Employment options was a big topic at the Timmins Chamber of Commerce general meeting yesterday.

Two employment programs were introduced to Chamber members, and one is called the Employer Database, a program that pairs qualified workers with multiple employers so workers can maintain full time hours.

Scott McDowell, Labor Market Research Assistant at Northern College, gave a presentation about the Employer Database, and explained what it’s all about.

“It was developed to facilitate the sharing of employees between two enterprises seeking similar skills,” he said. “So it aims to provide non-full-time employees, so that’s part-time and seasonal, to obtain additional hours or full-time hours through the partnership of separate enterprises in which those skills are transferable.”

The Employer Database helps to solve an issue that employers face every season: loosing seasonal hires to full-time positions elsewhere.

“Employers are experiencing a loss of those great employees to the next best full-time opportunity,” McDowell explained. He said employees not getting enough hours to pay their bills was the biggest factor in their taking on full-time work at another business.

“And then on the employee side,” McDowell continued, “the comment that they had was that it’s difficult to coordinate and juggle multiple part-time positions.”

McDowell said he personally has had issues with juggling multiple part-time positions, and that’s why this program helps handle the coordination of positions and keeps that aspect on the employer level.

“We stress that all the coordination is on the employer level,” he said, “so that stress is relieved of the employee.”

An important part of this program is employees offering transferable skills to move from one position to the next. Industries like retail, service, administration, sales and general labor have the greatest number of projected employees who are seeking employment, and the majority of skills involved in those industries are transferable.

“So these individuals have those transferable skills,” McDowell said. “So say, for example, two employers collaborated to share a part-time sales person. This person would then have the potential to obtain those full-time hours and have a secure income. And, you know, hopefully they can potentially retain their talent for both the employer, as well as the north as a whole.”

McDowell also quoted a statistic stating that the largest number of employer-employee separations is due to temporary lay-offs and seasonal staff. With the Employer Database, an employee could retain one part-time position for a certain season, and then have a smooth transition to another company when they’re needed for another busy-season. This eliminates the stress of looking for new work after your seasonal contract ends, and gives you peace of mind that you’ll be employed all year.

The Employer Database is for employers to communicate with other businesses seeking employees with similar skill sets. To explore the Employer Database, head to their website here.

You can also find more information on the Timmins Economic Development main page, and the Timmins Chamber of Commerce website under News and Advocacy.