In today’s world, technology drives our businesses, our economy and, to a large degree, our everyday lives. IT Professionals Day gives us an opportunity to deliver a “clapping hands emoji” to all the people working behind the scenes who ensure our technology, and therefore our businesses, run smoothly.

Some might be surprised to learn that J.D. Irving, Limited is actually one of our region’s largest IT employees with over 330 professionals including engineers, system administrators, data scientists and more. Our team is as diverse as it is dynamic with newcomers to Canada making up 25 percent of our workforce and over 21 different nationalities represented. With 37 percent of our workforce having a graduate degree (or secondary degree), we are also highly educated and highly motivated.

In recognition of IT Professionals Day, we’d like to shine a light on the exciting projects we are working on. One such project, “The Connected Supervisor” aims to give our organization’s approximately 1500 supervisors greater connection to their teams. Like most organizations, when the pandemic hit, we were looking for ways to facilitate electronic communications between employees and their supervisors. This project evolved however, from a necessity of business continuity into a significant opportunity to give supervisors more freedom to be in the field while staying in touch and aligned with their teams.

With such a diversity of workplaces within our organization - from mills to offices, from the side of the road to the middle of the woods - the JDI IT team was presented with a significant challenge. Each division and in some cases, each team made use of different applications and distinct software. We were being called on to optimize over 45 different applications and over 9000 mobile devices with the goal of fostering improved efficiency.

Beyond the hardware and software challenges, we were also faced with connectivity issues in many of our workplaces. We addressed these problems by investing in tower infrastructure across New Brunswick and we are even standing up a new tower in the Upham area to serve our employees which has provided connectivity benefits to area residents as well.  

The program is ongoing, but has already proven its value by delivering solutions that improve supervisors’ mobile capability and effectiveness.

If you’re interested in an important and dynamic role where you work on projects like this or if you simply have an aptitude for IT and enjoy connecting people, we’re hiring. Please consider applying here.