Building Healthcare Capacity

SEIU Healthcare

A union-led plan to stabilize healthcare staffing across Ontario.

Facing severe shortages across hospitals, long-term care, and home care, SEIU Healthcare partnered with Opus Group to co-design a workforce strategy grounded in evidence and frontline insight.

Challenge

How do you address a province‑wide healthcare staffing crisis without first knowing the system’s real constraints and opportunities?

Approach

Engaging stakeholders to map the current workforce state, uncover barriers and gaps, and identify leverage points for coordinated action.

Outcome

A sector‑wide workforce recovery strategy - grounded in evidence and co‑designed with healthcare workers, employers, and union leadership - that now guides workforce planning across Ontario’s healthcare system.

Context & Challenge

Ontario’s healthcare system faced critical staffing shortages across hospitals, long‑term care, and home care. Contributing factors included:

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Rising demand from an aging population.
Pandemic‑driven burnout and attrition.
Competition for skilled workers across jurisdictions.
Disconnected recruitment, retention, and training efforts.

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For SEIU Healthcare, representing over 67,000 healthcare workers, the stakes were high: without a unified, evidence‑based plan, responses risked being fragmented and reactive.

Policy Response

SEIU Healthcare partnered with Opus Group to co‑design a workforce recovery strategy aimed at:

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Diagnosing system‑wide barriers to attracting and keeping healthcare talent.
Building solutions with frontline insight to ensure they reflect worker realities.
Aligning union and employer actions with provincial workforce policy and funding levers.

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This work created a clear, credible foundation for coordinated workforce stabilization across the sector.

Implementation & Results

The process produced a Workforce Strategy that:

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Mapped the current state of Ontario’s healthcare workforce and identified priority gaps.
Created a shared framework for coordinated workforce planning between union, employers, and policymakers.
Highlighted high‑impact, scalable initiatives ready for pilot or expansion.
Positioned SEIU Healthcare as a solutions‑driven partner in healthcare system transformation.
Informed ongoing provincial workforce planning discussions and sector partnerships.
Anchored in the reality that Ontario’s healthcare system could face a shortfall of 33,000 nurses and PSWs by 2030 without coordinated action.

Why It Matters

This project shows how a union‑led, evidence‑driven approach can shape workforce solutions that are both practical and policy‑aligned. By starting with a clear picture of the current state and co‑designing with those closest to the work, SEIU Healthcare built a strategy with credibility, ownership, and a real path to implementation.

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