Skills training for food jobs
Seafood industry needs help to attract, retain employees
HALIFAX — As the seafood industry introduces more automated processes, demand grows for workers with technical skills. But according to Lynn Rayner, operations manager for Acadian Supreme in Wellington, P.E.I., those employees are not always easy to come by.
“A lot of companies now, because there's such a labour shortage, are starting to get somewhat semi-automated, which is going to mean we're going to need a technical stream of people, plus our front-line people,” said Rayner.
“Training, for sure, is going to help out in that respect.”
Acadian Supreme is one of the companies availing of a new program targeting food manufacturers in the Atlantic region. Skills Training Atlantic Canada is free and will train employee teams through online, competencybased courses in technical and soft skills. It's funded through the Future Skills Centre and spearheaded by Food Processing Skills Canada.
Jennefer Griffith, executive director for FPSC, said the organization was aware of significant interest among Atlantic Canadian food manufacturers to support skills development.
Through this free program, companies will receive Chromebook tablets that employees can use to complete goal-driven training at home or in the work environment. The training will also address social and emotional learning as a means to make the individual a better worker and person.
“We're really trying to make it interactive and engaging, even though it is all online,” Griffith said, acknowledging plans for in-person training were scrapped due to the COVID19 pandemic.
RECRUITMENT TOOL
Griffith and Rayner both consider skills development essential to recruitment.
“I think showing that commitment to your workforce really helps establish that pride . . . working in our sector,” Griffith said.
“We feed Canada. What's more important than that?”
For the seafood industry, retaining front-line staff is consistently challenging, Rayner said.
“There's always been a real stigma in seafood. People don't want to work in the seafood industry, but they'll work in the food industry,” she said, citing grocery stores as a prime competitor for attracting employees.
“I think they don't realize how high-tech the plants are these days. They look back to the old seafood industry. It doesn't have a very good reputation for work.”
Rayner is hopeful training to develop technical and soft skills will help Acadian Supreme retain employees. At its peak in 2020, it employed 137 front-line workers.
“Most plants, to get people who would want to move up the line to become a supervisor or quality control technicians, or even to become a quality manager, people have a tendency that they want to stay just at that level they're at,” Rayner said.
“Maybe if we start giving people some training, it will make them feel more empowered, and they'll take these chances to move (up).”
PREVIOUS TRAINING
Seafood processors on the Island worked with FPSC in 2019 to develop an online training course for supervisors, and Rayner considers the new program an extension of that work.
“The way we're looking at it is to have people with some more training, they might feel when they come like they want to stay,” Rayner said.
“They'll be a good worker instead of you always having the rotating door. . . . It's to get to people who realize that the jobs are good jobs and that they can make a good living at it and that they have that potential to move up.”
It's not just the seafood sector that's shown interest so far in the skills training program. Among the sub-sectors represented are food and beverage, sugar confectionery and even cannabis. The program will start in February with an initial group of supervisors to coach the front-line workers. The end goal is to train at least 500 workers in the first year.
Griffith is optimistic that if the program is successful, its funding can be renewed.
“A lot of our facilities don't have the capacity, area or space to provide skills development (training), so we wanted to test out the model.”