MAPLETOWN — “We can’t afford to lose any more staff,” bluntly stated Mapleton CAO Manny Baron at a meeting earlier this week.
The comment came in the wake of a report Mapleton council received a detailing the township’s difficulty to attract and keep staff.
The report stated action must be taken to address the township’s loss of staff to continue to provide residents with necessary services.
“It is clear, with the recent departures, that Mapleton needs to look for strategies to adapt and move forward in creating an updated work culture to ensure we continue to provide and increase the service levels our residents are accustomed to,” the report said.
Mapleton Township is caught up in a local struggle among many businesses to attract the qualified talent necessary to operate as usual.
“There is something that’s going on in the last year or so that every business from coffee shops, to restaurants, to big industries, to municipalities are all seem to be fighting for the same position. And we’re not immune to that. Obviously what we’ve gone through with the building department, we can’t seem to attract building officials,” Baron said.
The report stated some specific problems that show the nature of the situation.
The problems the township is facing include: lost employees to competitors offering greater compensation for reduced responsibility, failure to recruit specialized professionals, municipalities close by trying to take staff, and the nearby municipalities, Dufferin, Guelph, Kitchener, and Waterloo, being larger.
Although the township is good at hiring the right people, staff members have been developing plans and strategies to both attract and retain qualified staff.
“Senior management got together and tried to brainstorm on different ways that we can not only attract staff but, we do have amazing staff, and we want to make sure that we keep them as well, and keep them happy.
“Because when we do hire, we hire the right people and it is a shame to see them move on to bigger centres,” Baron said.
The report also included several suggestions that would make the township a more attractive employer to both potential and current employees.
Possible solutions that would attract employees include: reconsider vacation benefits, add personal days, offer a break during the period of Christmas to New Year, if possible allow staff the option to work at home one day per week, change the probationary period from six to three months, increase financial benefits, and increase salaries.
The council received the report, endorsed the report, and will have it presented to the next council for their Nov. 22 meeting.
Jesse Gault is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program.
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