BCBusiness

December 2016 Best Cities for Work

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/751527

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 31 of 67

32 BCBUSINESS DECEMBER/JANUARY 2017 I t's late September, and inside the lobby of the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel, a steady stream of travellers are lin- ing up at the check-in desk; next door, the hotel's ARC restaurant is buzzing with the chat- ter of diners studying city maps and servers calling out orders to the kitchen. While not as packed as in the sold- out summer months, the 489-room hotel in downtown Vancouver is struggling these days to find workers to meet the demand of its 200,000- plus annual visitors. In a typical example, openings for in-room dining servers and bussers that took two to three weeks to fill just three years ago now sit unfilled for upward of four months. A variety of factors are at play, including changes in 2014 to the federal Tempo- rary Foreign Workers pro- gram, but Vancouver's high cost of living has become a top concern for hoteliers, retailers and restaurateurs across the region. "We've seen a couple of people leave because they're relocating to places like the Island or the Okanagan where they think it's going to be less expensive to live," says the Waterfront's director of human resources, Arlene Hall, who's been with the Fairmont chain for 36 years. Hall says that many job candidates that she inter- views express resistance to the regularly fluctuating hours—an inevitable part of hotel life. "We find some- times people are looking to juggle multiple jobs in order to pay their bills." The challenge of finding stable hourly workers in the Lower Mainland is echoed by Cameron Laker, CEO of Burnaby staffing agency Mindfield. Laker—whose cli- ents range from Cobs Bread to Mr. Lube—says the region's cost of living touches all parts of the service sector. "I can't HELP WANTED Arlene Hall, director of human resources at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel, says some workers juggle multiple jobs to pay their bills A Victim of Its Success GLOBAL INTEREST IN VANCOUVER (DOWN NINE PLACES ON THIS YEAR'S LIST) HAS MADE IT ONE OF THE LEAST AFFORDABLE CITIES IN THE WORLD–AND ONE OF THE HARDEST PLACES TO ATTRACT AND RETAIN SERVICE WORKERS b y J E N N Y P E N G p h o t o g r a p h b y T A N Y A G O E H R I N G B E S T C I T I E S F O R W O R K I N B C

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of BCBusiness - December 2016 Best Cities for Work