Whistler’s workforce has always skewed young, but if you have been in the resort’s busy grocery stores, restaurants and retail shops at all during the COVID-19 pandemic, you’ve probably noticed the community’s frontline staff looking even younger than usual.
“I would say in my experience, which is limited to the clients I work with, very few of them hired younger than 16 to 18 in the past,” said Jacki Bissillion, owner and president of Whistler Personnel Solutions. “But I think recently people are far more open to try younger youth workers and young students, probably down to the age of 14, if a little younger, in my experience.”
It’s no secret that Whistler’s longstanding staff shortage has only worsened in a pandemic that has kept scores of foreign workers, which make up 45 per cent of Whistler’s labour force, at home. According to a Whistler Chamber of Commerce survey released last October, 68 per cent of respondents with 50 or more employees reported not having enough staff last summer.
It has forced employers to look at new avenues to fill in the gaps, and for a number of customer-facing businesses, that has meant increasing their reliance on youth workers.
“We definitely have more young people now. Everyone is looking for staff and it’s real slim pickings out there for people, so it’s good there are some good, reliable, young people in town who are willing to work. It’s certainly helped us out,” said Jerry Marsh, co-owner of the Creekside Market.
Hiring young workers is nothing new for the grocery store, however. Marsh said it has been a part of the company’s recruitment strategy for several years, hiring part-time and weekend staff as young as 12 and typically pairing them with a seasoned worker until they settle in.
“It takes a little more training so definitely it’s costly on that end … but they usually are working with an older staff member, if at all possible, especially for the first little while,” Marsh said. “Most of them are pretty responsible and usually most of them work out.”
There are other considerations when hiring young as well. Earl’s Whistler GM Kevin Wallace said it’s important to keep the communication lines open with employees’ parents to ensure their schedule and workload is being managed appropriately.
“In a lot of respects, they’re working in an adult environment and they are young for that. We need to handle it with respect and I think that’s a huge piece to it,” he said. “You can’t say to a young kid, ‘Hey, I need you to work overtime tonight.’ You just don’t go there.”
In return, businesses get back a mouldable worker that, if they’re lucky, will stay on until their post-secondary years, said Jay Pare, co-owner of Caramba Restaurant. “It’s not like they’re coming in with bad habits from somewhere else,” he said. “In the restaurant business, you learn a lot of different things quickly about dealing with customers, dealing with your peers, the volume of busyness. I think it’s great life lessons for the kids. They get a lot out of it and we get a lot out of it.”
B.C. is set to make changes to its employment standards this October that will raise the general working age for young people from 12 to 16 years old. Workers aged 14 and 15 will still be able to perform “light work” with the permission of a parent or guardian, which could slow down Whistler’s youth worker stream.
Even still, with the labour shortage showing no sign of going away anytime soon, could Whistler’s young workforce play a bigger part of the resort’s labour pool coming out of the pandemic?
“I think all of these things come with an opportunity to continue the practice [of hiring youth] if it works for them,” Bissillion said. “There are youth workers in town and in the past they worked in certain places like camps, helping out at grocery stores, ice cream shops and places that are a little more suited to that age group, but I do think there’s an opportunity for our youth workers to get broader experience and opportunities to connect with great employers, world-class hotels and learn what it’s like to be in a workforce.”
Whistler Personnel Solutions is collaborating with the Whistler and B.C. chambers of commerce on a labour survey of local businesses and workers that is expected to launch later this month.
