Hamilton’s staffing woes will hamper services: city manager

The city is struggling to hire a director of a new housing secretariat tasked with easing Hamilton's affordability crunch.

The position has been posted at least twice but it remains unfilled, city manager Janette Smith says.

Of course, it's a critical position," Smith said during a news conference Tuesday to announce the city's stepped-up recruitment and retention strategy.

Whoever becomes director will steward the city's budding Housing and Sustainability and Investment Road Map, a comprehensive plan before council Wednesday.

The frustrated efforts to fill that vacancy are just one example of how services can be affected if the city doesn't step up its game in an increasingly competitive labour market, Smith said.

Hamilton, like other cities, is also struggling with staffing in other specialized positions amid a fight for talent spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, its remote-working landscape and an aging workforce, she noted.

Between 2019 and last year, the city's retirement rate of non-union employees spiked by 47 per cent, and over the same period, voluntary non-union departures rose by 40 per cent.

These increases are concerning to me. They're happening across the sector, and we will absolutely have service impacts if we don't address it," Smith said.

A shortage of city planners, for instance, causes delays in development approvals, while a lack of IT staff can lead to data privacy issues, she noted.

In February, city auditor Charles Brown also flagged how his office - which investigates tips from the fraud and waste hotline and conducts probes into municipal services - was struggling to fill two senior positions.

Last year, the city hired a consultant to analyze its competitive position" when it comes to drawing non-union employees, a contingent of roughly 1,100 among the city's more than 8,000 workers overall.

In addition to auditors, that group includes planners, IT specialists, engineers, directors and managers.

Consultant Optimus SBR's $107,000 study found the city had a weakened competitive position as an employer" compared to other municipalities. It pointed to four key factors:

• High workloads due to the city's organizational structure in parts of the organization;

• A lengthy" recruitment process with an the average of 87 days to fill posts;

• Pay that doesn't reflect Hamilton's economic conditions" anymore; and

• A need to further standardize the city's hybrid work policy" to ensure its equitable application.

We're losing our competitive position as employer of choice," Lora Fontana, the city's executive director of human resources, told reporters.

The recruitment and retention strategy, rooted in the consultant's recommendations and informed by an employee survey in 2021, is meant to regain that edge.

That initiative - which accounts for 0.46 per cent of the overall 5.8 per cent 2023 budget hike that council approved last month - ramps up efforts on a number of fronts. For instance:

• An organizational review aims to find ways to ensure sustainable workloads and service excellence";

• HR hopes to improve the recruitment process through better use of technology and systems";

• Maximum pay increases attached to promotions will be bumped to 10 per cent from eight per cent;

• A mandatory of two anchor days" per week in the office across all divisions aims to foster greater collaboration"; and

• The city plans a tailored marketing campaign" to trumpet the benefits of working in Hamilton.

Teviah Moro is a reporter at The Spectator. tmoro@thespec.com