Economic Development Regina (EDR) is set to launch a new campaign to attract more workers and people to call the Queen City home.
During the ‘State of Labour’ address to business leaders, President and CEO of EDR Chris Lane said that the campaign will focus on all the good things the city offers.
“Regina has got the shortest commute time of just about any major city in Canada. When you are working here, you’ve got more money left over at the end of the month than you would in comparative other cities as well.”
“Those are the kind of things that speaks to workers in other parts of the country,” he continued. “You can have a better quality of life in Regina. We really need to spend more talking about how competitive and how great Regina is outside of Regina.”
Lane said while the campaign isn’t ready to launch, it will feature creative marketing, like how you can get anywhere in the city within five songs.
“We’ve actually done the data; we figured out the average community time in Regina is 16 minutes; That’s about five songs on the radio or five songs on your playlists.”
Lane said they still have work to do regarding where precisely the campaign will be placed, but some examples are places like B.C. and Ontario.
“We are going to do a bit of research to figure out where it can do the most good. Where are the sections of the population in other centres that are the most mobile and put the campaign there?”
Lane said that he is hopeful the campaign and help solve a long-standing problem for businesses in the city.
“We’ve heard for some time that there are not enough people to fill the jobs that we have vacant in Regina right now,” he said. “That becomes a big problem in the future as the economy is expected to grow, as job creation is expected to grow, and the number of people we have available to fill those jobs is not growing at the same rate.”
Lane said that 85 per cent of leaders in Regina are spending more time recruiting and trying to retain workers than ever before.
“When you think about the amount of bandwidth that it takes in an organization just to find and keep the workers, to keep your business going. That’s a problem that can’t carry on that way,” Lane said. “We need to find a way to help those businesses fill those spots, and we need to help build a city that is stickier for the people for the people once they get there so that they stay and make a home there.”
