The Conference Board of Canada has published a new report, Small Business, Big Impact: Immigrant Hiring and Integration in Five Canadian Cities.
The study aimed to gain insights into the wicked problems of persistent labour and skill shortages among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and systemic barriers to immigrant labour market integration in Canada’s fastest growing cities.
Some key highlights of the research include:
- SMEs in multiple sectors identified skill gaps as their most common employment challenge and are looking for employees who require minimal training and investment after hiring
- SMEs are using practical and inclusive strategies to evaluate newcomers’ education and experience, but they rarely intentionally reach out to newcomers or work with immigrant-serving agencies during recruitment and onboarding
- Local level connections between SMEs, SME-serving organisations and immigrant serving agencies need to be strengthened. SME-serving organisations told us they would like to be more intentional about sharing helpful resources, and connecting the businesses they work with to immigrant-serving organizations to improve SME experiences of immigration programs
- Wherever possible, SMEs should implement flexible workplace policies to help accommodate diverse employee needs, such as adjusting working hours to align with transit and childcare schedules
The report comes through the Centre for Business Insights on Immigration (CBII), a leading research collective, of which Tourism HR Canada is proud to be a funding member.