HR, employers and government must work together to tap this labour pool
Shannon Klie
HR professionals are critical in helping organizations tap into the skilled immigrant labour pool to weather the perfect storm of retiring baby boomers and declining birth rates, according to a new whitepaper released by the Canadian Council of Human Resources Associations (CCHRA).
“People from other countries who come to Canada are among the most vibrant, the most educated, the most talented individuals that we can have and there is a role for HR to capitalize on that talent,” said Linda Manning, adjunct professor of economics at the University of Ottawa and author of the whitepaper Integrating New Canadians Into Canada and the Workplace: Maximizing Potential.
HR professionals are uniquely positioned to step up and take the lead because they are at the forefront of practices such as talent acquisition, foreign credential recognition, professional development and retention, said Manning.
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The whitepaper came out of CCHRA’s 2008 national HR forum, held in Ottawa in March, which brought together senior HR professionals, government officials and representatives from immigrant services organizations to find ways to better utilize skilled immigrants. (For a complete list of the recommendations, go to www.hrreporter.com, click on “Advanced Search”and enter article #6294).
The general consensus is that while a lot has been done on the issue, “there’s still a lot to do in terms of workplaces and a role for the leadership to embrace diversity and the value of having a very diverse workforce,” said Lynn Palmer, chief executive officer of CCHRA in Ottawa.
While about 309,000 jobs sat vacant across Canada for more than three months in 2007, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, too many employers aren’t capitalizing on skilled immigrants.
More than 1.1 million immigrants arrived in Canada between 2001 and 2006 and they are more educated than their Canadian-born counterparts — 51 per cent of them hold a university degree compared to just 20 per cent of Canadian-born workers, according to Statistics Canada. Despite these qualifications, only 40 per cent of immigrants who arrived in 2000-01 worked in the occupation for which they trained.
Not recognizing the skills of immigrants costs the economy $3.4 billion to $5 billion a year, according to the Conference Board of Canada.
HR professionals need to work closely with immigrant-serving organizations and build closer relationships with professional and trade associations to ensure they’re tapping into the right skilled talent, states the whitepaper.
“HR professionals are the liaison between employers and an invaluable pool of talented, potential employees,” said Manning. Even when employers hire skilled immigrants, they under-value foreign education and experience. According to compensation figures from the Institute for Research on Public Policy, a Montreal-based think tank, employers view a foreign degree as worth only about 70 per cent of a Canadian degree. And they think
one year of Canadian experience is worth two-and-a-half years of foreign experience.
With Statistics Canada forecasting 100 per cent of Canada’s net labour market growth will come from immigrants by 2011, HR professionals, employers and governments must work together to make the most of skilled immigrants or Canada will lose out, said Manning.
“Nowadays these people can go anywhere. They can leave your company, they can leave Canada and there are other places that want them. The competition is very stiff,” she said.
The whitepaper recommends HR professionals and employers ensure job requirements are defined in terms of required skills and not traditional credentials. Governments can help by co-ordinating prior learning and assessment programs and assessing credentials at the point of entry.
Employers also need to develop and aggressively promote an environment that supports diversity. This is a business imperative, not a “soft” objective, states the whitepaper.
To help retain skilled immigrants, the whitepaper recommends HR professionals survey employees and develop recommendations for senior management based on the findings. HR professionals can also help remove cultural and attitudinal barriers in the workplaces by ensuring onboarding and orientation processes are more sensitive to cultural differences, as
well as supporting and championing internal diversity initiatives.
To support HR professionals and employers, CCHRA has applied for funding from the federal government to develop a tool kit of best practices for HR professionals and is considering adding diversity competency as a requirement for the Certified Human Resources Professional designation.
HR professionals have a duty to ensure recruitment, attraction, retention and performance-
management processes are as unbiased and progressive as possible, said Palmer.
“The HR person really should know how to support a policy of diversity in the company and what it takes to get there,” she said.
© Copyright Canadian HR Reporter, September 8, 2008, by permission of Carswell, Toronto, Ontario, 1-800-387-5164. www.hrreporter.com.