BEAVER CREEK │ BUSINESS Y

Community Development Requires Cooperation of Business, Education, Health and Social Services

KEY CONCEPTS: challenges facing rural northern communities, drug and alcohol abuse, costs of high staff turnover, coordinated community development planning

Employers consistently expressed interest in discussing the barriers to business success, be it disability employment issues or otherwise. This employer extended the social constructivist discourse of disabilities to include drug and alcohol abuse. For this employer, anything that prevents employees from getting the job done is a potential disability.

If we consider drug and alcohol abuse/addiction to be a type of disability, then this employer identified that the barriers to employment start before the employee arrives to work. That is, when it comes to drug and alcohol abuse, the barrier to employment begins with the start of the each new day and getting out the door on time and suitably ready for a full day’s work. This employer suggested that it is much simpler accommodating what one might more traditionally identify as a disability (i.e., the employer gave the example of a friend with a prosthetic limb) than the uncertainty of the day-to-day consequence and longer term affects of drug and alcohol abuse.

Drug and alcohol abuse is a catalyst for a whole host of negative consequences for small business, including the high costs of training staff repeatedly given a high turnover resulting from a termination of employment arising from problem behaviours on the job. For a small seasonally-driven business, the loss of key staff during peak season due to drug and alcohol issues presents a significant problem for ensuring they can deliver a quality and timely product to clients.

Another repeating theme for employers in rural Yukon is the very small pool of available staff. Hiring someone from outside the Yukon is often not a solution, given outsiders don’t fully understand what they are taking on when they live and work in the rural north.

When asked about key issues to include in a Yukon Disability Employment Strategy, this employer stated that core social and employment issues need to be addressed through a wider employment and community development strategy – with disability as the umbrella them for developing the health and welfare of the community and its businesses, sharing the view that strong businesses needs strong communities and vice versa.

The theme underpinning all our consultations/discussions with employers is that that government and the bureaucrats in Whitehorse could do a better job a listening to community needs and sourcing the solutions to the problems in the communities themselves.

Business owners like this one want the government and the communities they serve to recognize their investment in the community for the long term. Employers and rural Yukon are ready to work together. What they need now is a framework around which to rally community momentum, and the resources and supports to ensure core issues are addressed now, over the longer term.