Understanding differences, similarities increases success
TransCanada, a gas transmission and power generator based in Calgary, sees supporting Aboriginal employment as a way to match the Aboriginal community’s need for skills and employment with the company’s need for skilled and talented employees.
When TransCanada merged with Nova in 1998, it continued a tradition of providing scholarships, bursaries and fellowships to Aboriginal students and inviting scholarship recipients to apply for summer student, co-op and post-graduation positions, says Victoria Sedgwick, Aboriginal employment and education advisor at TransCanada.
One beneficiary of the scholarship and several summer placements was Armand Cardinal, a member of the Cree Nation in Northern Alberta. After graduating from the industrial electronics program at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), he got a job with Nova in 1990 as a bench technician. Eight years later, he moved into the new role of land community and Aboriginal liaison at TransCanada.
As a liaison, Cardinal builds relationships with Northern Alberta communities affected by TransCanada, especially those close to the pipelines. He attends local cultural and social activities to find out how the company can best serve the communities and informs the communities of the company’s training and employment opportunities.
The company also sponsors a number of Aboriginal initiatives at SAIT, including helping students in the Aboriginal Oil and Gas Land Administration program prepare for behavioural descriptive interviews and offering cross-cultural awareness sessions to prepare them for work in the oil and gas corporate environment.
TransCanada, which has 2,800 full-time employees in Canada, also works to ensure the work environment is supportive of Aboriginal employees, says Sedgwick. One way the company has done this is by implementing a revised time-reporting process that streamlines Aboriginal employees’ tax reporting by making it simple to document employment income earned while on reserve, which is tax exempt for Aboriginals.
“It’s just understanding their treaty rights and creating systems to support those,” says Sedgwick.
TransCanada’s work with Aboriginal communities is the reason the company was one of 30 organizations that helped the Aboriginal Human Resources Council, a public-private not-for-profit organization, develop a new management training program — Mastering Aboriginal Inclusion.
The five-module training program is designed to help managers develop expertise in the recruitment, retention and advancement of Aboriginals, says Kelly Lendsay, president and chief executive officer of the council.
“Companies that are serious about diversity are looking for ways that their managers and their senior leaders can embrace and understand Aboriginal diversity,” he says.
The training modules include the business case for hiring Aboriginals, the history of Aboriginals in Canada, cross-cultural communication, recruitment, retention and advancement, and alliances and business development. There is also a two-day workshop managers can attend.
The Aboriginal population is growing six times faster than the rest of the Canadian population and there will be about 500,000 young Aboriginals entering the workforce in the next few years, says Lendsay. But this community also has an unemployment rate more than twice as high as non-Aboriginals, which hurts the entire Canadian economy.
“When Aboriginal Peoples become educated and employed at the same level as their fellow Canadians, not better, not worse, just the same, Canada’s gross domestic product will increase by $162 billion,” says Lendsay. “There’s a strong, strong social and business imperative for mastering Aboriginal inclusion.”
While the program’s public launch was on Dec. 2, the council has been providing training since September and has trained representatives from more than 100 companies across the country.
There are several cultural differences that can make it hard for an Aboriginal candidate to get past the interview process or to move up in an organization, says Crystal Kosa, national director of corporate training and inclusion strategy at the Aboriginal Human Resources Council.
Aboriginal people tend not to self-promote, which can make them seem less successful in interviews; they consider eye contact to be rude, which can make them seem untrustworthy; and they tend to take their time when answering questions, which can make them seem less qualified, says Kosa.
While educating managers and employees on the differences in Aboriginal culture is important, it’s just as important to focus on the similarities, says Lendsay. Aboriginal Peoples are just like everyone else, they want to be working and contributing to society, he says.
“They were always employed and contributing members of their society. We’re reinforcing what I call a very proud tradition of work,” says Lendsay.
To do a better job of recruiting and retaining Aboriginal employees, employers should do community outreach, create partnerships with various community groups and educational institutions and find out how the organization can best meet the needs of the community, says Sedgwick.
Employers might also have to put more effort into supporting new Aboriginal employees, especially those from remote communities who relocate to urban centres, says Sedgwick.
“In the Aboriginal way of life their belief is that it takes a community to support and raise a person and when we remove them from that community, we have to create a new one. As an organization we had missed out on that for a long time.”
TransCanada also provides training for all employees so they can be more knowledgeable about Aboriginal culture, says Sedgwick.
Understanding different Aboriginal cultures, beliefs and ways of thinking helps Aboriginal employees feel they have a place in the company, says Cardinal, when asked how other companies can best recruit and retain Aboriginal employees.
“I’d want the company to appreciate me and make me feel comfortable and acknowledge that I’m coming from a different background,” he says. “They need to have their staff and employees realize that Aboriginal employees can add value to their companies.”
Managers should also work with new Aboriginal employees to develop a career plan so they can see where they can grow within the company, says Cardinal.
“People want a sense of belonging,” says Lendsay. “When you create this sense of belonging, you create tremendous loyalty and output.”
