challenges in working with some of these groups so indigenous students for
example students disabilities newcomers to Canada and we continue to work with our federal the federal funder on some
of these challenges and I’ll talk a little bit about how we’re overcoming some of that in the latest iteration of the program as well so company
eligibility so what I like to do also is talk about how a company would apply to the the electricity sector program so
the first thing is are they or are they not eligible to work with us so if they’re in the generation transmission
distribution or supporting services to the sector we are more than happy to
work with them basically the the fundamental thing that we’re looking for is the work must be electricity sector
related now supporting services is a pretty broad category
had companies that are actually software firms for example but their primary
client is Tesla Motors as an example we’ve had other firms that their primary
function is actually the manufacture of electronic components or devices that
sort of thing that would still qualify in our in our iteration of the program engineering consulting services those
are those are also they regularly apply to our program as well and of course there’s a broad array of renewable
energy firms that also would qualify for the program so I won’t spend too much more time on this but I’m happy to
further elaborate as questions come in I have the student eligibility so if in
order to be eligible a student needs to be either business or steam you’ll notice that is not a typo I’ve had some
questions about that in the past we are now we have now in writing from est-ce
received approval to expand the scope of our program in a and this is true I
believe of also partners but I of course comes before our own but we can look at science technology engineering arts and
mathematics programs as well as business the only program that we cannot fund
inside of this program is the apprenticeship programs or the anything
sort of leading to the trades and that was very exclusive from from ESD which is a fortunate for us because the core
industries like the trades so full or part-time studies and full or part-time
employment this was actually a bit of a change from the previous agreement previously our students had to be
full-time enrolled and full-time sorry full-time enrolled with students and
full-time employed as part of their their their workers graded learning about the committee that is no longer no
longer the case students that are part-time enrolled or our enrolled
part-time pardon me are participating in a part-time and compliant opportunity would be eligible under the new criteria
for the program this was actually a request that this word partners had made in listening to some of yourselves but
also I’m each other as we’ve been evaluating applications came in and with the employers that we work with that in
order to accommodate the needs of certain demographic groups such as students with disabilities there are
instances where they may not be able to complete a full-time program for example or do full-time work but that shouldn’t
preclude them for participating in a program like this so we are hoping and this is very new but we are hoping that
by by expanding the allowability criteria for students to come in that
will allow more more students from different demographic groups – one of
the areas we have not yet been able to make headway of course is the the newcomer to Canada classification we all
know that there’s a movement towards internationalization for education in Canada and that a lot of those students
are on yeah variations of student needs us this program is still dedicated to
Canadians permanent ref permanent residents or refugees with status from
chip and buts it is formally Citizenship and Immigration Canada immigration
refugees in Canadian sonship I think it’s a new name and then of course they have to be legally entitled to work in
the jurisdiction where the where the work placement is in place so those are the key criteria and of course the
placement itself should be electricity related to give you some examples of
some of the placements that we put in we’ve had computer programmers for a data company I mentioned Tesla Motors
we’ve got software engineers that are working for smart grid startups we’ve
had business analysts and the electricity utilities that are working on mergers and acquisitions we even had one Health Sciences student majoring in
nursing actually will go into a health and safety role at one of our companies and so there’s a lot of different
opportunities so when you think of electricity colleges think of the
broader corporate functions sport could also be filled there are a lot of companies looking for those functions as
well so it’s a banded that makes up about 20% of our work so process I know
that there are always questions each of us have our own way of doing this and we will be sharing this deck by the
way at the at the end of the presentation too and I actually have linked each of these references so
typically the way our program works is employers will apply first then they
have their students apply the ones that they’ve selected we develop a learning plan and partnership with them I know
some of you at particularly in the co-op programs have already had students working on their learning plans
sometimes what they’ll do is they’ll just copy and paste the the answers they’ve done for you guys right into our online forum and the learning plan is
supposed to be developed in partnership with their their supervisor in their organization that they’re planning to
work for and we in fact we’ve we’ve created a double signature field so that
both parties that need to sign the learning plan when it’s submitted there is an on another online form the direct
deposit form because we do all of our payments by direct deposit electronic funds transfer the contracts is one of
the few pieces in this whole thing that is not currently digital and we do send the contracts out by email once all of
the approval steps above have been completed and those are sent back countersigned to us to the employers
then on a monthly basis we process claims so based on a previous month’s
salaries that have been paid with pay stubs to prove it employers will submit an online form
with the paste of information we’ll review that verify it against the contract ensure that it’s you know
either the 50 or the 70 percent depending on whether it’s a student from a regular group or an underrepresented group and then we will pay whatever it
is to the maximum allotment whether it’s five or seven dollars depending on whether or not it’s a student for a
regular group or one of the under up some papers mentioned above we do a
check in midway through the placement and depend on the length of the placement we may do more than one and
then at the end of the place when we do a reflection so we would ask we ask that students complete the reflection as part
of their their placement we ask that supervisors completed reflection back to
the place how did it go with the student also how did we administer the program so that we can learn any lessons that
the man required and then also at the end of it we asked the employer that’s been
managing typically in the HR function the whole process from there and is there anything we could do to maybe
improve the program or any feedback they could provide to us so those are the
steps of the program again all of the forms that I’ve referenced here are online we try to make this as possible
for employers we know how busy a busy people can be so I’m sorry employers and
for student participants and so we’ve tried to make this as easy as possible by putting as much online as possible
and we are investigating an option for an online contract we just have to looking at some of the legalities around
that to make sure that it would still it would still pass muster so that’s sort
of the process and again we will be passing the deck out at the end so I’ve got links to all of the forms in the
notes section of the as well the second
sort of big objective of the program is we had actually included in our proposal
a I’m going to call it a professional development program originally our
thought was we might be developing something along the lines of you know a training program for renewables whether
it’s solar or geothermal perhaps wind something along those lines technical
what we overwhelmingly heard from our steering committee which by the way is composed of members of the academia as
well as from industry is that that’s actually not needed we’re actually in
Canada turning out very like world-class students with highly highly prized technical schools where we seem to be
needing a bit more work is on the professional skill side and this is why co-op in work integrated learning it’s
so important because these skills are sort of baked into that that work placement sort of function in order to
jump start at however on the steering committee gave us direction to develop a professional supposing program so what
we did is we started out with environmental scan to understand first of all what are we talking about with regard to professional skills or soft
skills or global competencies or or any of the varietal skills there’s a
variety of different names for them but in the electricity sector when we go out and talk our employers and we’ll talk to the educators that are training whether
in technology or the deans of engineering etc etc what are we talking about there are too soft and what we
ultimately settled on we’re a top 10 list of professionals builds they don’t
always they don’t align perfectly with some of the other things that people talk about things like leadership for example we’ve actually determined about
the complement of foundational or single stability can be evaluated on its own but we have found a top 10 so reading
comprehension critical thinking time management speaking active listening
decision-making self-awareness or monitoring coordination or teamwork
social perceptiveness and active listening to the top 10 that we ultimately settled on based not just on
the environmental scan but on consultation with our steering committee not a focus that we put together as well
as survey research that we did some of you may have even participated in that so based on that we’ve come to this top
10 list and we’re now developing a program over the course of the next three months that we hope to pilot early
in the new year pilot participants or pilot partners could be academic
institutions whether it’s co-op departments or pretty potentially and Dean’s and technical technology or an
engineer by name of whether it’s college or university level and we’ve also put
together an academic advisory committee made up of members from a variety of different disciplines so again the ends
of technology engineering and some co-op and professional development office participation and they represent almost
now every province and territory in Canada and the goal was again to provide academic rigor and oversight of the
program we developed to ensure that the learning outcomes we are going to achieve will in fact be achieved by
implementing this so in order to do that of course we have a curriculum developer on staff as well as professional
designers and we’ve just hired a firm to do some videography for us as well as components into the program we’ve got a
four phase approach to this so the first phase of course is awareness to ensure you know what our professional skills
and why are they are they necessary second phase would be like self-directed learning online probably third days would be instruction
instructor-led or typically organized into groups and the fourth phase is matched to a mentor or coached further
develop those skills and we are developing all of the materials to support all of those all of those
functions so professional still skills training program more to come on that
but I expect that we’ll be making an announcement very early in the new year and for any or any of your organizations
that wish to participate or learn more about it we’re more than happy to talk about it it’s our goal to to help make
this this is a lovely picture of the San
Francisco Bay Bridge that has absolutely nothing to do with what we’re talking about today except the one of the things
that we’ve identified and that you have identified and that students have identified and that employers have identified is that we do not have
currently at HRC a method by which a student who does not currently have a
placement can find an employer who currently has a placement without first
contacting our office to do so right now that is a very manual process and
admittedly I think we’ve probably only placed like one or two percent of the students that come with us directly with
employers that are looking mostly it is employer lead it is our goal to change
that so one of our components of this program is the career it’s going to be
the career portal development piece so I know a number of us have heard and
talked about the magnet career connect option we have decided both of the
steering committee level and also at our board of directors level and our management team level that we are going to proceed with that it’s just a matter
of time before we can implement correctly but that will be the tool that we use primarily for this connections
Beast building a bridge across the different organizations but also we’re
looking at it as because there is a light LMS included or a light learning we may use this as part of our content
delivery for the professional supposed program but again more on that depending on the functionality at the let’s be evaluated through them
so that is the the big news on that from from our and again I would expect to
hear about this early in the new year as far as how can everyone get involved so
we have developed a fair bit of collateral for the program one is a
program overview it’s a really high level what is the empowering future student student work placement program
and how to get involved regardless of which audience you fall into whether it’s educator student or employer we’ve
got an educator pardon me an employer one pager that we can share with you to
share with your employer base those may be interested we’ve got a student one pager you know the what’s and how to use
and all that stuff we’ve got an educator one pager again same thing mostly for
yourselves but for if there are any sort of any of your colleagues that may wish to learn more about the program that can
be shared internally as well we have an employer step by step guide so one of
the things we heard for smaller employers this isn’t as big a deal because the we’ve tried to build user experience into the process as much as
we can and so for smaller employers once we’ve engaged with typically somebody who’s in the HR function they seem to
get it and they follow the process fairly where things were falling down was in what I would say the mid to
larger size employers where you’d have a recruiter that was doing the intake and then you’d have HR function doing the
onboarding hand it off to the supervisor and then for anything finance related
that was a totally different group of people so what we did is we put together an employer step by step guide to be
shared with the whoever our primary or secondary contacts were at each of the
employers were working with so that they know what to expect and how to expect it and how to work within the program
because typically their internal communication handoff was not always as smooth as we would have liked it so by
putting this together it’s something that we hope would be well actually has been helpful we’ve already had it received feedback on this and been
helpful from a number of our employer partners we’ve also developed a professional
skills infographic something that again we can we’re happy to share with with all of you I’m showing which
professional suppose we will be developing and working on and of course there’s always an opportunity to share
so feel free to anything that we produce or anything that we make available to you feel free to have to share with
colleagues share with employers that you’re working with share with students who may be interested for doing actually
enjoying the electricity or even trying it out but one of the great things about working degraded learning is it’s an
opportunity to try out different sectors we are planning to pilot the professional skills program so if you
are interested in participating in the pilot please let me know my email will be at the end of the slide deck and I’m more than happy to share that all of you
as well we are currently in production of a work
integrated learning white paper we actually had Minister Patti Heidi weigh in on this which was kind of exciting as
well as a number of you we’ve heard from some of you as well and this as well as a number of our industry partners and if people who I would call the rising stars
those are our students the electricity sector that have participated in the Americas program so we’re kind of
excited about this I expect again that we’ll be releasing that very very soon we’re also in the process of developing
and professional skills to white paper based on the research that we’ve conducted to date I am literally reviewing that as we speak so not
currently of course because I’m talking to all of you but right after we get off the call today I’ll be looking at a
little bit more detail again I expect that to be released very very soon
HRC is a membership organization so we are more than happy to partner with you
as members of EHR see some of the benefits of that of course are free access to any member who signs on for
three years our labor market intelligence study which we just released and of course first sort of
first view of anything that we do so when a new sort programs and outs for example or members are the first to find
out about it on the subject of LMI so everything that we do is data driven so
we know that by 2022 20% of the workforce will retire and 107 thousand
workers nationwide so we’re looking at retirement of 20% of that 50,000 people we also know that our workforce skews
older and our workforce does not have the representation from youth that other
sectors do so while Canada’s labor market more broadly is about 14% the
electricity sector is only four percent so one of the reasons that our board was very clear that they wanted to
participate in this program was because we need to do a better job of attracting you to the sector most people when they
think of the electricity sector they think of engineers they think of powerline technicians the guys who climb
the lines arborists you know technicians acknowledge that sorts of things but
there are a wealth of opportunities in the sector whether it’s corporate functions HR Health and Safety business
analysis regulatory we cool jobs for political science students
in the regulatory environment in HR I think we’ve you know there’s potential for a philosophy student I’ve heard of
some of our larger sort of more progressive minded employers considering those opportunities as well so there are
a lot of opportunities for students to engage in the sector and we do know that they’re gonna be a number of occupations
under pressure in the next five years sorry in the next few years so things to keep in mind we’ve got another program
running concurrently as well right now the green jobs program this was not quite as much funding behind this one
but we do still have training opportunities available the wage subsidy opportunities are now complete as it
finishes March 31st but for any youth non students who are currently fifteen
to thirty years old and on or underemployed we can help fund employability skills training so if it
looks like they’re a student or a partly a youth who is not current they registered in the school program but
could benefit from upskilling or employability skills training we have
funding for that to the tune of up to $15,000 or $20,000 if they are
indigenous a student with Vardon a youth disability or come from a rural or
remote community in Canada we’ve currently placed thirty-five students but we have we have funding for a few
more particularly on the training stream this is a cool build a picture of a
building being built and what it references is actually our national occupation standards program so we are
flipping the way we have traditionally looked at the National Occupational standards in Canada on its head
historically what we’ve done is we’ve taken for example a bunch of Engineers in the electrical engineering function
in a room and determined what are the skills competencies tasks required for you to do your job well as an
engineering or Denis an electrical engineer we flipped out on its head and
said what we’ve developed as a competency framework building it from the ground up for the entire sectors so
the idea is to understand what are all of the competencies skills tasks required for the entire sector and then
look at what occupations emerge as a result what stacks on top of each other to
what occupations of arge so the benefit of the system is it’s a standard terminology something by the way which
we’re coordinating with the STC is they look at this ability taxonomy but a standard terminology across the entire
electricity sector that applies to all jobs so that we can do things like oh
here’s a newcomer to Canada they’ve previously held the following occupation and develop the following skills or
competencies what might we need for that person to enter the occupation that most closely aligns with what we’re doing
here or here’s somebody that is a wind turbine installer but we need 50
installers for every two technicians so how many additional skills or what percentage of musicals they require in
order to become a technician rather than an installer and are their skills transferable to other occupations
perhaps perhaps solar photovoltaic solar photovoltaic installer or PV installer
for example so this is going to give us an opportunity to do a lot of that transferable skills work more easily in
an online database so this is exciting for us because it’s really going to change the nature of the way we’ve done
occupational standards asked some of the occupations were looking at electrical engineering technician and technologist
Power Systems operator power station operator geothermal heat pump install wind turbine technician some possible
new ones that were looking at our heat pump designer small systems design our solar smart grid specialist nuclear
operators non licensed wind throw energy storage technician this was one that was
very interesting which would be a little bit more avant garde and another one was EB charging station installer or electric vehicle charging station so
this is an exciting project what comes out of it ultimately could help all of
you or again the beams a few different programs drive curriculum change over the long term so there are impacts there
as we look at it also doing a big piece on the future of work so looking at
automation of the sector very interesting very initial findings were not ready to publish just yet but it
looks like there’s two points of view on parent automation in our sector one is we have no idea what to do and we’re not
doing anything about it yet and the other is it’s here it’s coming and we
think a plan to deal with it so expect that to be published probably by the end of this
year we were very fortunate PricewaterhouseCoopers is co-sponsoring
that with us we’re also doing a big piece on women in the workplace we know
that our sectors only 5 percent making up the sector and we’re trying to improve that a number of different ways
but one of them is to understand why there aren’t more women in leadership positions so we’ve just closed surveys
on that and analysis is starting we do a fair bit of work on the diversity side the diversity and inclusion side at HRC
we’re currently working on a project the Alberta government on a diversity
toolkit so first of all understanding you know what what constitutes diversity in the Alberta context what’s being done
currently we’re actually reviewing real-life employer examples of HR
policies procedures and practices and sharing feedback on what makes good
diversity and inclusion practice so that they can modify their own stuff and we
expect to have draft resources for Alberta employers available by by November or by the end of November or
early December our leadership record on gender diversity is something that we’re very
proud of a the HRC again we know that women only make up 20% of our sector and
that’s particularly bad for the trades so we are trying to do something about
it something that’s actionable if we’re working in partnership with the equal by 30 campaign some of you may have heard of we actually developed the leadership
record on gender diversity first but the idea behind it is CEO sign on and then
they commit to benchmarks which means it might be that you have one woman Board
of Directors member we want to see that changed within two years time it might be that you’ve only got so many women in
leadership positions we want to see that change within two years time for the better it might be that you want to move
the dial on the number of women apprentices on again you’re committing to two years time change so there are a
variety of different ways that people can commit to change and we do have a number of unions educational
institutions and of course employers that have signed on to this and it’s something that we’re very
crowd of the HRC because it is making change inspectors something that people have talked about for a long time in our sector but there has not been a lot of
movement on the on the numbers up coming in Toronto are agents of change events
we are its rise by lifting others the goal is really need to have met miss a
room talking about how they can help women advance in their careers sometimes what we find in the the gender
discussion is that we have a lot of women talking about how women can improve themselves but we’d like to see more male champions women in the
workplace and so this is something coming up in Toronto with the details on the screen there and then of course our
Awards of Excellence which of course again educational institutions can participate in and certainly we encourage you to do so more information
on our website as well but it are our words of excellence and the nominations are do I believe and I think it’s mid
November and the actual event is in February so that is a lot of what’s
going on at the HRC right now and that gives you a good sense of you know some of the things going on with regard to
our our different programs that all of which sort of feed into each other a
little bit later so I am going to open up the questions here we’ll start with
two the first one students in a renewable energy’s technician program be eligible probably would be my answer to
that if they are not in fact considered a trade then yes they would be eligible for the for the program typically we’re
looking at everything in the Renewable sector as for the program again with the exception of a formalized trade
structured program the next one do you
mean students looking for full or part-time employment absolutely so our program regardless of whether they are
full or part-time students are eligible again so on both sides if they are
enrolled part-time or full-time studies at an educational institution they would absolutely be considered eligible for
the program if they are hired on a full or part-time contract whether it’s co-op
or other work integrated learning opportunity that too would be considered eligible for the program
the other question our indigenous organizations Elle such as band to have their own power projects again absolutely
we have no limitations with one exception we cannot fund the best way to
consider this with regard to the organizations that are eligible we can’t
fund a previously federally funded
position so the way to think of this is see if you’ve got 50 percent of the money coming from us for the position
and 50 percent of the money coming from another federally funded fund that would
not be eligible if however the position is 50 percent coming from the student or
placement program through HRC B and the other balance of funds comes through some other form of revenue whether it’s
electricity rates or consulting services or whatever it happens to be that would
be considered eligible so hopefully that that helps you clear that up a little bit we no longer have a minimum number
of weeks that students have to have to work we you know it’s it’s our goal to
work with our education partners our employers and students to determine what is best and based on best practice in
work integrated learning so there is not a limit on those would first-year
students be likely to find a summer position through this program certainly I’ve certainly seen a number of them
first year students do fall within the underrepresented groups category for us as well so they would absolutely we
would absolutely consider those opportunities for them as well so we are I think that’s the the total of the
questions that have been provided through the Q&A but I did note that there may be some on the on the chat
function as well so I’m just bringing that up pardon me for just one moment let’s have a look here
one of the questions that came in through the chat so is the per the program open to SMEs we are not
currently restricted in our program and we are encouraging so the way to think of this no there’s no eligibility
criteria with regard to size we are encouraging more small and mid-sized companies to apply and just and the
reason for that is they tend to have less capacity for the program and they less they’re less able to bear more risk
so we’re of course promoting more actively to that particular group that’s
not to say that we’re not accepting positions from from larger firms
particularly if those larger firms are creating net new positions so this
you’ve probably heard from member of the other partners if you haven’t already position is only considered net new if
it that particular role has never previously been filled within the company it has essentially been created
brand new so that was one of the that’s one of the criteria to consider and that that does that does come up a little bit
from from a number of the different employers that we work with does anybody
else have any questions that about the program or about any of the work that each RC is doing feel free to add them
to the Q&A section your your dialog box there how long does approval take well
so normally we try to have a five five business day turnaround and we do that
very intentionally that said I had to go through a very significant staffing
change one of our primary project coordinators on the project found love
in Germany and left us right in the middle of the summer so we’ve since replaced that role of course but there
was a backlog that was created as a result so we’re just a little outside of our five day turnaround right now but I expect that by the end of this week or
next we’ll be back to five days to turn around an application now that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be
approved in five days it does depend on if they have given us all the information that we require by doing the
online forms one of the benefits that is a kind of forces people to give us the information we need make a valid
assessment and I would say a solid 95 to 98% of the the application they receive
are actually approved and that’s just as a result of people identifying
themselves itself self selecting out backwards I do have a couple of stories we’re very sad we had two cases where
women power line technicians a trade that is very underrepresented with regard to women inspector had to be
denied only because they’ve all within trades which made me very sad but that was unfortunately the case just our
funds provided a first-come first-served basis the answer to this is yes that said I have currently is that this is a
good question actually for a couple of reasons because I didn’t mention it earlier very early on in the program and
this is one of the reasons we build a steering committee for this kind of thing is we discovered from working and
working with yourselves also working with our steering committee made up of advisors from academia and from industry
that industry didn’t want to apply for the program and try and find a student
if they didn’t weren’t at first sure that they could secure the funds in order to hire that student particularly
for small and mid-sized companies and educational institutions as a result of their own policies can’t post a job
unless the job is guaranteed at the end of the day which made a bit of a sort of a circle scenario where we wouldn’t let
them apply having a student in advance so we changed that we’ve now created a
situation where employers can apply to the program without first identifying student and we will tentatively approve
that application pending eligibility of a student that they go they find and
this has worked really well for attracting small and mid-sized firms to the program by the way that 30 days is
renewable so if they don’t find somebody in 30 days we don’t hold them you know but we do – it just makes us checking to
see how the recruitment is so they can apply without a student they can ensure
that the rule is guaranteed or that the funding is guaranteed and we very very specifically did that
as a direct result of feedback again from our steering committee and from all of yourselves so that was one of the definite program
improvements as a result of feedback and yes first-come first-served and we currently have 200 open positions
available you know or in a revised in the in the program to date so again
we’ve already placed I believe today it’s 235 this fiscal year so starting April 1st and our goal is to place 200
more by the end of this fiscal year which ends personally first if the
position is net the next question if the position is net new but the employer is hiring less co-op students is that an
issue that’s an interesting question so
the way that we so and this is one that I actually had to go back to the funder
on because so a good example of this would be in Alberta they actually had
there have been workforce reductions at in Alberta I’m sure some of you are aware of this or all of you in fact and
as a result co-op placements were one of the first on the chopping block unfortunately that said there were
companies that we worked with that said you know what we wouldn’t create this opportunity unless we had the funding in
order to back it up unfortunately that did not qualify as net new according to the funder and so
we weren’t able to accept that particular role now the are those
particular corporals because those companies have previously participated in the program with a certain number of
students and so we couldn’t actually so
if the position is net new but the employers hiring all those co-op students overall I would have to
evaluate that with the employer because I suspect the answer is no but that may
be one I would have to go to the funder to just because they asked for a total
number of essentially co-op placements in the given organizations that were working with and if that number is not
in fact pardon me not co-op but work integrated learning placements because we are looking broad more broadly than then
co-op if that number is lower your to than it is year one then we would have
to have a very serious look at that to see if in fact it could be the next question would a 100-hour placement to
qualify example a business course with the requirement for a 100-hour placement
hours so 100 hours that would be like two and a half two and a half weeks
probably that’s certainly on the lower end I would probably would probably have
to evaluate that on a case-by-case basis again I may have to go to the funder but they they may come back to us and just
say we have we have the ability to approve it or not if that’s the case then I would probably and I would say
yes that probably qualifies for again as long as there are learning objectives
assigned at the front end and there’s a reflection on that would qualify us
working for the learning another question came in so to clarify do employers need to have hired a student
before applying no they do not have to certainly a number of our employers have
done that but that doesn’t mean that they have to come to us again if they’ve
identified that they have a position opening and they just want to guarantee the funds are there for them to to to
participate in the program then we will we will essentially hold a position for
them and while they find somebody to fill it and I think there’s a there’s a field this has happened numerous times
by the way so there’s a field that it asks for the student name and what employers put there is just hold and
that’s literally the only field that so they just put in hold and we hold a position for them and then in 30 days
after application we check in with them to see how the recruitment is going if we haven’t heard from them sensible next
question are their deadlines for employers to apply for example can employers apply for the current fall
term September to December that’s a little tough largely because we’re
supposed to have the contracts in place as of September 1st and so it it
that’s a little tough to do you know to to place the current fall term ten
employers received more than one grant as long as the position is new oh I
think the question sorry I’m just thinking about this so I think what you mean here is that I think I think I know
how I’m gonna answer this so if what you mean is that the total number of
positions a given employer can have we we’ve set we did set a limit of ten
total coop funded positions the only reason we did that is we do have some really large firms in the utility sector
in secretary in Canada and we wanted to give an equal opportunity for a variety of firms to apply so the total number of
applications a given employer can submit is ten so I think that answers the
question and if not Tara I apologize so please feel free to to clarify if you if you feel that that doesn’t answer the
question another question that came in are there different funding considerations for graduate versus
undergraduate students great thing about the program is doesn’t matter how the
student is enrolled and if it’s a graduate program or an undergraduate program they’re still considered eligible so that that doesn’t change the
funding parameters and just to clarify for everyone the funding parameters are fifty percent to a maximum of $5,000 per
placement and seventy percent to a maximum of $7,000 replacement for those
students that fall into one of the underrepresented groups the underrepresented groups of course being
first-year students women in stem stem not scheme there is still a
differentiation there newcomers to Canada indigenous students and students
disabilities those are the the different groups under groups our reporters the
next questions are reporters providing stats for one calendar year ie number hired in 2018 or for one example number
of students hired winter 2019 I’m not sure I understand the question here Bob
do you understand that maybe the attendee who posted it could further clarify that particular question how do
educational institutions typically engage with the HRC just this ability to have students match with employers
through your council we’re not a council anymore by the way we’re a sector association compete with in-house co-op
and internship programs we absolutely do not compete with in-house co-op and internship programs it is our goal to
work in partnership with any of the educational institutions that wish to participate in our program so we are
more than happy to discuss the different ways in that so please feel free to be
in touch with that again my my contact information is at the end other ways to
engage with us if you’re interested in participating in the if you’re
interested in participating in the pilot study or the pilot professional skills program feel free again to be in touch
with us if you’re interested in being a member in access or more of the stuff
that we do want a more frequent and more regular basis again feel free to to be and of course if you want any of the
promotional materials I mentioned before again feel free to be in touch with me those are all free resources we are more than happy to share those views that you
can share with your own networks whether it’s colleagues with with partners would
students on a first work term qualify under the underrepresented group
yes I think that answers that question and what else here can we get the list
of the top 10 skills you mentioned absolutely so one of the things that I mentioned was the infographic in fact I
think at the end of this Hayley involved what I’ll do is I will just give you a list of the PDF documents that we put
together so the infographic of the skills we’ve also got an impact graphic from last year I know it’s dated now but
at least I’ll show you what we have helped last year on the same PDF so we can share that with you I’ll also share
with you the the different materials so the one project overview the employer
one pager the educational one pager and the student one pager again you are free to share those amongst your networks I
would mention that for those universities and colleges that posted information about our program on their
websites they have had more uptake with the HRC funding than those that haven’t
so that might be of interest to you and again we are more than happy to offer language around this we’ve done this for
a number of different institutions across Canada as well so please think of us as a partner we want to continue
working with you we’ve tried to be at every see will event to make sure that you know we you know we’re out here and
that we’re available and open keep the lines of communication open so again feel free to reach out with any
questions whatsoever I believe we’ve actually gotten through all of the questions here and we’ve got five
minutes left so thank you so much all of you for being on the call today again if
you have anything that you’d like to discuss further please feel free to send me an email or give me a call I’m more
than happy to be available for that otherwise I hope you all have a wonderful October day and looking
forward to connecting in the future as we continue to roll out this fantastic program for more and more students
across Canada yeah and on behalf of stay
will and myself we’d really like to thank you mark for the in-depth
knowledge about the freeters program along with all the other programs and work that you’re
doing at EAB sharks eat it’s been a very informative for us awesome thank you
very much and for answering all the questions I believe is the one question I’m just gonna go out there and I think
maybe the person was asking maybe not reporters but our employers reporting on
a yearly basis regarding the number of students that they’ve hired ah yes that
yes so as part of the application proach like are they the application package
itself employers do have to report each time how many students they’ve hired in a given calendar year
excellent all right well perfect timing three minutes to spare I just see I’ll
check one last check if there’s any new questions to do I think what we’ll do is
for any further questions that are that come in we will reconvene and make sure
we get all the answers out to everybody who was in attendance thank you all very much have a great day and please feel
free to contact me or or mark in regards to any follow-up that you need and and
just before we sign off Bob there was something that came in on the chat on everything that we do is available
bilingually so I’ll make sure that we share everything in both French and in English so that everyone has that as
well all right thank you all okay thank
you have a wonderful day Thank You hailey for convening everything technically yes thanks Haley
no problem at all thanks everyone bye thanks all bye