West Fraser – skilled in recruiting and retaining exceptional talent

At West Fraser, it’s all about the people!  To improve the candidate experience, the team in HR, and beyond, continuously refines the intelligent recruitment strategy for the benefit of everyone. We incorporate employee feedback and adapt our approach as labour market conditions evolve. Our approach is supported by leadership training, and a comprehensive hiring toolkit that promotes standardised best practices and subject matter experts within our human resources team developing tailored strategies for hard-to-fill roles. To expand the talent pipeline and create long-term employment opportunities, the West Fraser organisation offers multiple career pathways, including student hiring programmes and strategic partnerships with educational institutions.

Cultivating a welcoming experience

We strive to create an environment where every employee feels valued, connected and part of our team. To promote engagement from day one, we are developing a standardised and scalable onboarding experience for salaried employees. We launched an online Human Resources Hub to streamline access to essential resources. This platform organises and improves awareness of existing materials and introduces additional information to foster a seamless transition into our organisation.

Extending candidate outreach

Across the company worldwide, teams engage in career and community events to attract diverse talent as well as further educate and involve our people. We participate in numerous partnerships to enrich our teams and expand student programmes. These include ongoing support for Strathclyde University’s Engineering the Future for Girls programme, indigenous youth employment programmes and internship partnerships with top Historically Black Colleges and Universities. We are proud of our success through these collaborations, which provide opportunities to connect with future job candidates and give back to the communities where we operate.

Support for women in STEM programmes

West Fraser actively promotes engineering as a career path, including through our partnership with the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, to inspire the next generation of Scottish women engineers. We sponsor the university’s week-long, on campus Engineering the Future for Girls programme, which encourages young women to pursue careers in STEM and helps close the gender gap in engineering. “Engineering the Future for Girls was a fantastic event” said Deborah Ayebare, IT Project intern. “Programmes like these are important and show young girls the range of opportunities available to them so that they are confident and encouraged to pursue STEM across their education and career”. 

Our mill in Inverness, Scotland, supported the Developing Young Workforce programme at Nairn Academy’s Girls Do STEM event. Lily Carmichael, Mechanical Fitter, and Linda McDermott, Human Resources Advisor, shared their experiences as women in the mechanical industry, discussing their daily roles and challenges. They also conducted hands-on activities including a hydraulic tabletop demonstration and a STEM activity using playing cards. The group later visited our Inverness SterlingOSB Zero mill for a site tour. The event was a success, and West Fraser has been invited to participate again.