'The continued investments in employees is less than it ought to be,' says academic
There has been a marked increase in the hiring of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) to fill business and administration roles in Alberta.
Data on labour market impact assessments showed there was a 1,251% increase in these hires between 2018 and 2023, CBC News reported.
Canadian HR Reporter spoke to experts in the field to discuss what’s causing this trend and what it means for HR.
Changing career goals for business grads
The reasons for increased hiring of TFWs in business roles can be at least in part attributed to overall global changes in the way younger professionals plan their career journeys, says Christian Cook, professor of human resources at Mount Royal University.
This could be especially true in Calgary, she explains, where there has been an increase in local university and other programs that revolve around innovation and technology.
“From a post-secondary education perspective, it isn’t that traditional ‘Go to university, graduate, ascend up a corporate ladder at some big corporation,’” Cook says.
“There's lots of options for folks, and especially in Calgary … there is a lot of support for innovators and entrepreneurs. I do think that some of those folks want a different path than perhaps their parents or even the generation ahead of them had when they went to university.”
Even large, prestigious organizations don’t have the draw with new graduates that they used to have, she adds – and although innovation hubs are necessary to Canada keeping up with global change, they attract talent away from more traditional industries such as finance and administration, which are seeing the most growth in TFW hiring.
Will TFW hiring for business roles continue?
Mike Holden, chief economist and VP of policy at the Business Council of Alberta, thinks the trend, while “not surprising” given various economic factors, will likely decline, mostly due to recalibrating of immigration policies by the federal government since the pandemic, and the cooling labour market.
“When COVID ended and the economy reopened up, a lot of businesses had a really hard time finding anybody to work … there was suddenly this huge demand for labour and there weren't any Canadians who were available to do it – a chunk of the labour market disappeared,” he says.
“Because of that, they loosened some of the restrictions around temporary foreign workers, and that's part of the reason why you saw this spike over the last four or five years. But that temporary loosening has since been dialled back.”
Job growth rates have been declining nationally, Holden adds – specifically they are climbing at a slower pace than the population, meaning the unemployment rate is flat, or rising slightly and vacancy rates are declining across the country: “We're having more people coming into the economy than are getting jobs.”
Lack of investment in employees leading to dependence on TFWs
The Business Council’s most recent labour market report measuring job vacancies in the province showed that between 2019 and 2023, there was a 250 percent increase in postings for accounting, administration, and other business roles. These roles are traditionally harder to fill, Holden said.
Cook points out that another contributor to employers turning to TFWs to fill business roles is an observed decline in employer investment in employees, in the form of training and support for lifelong learning.
“One of the first things that goes in a downturn is any kind of training. So, over the years, we have these employee experiences where they maybe haven't had access to the kind of training that they should have,” Cook says.
“The continued investments in employees, in my opinion, is less than it ought to be. So, when things like this come up, we are without the skills to immediately be able to fill all those positions. So now there's cases where we may be able to bring people in from other countries, temporarily or even permanently, to help upskill that.”
Decline in in-house upskilling
This decline in general in-house upskilling and education is not a recent problem, Cook says, although it has become more prevalent since the pandemic caused a drop-off in typical training modes as work models were drastically reshaped.
“The responsibility, either through college, university or even as an adult professional, I think that the onus of that continues to lie on the employee, and without that investment for lifelong learning from employers, I have some concerns that we will continue to fall behind.”
Cook adds that employers could benefit from investing in their employees more, not only for retention but to ensure that there is a store of skills available in their existing workforce to fill gaps during downturns instead of relying on temporary workers.
“Do we actually have a skills gap, or is there a way in which we could support those employees to grow their skills?” she says. “What is it that we're doing to support employees, to ensure that we do have a labour pool that can satisfy the amount of roles that we have?”
Increase wages or other benefits to attract local talent
An obvious way to attract local talent and new graduates is offering competitive wages, Cook says. Many employers are struggling to pay market rates, but she stresses that paying lower wages to TFWs is not only unfair, but discriminatory.
A TFW worker being paid 20 percent less than a local employee will still have the same cost of living as anyone else living in Alberta, she points out. For this reason, employers who can’t afford to raise wages should look at other financiall beneficial ways to compensate employees fairly, whether they are TFWs or local permanent residents.
“Each organization should have a compensation philosophy, so they are being purposeful about what they wish to pay. By that, I don't mean cost per hour, I mean in a total rewards framework,” says Cook.
“Maybe it's a tuition reimbursement program, maybe it's an extension of the contract window, maybe it's support of a spouse to also come. We just need to get a little bit liberated beyond the paycheque. Not that that's not crucial too, but we need to get creative about ‘What could we actually do to make this work for both the employee and the employer?’”
