December 3, 2014
Improving Skilled Immigrant Employment Outcomes through Strengthened Government-Employer Engagement
Demand-led employment supports are a good idea, but require greater engagement between government and employers to successfully meet talent needs and decrease unemployment. In this report, we identify four key levers government can use to strengthen engagement with employers across Canada.
Executive Summary
Poor employment outcomes for skilled immigrants have long been a problem in Canada. Many government initiatives exist to support skilled immigrants, and the majority have focused on helping immigrants become “job ready” through programs such as language or bridge training.
Increasingly, governments are exploring initiatives that focus on employers—“demand-led” employment supports—rather than those solely focused on job seekers’ skills and abilities.
But getting these programs and services right is a challenge for government. Successful initiatives that improve outcomes for employers and skilled immigrants require a sophisticated understanding of the needs of employers. Improved engagement between employers and government is necessary to design and implement such initiatives.
This paper asks which strategies and levers are used by all three levels of government in Canada to engage with employers to fill their talent needs and improve employment and economic outcomes of skilled immigrants. It also explores how these strategies can be improved.
As negotiations on the Canada Job Funds (previously the Labour Market Agreements) proceed, governments across Canada are making important decisions about how they will provide employment supports. These changes in the labour market training architecture coincide with significant changes to Canada’s immigration system, with the expectation that the Express Entry application management system will be rolled out in January 2015.
These important policy changes—coupled with unsatisfactory economic outcomes for skilled immigrants and global competition for skilled labour—highlight why now is the right time for governments in Canada to improve their engagement with employers on demand-led employment supports for new skilled immigrants.
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- Legislation and policy, including rules on entry streams and employment equity;
- Economic development outreach, specifically building on existing relationships cultivated by economic development officers;
- Funding of programs and services;
- Engagement with intermediaries that represent employers, such as sector councils.
Based on our interviewees’ observations and our review of international and Canadian best practices, we make recommendations to governments and employers to improve engagement. Strengthened engagement can produce better economic outcomes for skilled immigrants and can support employers in hiring the talent they need. These recommendations include:
- Governments should develop clear strategies for engaging employers as part of labour market policy and program development;
- Governments should implement rigorous, harmonized metrics for evaluation of the Canada Job Grant, the Canada Job Funds, and other employment supports;
- The federal government should support more avenues for recruiting skilled labour within Canada and, in the process, diminish the desire for employers to use the Temporary Foreign Worker Program process to fill positions;
- Provincial governments should encourage employers to move toward competency-based hiring—rather than simply requiring “Canadian experience”—through strategic use of government procurement policies and by providing other incentives and supports that reward enterprises for competency-based hiring.
Our recommendations should all be pursued in a manner that adapts to local needs to ensure that initiatives are flexible and responsive to local situations; supports smaller enterprises which often do not have the resources or capacity to engage with and take advantage of government initiatives; builds a common language around evidence, skills, and objectives; and promotes long-term stability of programs, services, and funding to build trust and sustained initiatives.
With the renewal of the Labour Market Agreements as the new Canada Job Funds, the introduction of the Canada Job Grant, and the shift toward the Express Entry system, there is a window to experiment with demand-driven initiatives to improve labour market outcomes for skilled immigrants. If these initiatives rest on a foundation of improved government-employer engagement, success is more likely.
Authors
Andrew Galley
Jill Shirey
Release Date
December 3, 2014
ISBN
978-1-927350-79-9
Mowat Research
No. 101