Workforce WindsorEssex is hoping to help employers better understand our region’s aging workforce, exchange ideas, and learn workforce planning strategies.

The Local Employment Planning Council is launching two new online tools and hosting a workforce summit on Wednesday.

“Our goals for today were to empower local employers with strategies and research to tackle the challenge of an aging workforce, and to help them ‘redefine retirement’ by seizing the opportunities to engage retirement-aged workers before and after they retire,” says Michelle Suchiu, executive director at Workforce WindsorEssex.

According to the last census, 21 per cent of Windsor-Essex’s workforce is 55 years or older.

Combined with low unemployment rates and an existing skills gap, many employers will find it challenging to recruit replacement workers when a worker retires.

According to the Canadian Occupational Projection Systems, 2 per cent of our national workforce will retire in 2019, with certain occupations and sectors being hit harder than others.

To help employers and the community understand the retirement wave and better navigate labour market information by sector, Workforce WindsorEssex has launched an online Sector Dashboard.

This resource contains a dozen interactive dashboards that allow users to pull sector/sub-sector level statistics about the supply and demand of the workforce, including job automation predictions.

Users can interact with and download sector and sub-sector level data pertaining to business counts, workforce demographics, incomes, education, projected retirements, post secondary enrollment, job postings, and job automation potential.

Through the tool, users can also learn more about other Workforce WindsorEssex research and tools.

Speakers at the Workforce Summit will present on key topics relating to an aging workforce, including knowledge transfer, engaging an aging workforce, offering benefits to older workers, and succession planning.

Teppermans, a third generation family-owned business with five locations throughout southwestern Ontario, is sharing what they have learned over 95 years in operation.

Workforce WindsorEssex has launched a new online information hub for employers, workers and the community so they can access recommended third party resources and tools related to key themes such as ageism, the aging workforce, the multi-generational workforce, and succession planning.