Building the Future Workforce: World Cafe on Health Human Resources

In 2022, the B.C. Ministry of Health introduced a five-year Health Human Resources (HHR) Strategy outlining 70 initiatives across four key pillars aimed at strengthening the province’s healthcare system through workforce optimization, improving recruitment, retention, training, and redesigning the system.

The senior care sector continues to grapple with a worsening health human resources crisis, as a national shortage of health care workers strains providers across the continuum of care. Overall workforce stability is under pressure as recruiting new staff has become increasingly difficult, and the sector is losing its experienced workforce to other industries. Limited funding and insufficient time for training new entrants compound these challenges, creating barriers to building the skilled workforce needed for the future. As the baby boomer generation rapidly ages, the current system remains ill-equipped to meet the rising demand for care, highlighting the urgent need for coordinated, long-term solutions to strengthen and sustain the sector’s workforce.

Against this backdrop, this Care to Chat event is designed as a World Café, bringing together senior care operators, government stakeholders, partners from post-secondary education, and other industry stakeholders for an open, solution-focused discussion. Participants will share insights and develop practical recommendations to strengthen B.C.’s HHR strategy, considering these evolving structural changes.

Objectives:

Gather on-the-ground insights from operators on what is working, what isn’t, and what needs to evolve in BC’s HHR approach.
Identify recommendations for recruitment, retention, training, and workforce redesign.
Build shared understanding among providers to inform BCCPA’s policy and advocacy priorities going forward.

Ideas and recommendations generated during the session will be consolidated with input from the BCCPA Board, the Health Human Resources Committee, and other research. The resulting analysis will inform BCCPA’s policy recommendations on the issue.