Caring Support was one of the sponsors for the IBT College Home Care Staffing Forum and Career Fair last week (November 24, 2022) in London, ON. The Home Care Forum - a first of its kind - brought together many healthcare organizations facing the same staffing issues in International & Domestic Recruitment, Employee Retention, Immigration, and Leadership.
The keynote speaker of the event was Raelynn Douglas, CEO of Raesoleil Consulting. Raesoleil was created by Raelynn after an “aha” moment left her realizing just how much the cost to organizations is when they are dealing with the burn-out, turnover, and churn of employees. Raelynn spoke about employee retention and how to improve the overall work experience healthcare workers are facing every day as well as how to effectively listen to employees by using her “Laugh Model”. Raelynn believes that by paying attention to retention organizations can decrease the amount of turnover within their company and have the ability to attract quality employees to their teams.
“When healthcare is sick, everywhere is sick.” – Raelynn Douglas
Read more about what Raelynn had to say in our podcast interview.
There were two panels during the home care forum. Each with its own panellists and different items to discuss. The first panellists of the day were James Rice (Vice-President, IBT College), Debbie Jensen (Manager of HR & Membership Services, OPSWA), Speciose Mulcalcamanzi and Mohamed Awad (ACO Program Leader, WIL Employment Connections). This panel discussed how organizations can best retain domestic and international healthcare workers. When presented with the issue of home care workers not having access to personal transportation, James Rice said: “we need to think more about how we can help them succeed versus focusing on what they don’t have” (ie. car/driver’s license).
On the second panel of the day, we got a chance to hear from James Smith (Director of Sales, Caring Support), Jacqueline Riches (Talent Acquisition Manager, CBI Health), Heather Esbjerg-Rezian (Area Director (Sarnia & London) for Bayshore Home Care Solutions), and Joanna Renaud (Regional HR Manager, Bayshore Home Care) on the topic of recruiting healthcare workers. The panel discussed how much impact COVID has had on recruitment in healthcare and the interview process. Panellists agreed that when it comes to interviews, the company is being interviewed by the candidate just as much, if not more than the candidate is being interviewed by them – and that’s ok! With an overabundance of healthcare job vacancies, companies need to sell themselves, their work environment and what they offer over the competition, to the candidate.
IBT College Vice-President, James Rice, was also one of the speakers at the event. James spoke largely about global talent acquisition and the importance of Canada building relationships with other countries, like the Philippines, to attract new graduate nurses to come to work in Canada to help ease the shortage of nurses and healthcare workers we are suffering from today.
The Home Care Staffing Forum was followed by a Career Fair attended by many healthcare workers where they were able to meet with local healthcare organizations that are looking to hire.
Healthcare workers and others in attendance were able to try out IBT College’s AR/VR Platform which is allowing IBT College the opportunity to make education collaborative, adaptive and hands-on. It was awesome to see this equipment and get to watch as many people got the chance to experience it firsthand. If you haven’t been able to check it out yet, you can by clicking this link.
Overall, the event was a success and there were many connections made and lots of conversations surrounding the issues that matter to healthcare employees and employers alike. While this forum and career fair is a huge step towards bringing together the healthcare community, there is still lots to be done and you can expect to find IBT College and their sponsors hosting many more events like this in the future!
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