Barbara Jaworski
President, Workplace Institute

Where were you born?
Toronto.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
I really had no idea. I guess I knew I wanted to do things with people but that was about all I knew. The only thing I remember was a real sense of fairness being sort of a driver for me. That’s about it. I really didn’t aspire to any particular kind of career.

Who was inspirational in your life?
My parents were immigrants and they worked very hard. If anything I suppose my father was a role model for me. He had a small entrepreneurial business of house painting.

Where did you work before you started the Workplace Institute?
I’ve done a number of different things. I started my career working with troubled youth, so I supervised residential treatment centres for youth. Then I moved to the municipality of Metro Toronto and I managed an intake service for seniors, I developed supportive housing for the City of Toronto—supportive housing being housing services where seniors could age in place with nursing services—and so I did a number of things for about 10 to 15 years with the municipality, everything from running intake to working in long term care facilities and interviewing families and doing assessments, doing policy interpretation for the City…I went on to develop all different sorts of work/life programs and wellness programs and finally did these management programs for CHC, FGIWorld and (Warren) Shappell.

How did Workplace Institute come about?
It was really through my consultation with companies. And one of the very first questions I would often ask would be: tell me a little about your demographics. So I would begin to understand what the issues might be.  And time and again organizations were saying to me things like: Oh, we have an aging workforce, our average age is 47, 48. And then they would look at me shamefaced as though there was a problem. I began to realize that even very sophisticated organizations really had very few best practices in place or there were no role models for what organizations should be doing to meet their own business needs with the maturing workforce basically. I saw it so many times and I saw the gap. People really didn’t know what to do because good managers at that point in the early 2000s were used to getting rid of people who were in their 50s and bringing in as many young people as they could. Because the demographics were changing people just couldn’t do that anymore and somehow people didn’t realize that it was not going to be possible to do that anymore. I really felt there needed to be an education of all employers on what they should be doing. Again in my travels with different employers and consulting to different organizations, I saw pockets of excellence. What I wanted to do was share those. And show organizations how they could be doing things differently. Hence I started the Best Employers for 50 Plus Canadians award and that was really the beginning of The Workplace Institute.

What’s your greatest challenge?
My greatest challenge is getting employers to understand that they should be doing something now rather than waiting until they cannot absolutely find anybody…What organizations are just beginning to understand is it takes a long time to get some of the skills they really need. And organizations by general nature don’t respond until there’s pain and for some organizations the pain’s not there yet. Certainly out west, the pain’s there and they get it. But in a lot of organizations in the east there are specific skills that they’re lacking now and so those organizations that are grappling with trying to get particular skills are starting to get it.  Those who are ahead of the curve and understanding that they need to begin changing their organizational culture and valuing mature workers, those organizations are going to be positioned to attract and retain individuals when they need it.

How do you overcome that challenge?
All I can try to do is tell people that it takes time, even once you realize there’s a problem, that you’re still going to need probably about three years to try and get ahead of the problem. It’s interesting every year the issue does get more urgent. And so more organizations as they feel pain start to listen.

What’s in it for you?
I’ve always been very, very interested in workplaces. Every organization has its own unique personality. I think what’s in it for me is making sure that we as Canadians expand the labour pool and use the total labour pool that’s available. It’s only going to be with that kind of attitude in organizations that we’re going to continue to remain competitive in the global workforce. I enjoy consulting with organizations and helping them sort out these issues.

How do you feel you’ve made a difference?
It’s difficult to know when you’re in the middle of things. I am Canada’s expert on the mature workforce, so I’ve really raised the issue and tried to give it a higher profile and group the information in a way that it will be available to people in a more coordinated way than it currently is.

Do you have any dreams of your own that you still want to fulfill?