The Quebec Employers Council is implementing its project aimed at promoting the continued employment of workers aged 60 and over, or their hiring, with the help of a grant of nearly one million dollars from the Ministry of Employment .
During a press conference Monday in Montreal, the Minister of Employment, Kateri Champagne Jourdain, specified that a sum of $987,289 was granted to this project.
The project on which the CPQ has been working for several months already is one of a guide to best practices, a personalized support service, evaluation and monitoring for companies that want to keep their workers aged 60 to 69 or older in employment. recruit some.
Often, it is first a question of combating preconceived ideas faced by experienced workers. Then, it is a matter of thinking about ways to keep them employed or recruit them: offering teleworking, adapting a workstation, offering a part-time schedule, splitting a full-time position into two mid-term positions. time, offer to mentor younger employees to value the experienced worker, etc.
There is “no wall-to-wall solution”; we must make a good diagnosis of the situation in the company and find solutions that are adapted to it, argued Karl Blackburn, president and CEO of the Conseil du patronat du Québec.
Around twenty companies already benefit from support in this area and Mr. Blackburn hopes to be able to interest 90 companies.
For the moment, certain sectors of activity are favored: catering and accommodation, retail, manufacturing, construction.
But if the project is successful, Mr. Blackburn would like to be able to generalize it to other sectors of activity.
Minister Champagne Jourdain emphasizes that if Quebec had the same employment rate as Ontario for this age category of workers, 42,000 more workers would be employed. And, in this era of labor shortages, such numbers matter, she argued.
The Minister of Employment notes that Quebec has already modified the tax and financial environment, particularly at the Régie des rentes du Québec, to make it more advantageous to continue working. But “it must remain a choice,” she insisted.
However, last week, the Quebec Statistics Institute told us that people aged 55 and over now occupy 22% of jobs in Quebec. They have even passed the million mark, occupying 1,000,500 jobs in 2023. And the ISQ predicts that the number will grow further in the coming years, given the aging of the population.