The Municipality of Lakeshore is dealing with some recruiting challenges.
A report received as information by council at their meeting on Tuesday night states that Lakeshore is experiencing challenges in recruiting and hiring qualified talent.
The Municipality has experienced denial of offers of employment made to qualified applicants, lack of qualified and experienced applicants for postings, information and recommendations received through the results of 2021's organizational review.
Mayor Tom Bain says a lot of this has to do with COVID, but there are other lingering issues that need to be addressed.
"There seems to be a lot of movement among employees moving from one municipality to another municipality looking for better paying jobs and you certainly can't blame them," he continued. "It seems to be a real challenge right now getting employees and keeping those employees."
Some of the reasons for denial laid out in the report include low compensation levels and benefits, counter offers from current employers, work burden vs work/life balance and an increasing trend of potential employees requesting flexible working arrangements.
Bain says they'll be looking at some of the recommendations in the report and following through on them in short order.
"One of the items that we're dealing with right now is making sure that pay wise, we're going to be in the ball park with all the other municipalities. We're going to make sure, one of the things, is that we're in the 55th percentile rank and that we stay there. That there's no falling behind," he said.
In addition to the compensation percentile target not being competitive, the report outlined that the annual economic increase for Lakeshore non-union positions hasn't been competitive over the past few years.
Bain says these details were a surprise to a degree, because normally when they would put out a posting they'd be bombarded with interest.
"Just recently you would get 50-60 applications for a job, we're not getting that many now. That makes it much tougher to come up with a good person to take the job on when you've got fewer applicants even applying to begin the process."
The report at Tuesday's council meeting was provided as information, and staffing requests will be brought forward in the 2022 Draft Budget as pressures allow.