The region's workforce and community planning board has released a toolkit for employers in the tourism and hospitality sector.
The toolkit, created by Workforce WindsorEssex, provides strategies to improve recruitment and retention across the variety of sub-industries in Windsor-Essex, ensuring the sector's vibrancy and sustainability locally.
Speaking on AM800's The Dan MacDonald Show, Tashlyn Teskey, senior manager of research and innovation at Workforce WindsorEssex says tourism and hospitality was hit hard during COVID-19, so the board came up with some resources and innovative strategies to ensure employers had consistent access to top talent.
"We have quite a high unemployment rate locally, so we wanted to make sure that those that are looking for work really understand what the options are, both for entry level positions and long term careers working in the tourism and hospitality sector," she said. "And so we wanted to give employers a bit of a leg up when looking for those tasks."
She says resources for job seekers will be released in the future, however for now the employer toolkit includes insight into the best recruitment and retention strategies to stand out when looking for staff.
"There's strategies on how to create the most affective job posting, how they can maybe share staff if they're too small have a full-time HR or marketing staff, they can maybe partner with another restaurant and share some of those staff," Teskey said. "Just innovative ways that they can make the most out of there opportunities with maybe a smaller team."
Teskey says it is important when recruiting to look at the available workforce, including students, persons with disabilities, racialized persons and newcomers to the region.
"Tourism is a great way for them to not only integrate further into the community, but just to learn about what's going on," she said. "Connect with other communities, connect with other people in their own community. There's a lot of great talented people in our available workforce, and we just got to find a way to match them with our local job openings."
Employers can access the toolkit here: https://www.workforcewindsoressex.com/employer-tourism/.