Centre of attention

We are pleased to have reached the point - after five years of work - that not only are nonprofit organizations beginning to pay attention to labour force issues, so are some provincial governments. The Labour Market Partnership in British Columbia is one example, with the government investing $5 million over the next three years to support nonprofit labour force development. When the HR Council held its annual forum in Saskatoon last fall, the provincial minister with responsibility for the sector spoke to the assembly of sector representatives about the value and importance of the nonprofit labour force to the province's social and economic prosperity. Sectoral labour force strategies are also emerging across the country with promising results. Organizations have expressed interest in developing provincial workforce strategies and are engaging their provincial governments.

The HR Council will continue to act as a catalyst, convenor and facilitator to bring together all organizations with an interest in labour force strategy development to share promising practices, disseminate information about the various strategies and reduce or avoid duplication of effort.

Supporting the sector in tough times

While there is growing awareness about labour force issues, 2009 was nevertheless a tough year for nonprofits. With a recession in full swing, organizations were challenged by increased demands for services and reduced revenues. From our vantage point, it looks like organizations did what they could to retain staff although training and development budgets were slashed. And judging by the number of downloads from our website - on average more than 700 per day - it would seem that organizations continued to pay attention to HR issues in spite of a difficult economic climate. They made use of the our new set of HR Management Standards, as well as continuing to access other information, tools and resources available on hrcouncil.ca.

This year also provided valuable insights into what the sector needs to do to attract university graduates as well as confirming that retiring baby boomers should be considered as a source of talent for the sector. Reports from the findings of the project on Tapping into the Talents of Early and Late Career Employees provide useful information about what the sector needs to do if it wants to be effective in attracting individuals from among these two demographic cohorts. An upcoming project on workforce diversity will add to our body of knowledge about recruiting and retaining talent into sector organizations.

Collaborations

2009-2010 marked the beginning of real and practical collaborations between the HR Council and other organizations. We worked with the Muttart Foundation to conduct an exploratory study on the state of leadership development and training in social service charities in Saskatchewan and Alberta. This provided us with an opportunity to go into eight different communities to talk to sector stakeholders about their leadership development practices and needs. A grant from the Government of Canada's Social Development Partnerships Program allowed us to delve into the issue of accessing the skills of retiring baby boomers for both paid and unpaid work, and to do so collaboratively with Volunteer Canada. We are also beginning to work with Tides Canada Initiatives to further test our HR Management Standards in a context of shared services.

As you will see from the list in the Our Partners section of this report, we are pleased to say that the number of organizations and individuals who are engaging with us to take action on nonprofit labour force issues continues to grow. What we accomplished this year would have been impossible without the active participation and engagement of a wide range of stakeholders, from the members of our board of directors, our staff team, funders, educators, capacity building organizations, advisory committee members, focus group participants, and survey respondents, to name but a few.