16 minute read
Local Culture
Hire with Career Connections. The business case for hiring people living with a disability.
BY LISA CRESS PHOTOS BY STUDIO 78
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How accessible is your workplace? How diverse is your staff roster? If you are not hiring with diversity and inclusion in mind, your organization is missing out on significant benefits and advantages. Workers with disabilities are productive employees. However, an organization’s protocols or practices can unintentionally exclude them from the workforce. Research has shown that when an organization invests in accommodating a wide variety of people, it benefits their workplace culture, bottom line, customer reach, employees and the community. In short, workplace inclusion is just good for business. “People with disabilities are just like you and I,” says Tracy Williams, Executive Director, Career Connections. “We all have skills. The only difference is that these folks are lacking the same opportunities to use them.” Thousands of individuals living with a disability are unemployed but have the potential to work. When these individuals do find work, they bring countless benefits to their employer. “It’s really a positive cycle,” explains Williams. “Not only do you see a reduction of absenteeism and a stronger workforce, but other employees in the organization become more accepting of people who are different from them.” Other benefits include a better company image, increased productivity and lower staff turnover.
obstacle.” - Tracy Williams
“It just makes good business sense to have inclusive and diverse hiring practices,” says Williams. “When an employer works with us, we connect them with the best person for the job and provide them with the support and tools they need to overcome any obstacle.” Career Connections is an employment agency that specializes in securing work for people living with a disability. “We provide continuous support to both the employee and the employer,” explains Williams. “For the prospective employee, we do skill assessments and aid in the job search. We can support the employer with their on-thejob training and ensure the onboarding process runs smoothly. When training is completed and our job seeker is working, we do follow-ups and provide further support, if needed.” Williams will also speak to organizations and their staff about the positive impacts of diversifying their personnel. “Our talent pool has people with every range of ability you could imagine,” Williams says. “Most of our job seekers have an invisible disability. As an example, we’ve helped people with master’s degrees find employment and reenter the workforce.” Organizations do not sacrifice any facet of their business when they hire someone with a disability. In fact, it’s been proven that inclusive hiring can help boost an organization’s productivity, profits and public profile. “Our job seekers have the skills and qualities that many employers are looking for,” Williams says. “They don’t need charity; they deserve a fair shot to do the work they are capable of doing.” Everyone has ability. As an employer, you are in the unique position to adapt your hiring practices and create a supportive and inclusive workplace environment. When you hire with diversity in mind and include people living with a disability, everybody wins. To learn about partnering with Career Connections, you can email executivedirector@cciwestman.ca or call their Brandon office at 204-728-9594.
Career Connections Inc. 710 3rd Street Brandon MB 204-728-9594 www.cciwestman.ca
Times have changed. Is your business a cyber target?
BY DANNY TAYLER, IT ADVISORS
In this digital age, things change fast. Especially since the onset of Covid-19, cyber attacks have increased dramatically. The big question is, what would YOUR business do in a cyber incident?
There are many things to consider. You can no longer be reactive to situations like this, similarly you can’t go buy fire insurance after your business has a fire. You need to have a business continuity plan, to make sure you have everything in order. Cyber insurance is also a must!
Well, why is this a problem now, when you have run your business the same way for years without an issue? Cyber crime is worth trillions of dollars every year. You’re not protecting yourself against some lone bad actor in their mom’s basement. You are now on the defense against organized crime, paying elite hackers six figures or more to break into businesses just like yours. In fact, most compromises are not discovered for more than 90 days. Can you imagine what a hacker can steal from your computers in three months? They will get your passwords. They will steal your contacts. They will see how much you’re worth and calculate how much of a ransom you are likely to pay. They will then disable your backups, steal your data, and execute a crypto ransom plan to paralyze your business.
Did you know that the Canadian Government has made it mandatory to report any cyber breach that exposes PII (Personally Identifiable Information)? That includes information such as Names, Birthdays, SIN, Email Addresses, and Phone Numbers!
So how much can a breach actually cost? The average breach now costs more than a million dollars. How?
1. The Ransom 2. The Government Fines 3. The Breach Mitigation 4. The Lost Revenue while down 5. The Lost Customer Revenue going forward.
You may say, “I’m not worried, that’s what insurance is for”. In cases like the RM of Gladstone cyber attack, at the time of their media release they had gone 10 months without insurance paying out the half a million dollars that was stolen from them. Insurance requirements are swiftly changing. Most will now deny your claim for gross negligence unless you are following best practices.
Cyber attacks are happening in Westman. Some are reported, and others are not. Canadian privacy laws do require you report any suspected breach of Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Remediation costs are high and will affect both your reputation and your profitability. What are best practices? In short, you need to use an MSP (Managed Service Provider). They also need to be capable of cyber security for your business. What are some of the specific requirements your business needs to implement? • Firewalls • Antivirus • Multi Factor Authentication • Identify locations with PII • Encryption for endpoints • Offsite Backups • Have a business continuity plan • Cyber Training for your employees • Dark Web Monitoring
Contact us to book time for your free strategy call.
IT Advisors / Brandon Computers Danny Tayler 204-717-4365 www.ITAdvisors.ca
Town of Neepawa
Where Stories Take a Beautiful Turn
BY GEOFF KIRBYSON
If you’re getting tired of your more than year-long staycation, Neepawa might be just the boost you need to get over the pandemic blues. Even better — be prepared to sweat. Located about a 45 minute drive northeast of Brandon, the town of nearly 5,000 people has a number of natural attractions that can get your COVID-19 body back in fighting shape. All of them are on the province’s list of acceptable activities while also allowing for social distancing. The Back Forty Trail Park offers a 5.1-km cycling course with various levels of difficulty, including a pump track and a skills loop. Technical features of the park, which is natural grade plus man-made hills, include work and wood drops, table top jumps, wall rides, log rides and plenty of berms. It’s open year-round and can accommodate cyclists, walkers and runners and is ideal for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and tobogganing in the winter. There’s also the Great Trail, 10 km of winding terrain that will surely satisfy the outdoor enthusiast in your group. If you aren’t exactly sure where it is, don’t worry, there are plenty of way-finding signs around town to point you in the right direction.
If you like your pace a little slower, the Neepawa Golf & Country Club offers 18 challenging holes along the winding Whitemud River. If you need to get some of the rust off your swing, they’ve got a 20-tee driving range, too. Keep your head up, though. The Neepawa course is known for the wildlife that meander across the fairway with little notice. No matter what you choose to do, there is perhaps no better way to finish off than with a visit to the Farmery Estate Brewery, the only brewery in Canada that grows its own ingredients. Plan your visit at www.neepawatourism.ca
A Contact-Free Experience Lakehouse Properties Uses Lockdown to Upgrade Operations
BY GEOFF KIRBYSON
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our lives upside down but Karly McRae took her new-found free time and overhauled her business to compete both today and when life returns to normal.
The managing partner of the Lakehouse Properties in Wasagaming in Riding Mountain National Park — include the 15-room Lakehouse hotel and the Arrowhead property, which has 33 rooms, ranging from studios to three-bedroom loft suites — examined her operations and identified a number of ways in which technology could improve things, particularly contactless procedures.
“We quickly built an online ordering system for our restaurant, expanded our takeout menu and began delivering grocery packages and take-home meals. We worked hard to expand our online offering to help diversify our revenue streams. We have built a contactless check-in system as well as a text-based concierge service for hotel guests, so our hotel experience is completely contact-free,” she says.
The government-imposed lockdowns in the first COVID-19 wave meant Parks Canada facilities were closed from March 17 to June 1 last year, resulting in the closure of all visitor services and vehicle traffic to Riding Mountain.
“The townsite was literally barricaded, resulting in zero percent occupancy at Lakehouse during the closure and the inability to even offer take-out. During those months, not only did we face a zero-revenue situation, but we were also refunding deposits from cancellations on hotel room bookings throughout the closure period and beyond,” she says. We are excited to announce some exciting changes at Lakehouse and for summer 2021. Last spring, during the height of the first lockdown, we decided to make a bold but necessary choice to move the Ice Cream Shop out of the Lakehouse building to allow more space for socially distanced tables in our restaurant, space for our hotel guests to check in, and for our customers to feel safe.
We doubled down and invested in fully renovating one of the storefronts in the Danceland building to become a shiny, bright new Ice Cream Shop. Fast forward to today, and we are excited to announce that we have sold the Ice Cream Shop portion of Lakehouse to our new friends from @Velvetdip in Brandon!! Anyone from the Westman area knows that Velvet Dip is a pillar of the community and the name is synonymous with all things Ice Cream. We knew we didn’t want just anyone taking over this space, and we couldn’t be happier to welcome Velvet Dip Lakeside to @clearlakecountry.
Over the next couple of weeks you will see some small renovations happening to the former Ice Cream Shop space at Lakehouse to make way for an updated cafe and retail offer featuring our very own line of ‘Lakehouse Adventure Goods’. Stay tuned, new stock will be coming in each week and we cant wait for you to see our new line! The new line will feature crew neck sweaters, hoodies, back packs, jackets, wool blankets, hats, toques, soy candles and more!
McRae believes there are opportunities to be found in every challenge, whether it’s personally or professionally. “Don’t get me wrong, I have had moments of hopelessness and feelings of immense frustration, but I try to focus my energy on what I have the power to change and how we can adapt creatively and make things work,” she says.
Clear Lake has traditionally been a three-season destination, but McRae has worked hard over the years to transform Arrowhead and the Wasagaming townsite into year-round attractions. “I love winter and think that there is so much potential for the development of unique tourism products centred around winter,” she says, noting that includes a pair of outdoor skating rinks at Arrowhead.
McRae chairs the Clear Lake Country Destination Marketing Organization and she believes businesses have a responsibility to contribute to the health and culture of their communities, improve destinations and to help them grow and reach their full potential.
“Clear Lake Country is focused on driving visitation to Riding Mountain National Park in all four seasons and within the last six years visitation has nearly doubled. We have invested heavily in destination marketing and have partnered with Travel Manitoba to raise the profile of our destination,” she says.
“I still have lots of ideas and plans. I have learned so much over the last seven years and I think it is so important to approach business with a desire to be constantly learning, constantly reinventing yourself in some way and constantly growing. If I ever stop approaching things that way I think that will be my indication that it is time to move on.”
The most difficult thing for McRae over the past 15 months has been guiding her staff through the never-ending stream of unknowns and constantly-changing regulations.
“Training them to essentially be enforcement officers for the health regulations of the given day and supporting them through the sometimes not-so-kind feedback and opinions from the public on things completely out of their control has been tough,” she says. “It has been a year of constant retraining and learning. People deal with and react to the need to change in very different ways and for some people that aspect of the pandemic has been extremely challenging. Of course, the stresses involved with shut-downs, laying off staff who are like family and the struggle to gear up and reopen quickly have been very real and difficult, too.” McRae never set out to become an entrepreneur and own her own company. She went to university but a political science degree wasn’t going to be much use in business. Growing up on a farm on the eastern boundary of Riding Mountain, however, she developed a strong work ethic.
“I learned to fix things and problem solve, to be resilient and was taught that if you need something, you build it, find it, fix it, work for it -- earn it,” she says. and gardens. Summers were spent weeding, picking vegetables, shelling peas, husking corn and canning or freezing everything we could. I think that is really what drives my entrepreneurial spirit.”
“The national park was literally my backyard and as a result I feel extremely connected to it. I grew up tromping around in the bush with my dad, hiking the backcountry or riding around on a tractor. We grew literally everything we ate. My grandmother had a huge greenhouse Lakehouse 204-848-7366 www.staylakehouse.ca
TRAVELING
without a (financial) plan?
BY MICHAEL VAN LIEROP, NEW OUTLOOK WEALTH
As most of the world enters a second year of restricted travel due to the pandemic, travel for many will remain either a hyper-local phenomena or a distant dream in 2021. As household budgets get re-allocated, normally reserved for snowbird escapes to sunshine destinations in the winter, money is flowing instead into “things” such as hot tubs, luxury BBQs, and back yard landscaping projects. Indeed, with lumber shortages spiking the price of wood products from the lowly 2-by-4 to sheets of plywood tripling in cost, even the seemingly innocuous deck and fence projects of the passed have become major financial decisions, not to mention the home renovation adventures many a household has embarked on in the past year. When travel becomes possible again, the pent-up demand will see a rebound in ocean cruises, all-inclusive vacations to Mexico and the Caribbean, and European sight-seeing tours. The “things to have” will be replaced, once again and perhaps with greater fervour than ever before, with the “things to do”. There is already prepandemic evidence of a consumer shift away from major expenditures on things towards experiences. Expect air travel to spike, live concert tickets to be more valuable than ever, and businesses looking to capitalize on this rise in tourism benefiting from the surge in demand. What does this mean for you? It means the temptation to overspend, or over-borrow, to have these experiences and make up for more than a year of home-bound virtual escapes (courtesy of a fluid mix of Netflix and Amazon binge-worthy series, Spotify music, and good old-fashioned books) is significant and impossible to ignore. It all boils down to spending choices and how those choices are funded.
What we’re talking about, really, is what’s known as “discretionary spending” – how you use the surplus you have at the end of the month, after you pay your bills, pay the rent or mortgage, put food on the table, and gas in the car. Ideally, it’s also surplus you have left after you hit your savings targets and/or debt reduction goals. If you’re thinking, “wait, I don’t have anything left” then you may benefit from a budget review with a financial planner. Even households with large incomes can easily find themselves over-extended and a re-prioritization from an objective 3rd party (ie: an Advisor) can help.
Entrepreneur.com offered in a recent article the “7 Reasons Why Spending Money on Experiences Makes Us Happier Than Buying Stuff.” One of the seven reasons mentioned is “experience defines your purpose and passions”, comparing owning your favourite artist’s entire album collection to seeing the artist in concert, live. It’s an easy comparison but makes the point. If the travel itch is becoming unbearable, one thing that can help is to plan. Many travel experiences are offering modest deposits and guaranteeing refunds in the event of Covid-related cancellations, which makes planning possible. Regardless of what you choose, how you manage this spending is critical.
Arguably, it’s never been more tempting to blow an enormous amount of money on travel once restrictions alleviate. The risk to your financial plan, if you have one, looms large. So rather than pretend it’s not a thing that’s been dominating your daydreaming as of late, embrace it! This means make sure your financial planner is aware and is helping you set aside a travel fund that is adequate to satiate your experiential needs. In other words, if spending more on that next trip south is what’s going to help your mind and soul heal from a year of hell, then go for it. Your portfolio and retirement can – with proper advice and adherence to a financial plan – survive just fine.
