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Canadian employers expect to boost the amount of business they do this year, but they don't plan to add more staff to make that happen, a survey by Hays Canada found.
The fifth annual Hays Canada Salary Guide also found that while employers are relatively optimistic about the year ahead, they're staff isn't, and instead burnout, low morale, and stress-related absences for workers have risen sharply.
The report suggests that companies' ability to meet their aggressive business targets for this year would be undermined if only current staff have to bear the burden of making that happen.
The survey found that 70 per cent of Canadian companies expect to increase their business activity in the coming months but only 38 per cent of employers intend to hire more staff to help them accomplish their goals.
"Looking at the results this year, we have to ask ourselves whether employers are asking too much from their people in a quest to improve productivity and profitability," Rowan O'Grady, president of Hays Canada, a global recruitment firm, said in a release.
One-third of employers also admitted in the survey that they're partly to blame for the shortage of talent as they don't have enough in-house professional development programs to develop the skills they need from their staff. This lack of qualified staff puts even more pressure on current workers, the survey found, as 31 per cent of employers reported a spike in employee stress leaves and 34 per cent said the morale of their staff had declined.
"Employers should be investing in skills development, recruitment and succession planning to keep pace with their ambitions," Mr. O'Grady said.
In addition, 35 per cent of employers said they feel they have a responsibility to increase the number of qualified graduates by promoting their industry and themselves at postsecondary institutions.
Also, few employers – only 12 per cent – say they have active succession and knowledge-transfer plans, and half say they're not even sure if the salaries they're offering match the market average.
The survey found that 32 per cent of Canadian employers plan to raise salaries by up to 6 per cent in 2015, and half say the country's economy will continue to improve in the next six to 12 months – that's the highest level of optimism in five years, Hays said.