TECH ROADMAP

Funded Project – Workforce Development

This project is funded through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (the Partnership), a five-year federal-provincial-territorial initiative. Building on workforce development best practices, this project seeks to develop an action plan and buy-in with industry employers to:

• Develop a strategy and action plan to enhance recruitment and training activities for new entrants to the industry, with a focus on job seekers having trouble in the labour market

• Enhance the skills of the incumbent workforce to build the sustainability, desirability retention and productivity of the workforce

• Enhance industry workforce practices to improve retention, worker advancement, engagement and skills

• Explore methods to support labour mobility to in-demand areas of the province.

The project saw the creation of the Meat & Poultry Inclusive Workforce Action Plan and the Meat and Poultry Industry Workforce Advisory Table. The advisory table set the following priorities for the plan to address:

1. Industry Career Promotion Campaign and Materials

2. Implement a Provincial Recruitment Strategy

3. Pilot a New Entrant Recruitment and Training Program

4. Create Education Partnership to Increase Exposure to careers

5. Enhance Employer Knowledge, Skills, and Practices Establish an Industry-Led Leadership Committee

Funded Project – COVID

We took on this project to explore how technology could be used to solve problems like labour shortages during COVID.

With the help of AON, we conducted Occupational Health and Safety Review and Business Continuity planning to assess current gaps and suggest potential technology solutions. The intention of the project was to help identify how MPO could provide supports in this area to help companies adopt technologies in the future.

MPO recognised that during this time of major operational challenges, there is a significant risk to the continuity of supply of meat and poultry produce between members, who have been affected by the pandemic, and the ability to continue to ensure continuity of supply to the province.

We hired AON to assess where we could make internal improvements to processes, training, and technology to limit the affects of COVID and minimize workforce gaps. This project is funded through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (the Partnership), a five-year federal-provincial-territorial initiative. This allowed us to conduct the following activities:

• Research, evaluate and develop concept for Occupational Health and Safety protocol templates

• Determine business continuity recovery time objectives and identify innovative technologies that mitigate risk

• Training, distribution and promotion of resources

We learned that meat plants are mostly using technologies from 1998- 2008 and that there are a lot of things that need to happen before we introduce things like robotics and AI into the sector. A technology roadmap was developed as a next step to guide the sector how it can adopt new technologies in three phases.

Phase one – introduce existing technologies and provide assistance to plants to get them comfortable with technology. Phase two – introducing new technologies includes helping technology companies adapt for the meat sector and finding new solutions for meat processors.

Funded Project – Sustainability

The program focuses on addressing current challenges within the meat processing industry including climate risk, public trust, employee retention, energy consumption and food waste prevention. A purpose driven business strategy and action plan will be put in place and the partners will leverage a KPI Dashboard to track their related KPIs such as: GHG output, energy and water consumption, waste production, and circular inflow and outflow within the company, productivity and efficiency, employee engagement, and more. Project will be completed in 2022