To help BC employers find innovative solutions to tap into immigrant talent to meet the province’s labour-force needs now and in the coming years, IEC-BC has created an Employer Advisory Group (EAG).
The EAG convenes HR professionals, hiring managers, business owners and other established professionals with the primary objective to help shape future IEC-BC programs and improve its current offerings. The EAG will develop key recommendations for IEC-BC and different levels of government to address immigrant employment issues. Thus, BC employers are able to increase their capacity in finding, hiring and onboarding newcomer talent, and create more inclusive workplaces.
The inaugural meeting of the Group, co-hosted by the Chartered Professionals in HR from BC and Yukon (CPHR BC & Yukon) was held on June 28, 2017, and brought together 18 representatives, composed of HR professionals, hiring managers, business owners and other professionals from various public and private organizations across the Lower Mainland.
Since then, the EAG had a great many meetings – each provides an opportunity for IEC-BC to gather labour market information, understand emerging employer needs and identify new opportunities for IEC-BC to assist employers in hiring and retain immigrant talent. EAG members to discuss critical issues, share ideas, solutions and promising practices.
Topics discussed in previous meetings include:
- Effective strategies for tapping into diverse talent pools and factors that influence the recruitment process for skilled immigrant labour
- Unconscious Bias: a practical approach to an inclusive hiring and onboarding process.
- Different models of workplace language training and the importance of “soft skills” in the workplace: interpersonal, cultural and personal awareness, and communications.
- Specific strategies to support SMEs to create and implement more inclusive recruitment and onboarding processes.
I always leave with some fresh ideas on how to improve my business and I am able to feed that back into the discussions. This becomes a part of the learning and discovery for the IEC-BC team, which they are then able to craft into a program which directly benefits me as an employer along with thousands of newcomers as they enter the Canadian workforce.”
-EAG Member from IT / Tech Industry