(originally published on the Cities of Migration website)
Current hiring practices often exclude refugees, as they are not seen as a ‘good fit’ based on lack of Canadian
education, training, or experience. However, a critical labour shortage can offer an opportunity for employers
to re-evaluate hiring practices to realize the potential in a previously untapped labour pool.
Ontario’s tourism and hospitality employers have struggled for some time with a critical labour shortage.
Recently, the industry began replicating an employment project with refugees that has had some success
working with vulnerable youth. The ALiGN Network Model introduces an alternative approach to traditional
recruitment, screening and hiring practices.
OTEC, a sector-specific training, consulting, and workforce development organization, teamed up with Magnet
to launch ALiGN, to connect unemployed youth to job vacancies. Based at Ryerson University, Magnet is a non-profit social innovation that brings together cross-sector partners to address unemployment and under-employment of Canadians through a technology-driven platform. With a strong commitment to diversity and supporting groups
facing significant barriers to employment, Magnet was a natural fit to partner with OTEC.
Many potential workers from vulnerable groups were not recognized as a suitable fit by employers simply because employers lacked the tools to fully evaluate their potential. Adam Morrison, OTEC Vice President, Projects and Partnerships says that “businesses have been telling us for years that, if candidates are the right fit, they will hire them
and train them for advancement.” As employers struggled to fill entry-level positions, it became clear that OTEC needed to create a system that matched vulnerable groups to opportunities based on their unique attributes, attitudes and goals.
OTEC and Magnet looked at models that were working for larger, well-resourced employers in the sector, but were out of reach for smaller companies. In one approach, “peak performers” were interviewed to assess not only skills, but also the behavioural and personality attributes that made candidates successful. OTEC worked with the sector to
scale this approach and created employee benchmarks that they combined with Lumina Learning’s psychometric assessment tool to establish job fit characteristics such as introversion vs. extroversion and people- vs. outcome-focused.
With Magnet and sector partners, OTEC built the ALiGN Network Model, a “psychometric-based talent-to-role fit assessment and job-matching model.” Once the psychometric and job readiness model was tested and had employer buy-in, OTEC worked with Magnet to bring the model online.
Clients are assessed by community and education partners trained in the psychometric tool. Once they are determined to be a fit for a particular job, clients are moved directly into work or supported through training, certification and other steps necessary to obtain employment.
Community, training and education partners are key to making ALiGN successful. Given the vulnerable populations ALiGN supports, OTEC recognized they had to connect clients to in-person supports, to help candidates excel and be successful. OTEC works closely with existing community and educational support systems to refer, support and
move clients to employment.
Replicating for refugees
The ALiGN approach has broad applicability. According to Magnet’s Executive Director, Mark Patterson, and echoed by Morrison, the model was always envisioned to work with other client groups and labour market segments. Refugees are a logical next group. Like unemployed youth, ALiGN creates pathways to employment for refugees who do
not have traditional “good fit” credentials for success, or even participation, in the labour market, such as academic accreditation, language proficiency, and “Canadian experience.” ACCES Employment, already a Magnet community partner, will pilot the Lumina psychometric assessment tool with refugee clients, and provide the additional
support system necessary for employment success.
Morrison says that the Lumina tool is particularly appropriate for refugees. It is available in 17 languages, and has been tested and used in other countries. Additional modifications have been made to ALiGN to be accessible for this new population of job-seekers, including a multilingual online interface, taking into account multilingual refugee clients.
Measuring impact
OTEC recently completed an evaluation of ALiGN for improving employment outcomes for vulnerable youth. They found that more youth are being assessed as a fit when they work with their employment counsellor to complete the assessment on ALiGN. Thirty percent more youth are on a realistic path to employment. That means more potential
workers for employers facing labour shortages.
More employers also have access to greater hiring opportunities now. Most employers, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), lack the Human Resource resources large corporate entities have. Through ALiGN, employers now have access to a recruiting system and new talent pools if they are willing to commit to hiring from
underemployed and vulnerable groups.
With a solution-focused tool, Morrison says that employers, large and small, have indicated that they are willing to adapt their recruitment practices to work with ALiGN, and access the new talent pool. With hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs projected in the sector, employers simply need new ways of finding and hiring potential workers.
Reducing employment friction for everyone Refugees only have to complete the psychometric assessment tool once. It becomes part of their profile on ALiGN and part of their personal employment portfolio on the broader Magnet site. With the ALiGN profile integrated on Magnet, refugees will be able to also access opportunities across the whole Magnet platform, exposing them to more employment opportunities as they gain new skills and experiences.
Morrison says ALiGN offers employers a streamlined process to access talent they may not have previously been able to tap into. Their access to the platform, including posting jobs, is all free.
ALiGN’s refugee project is just getting started. With its initial success working with youth, it can continue to model the way tourism and hospitality employers can tap into previously ignored labour talent.
Originally published by Hire Immigrants, with these additional tips for employers:
Multi-sectoral stakeholder partnerships are key. ALiGN brings private, public, and non-profit partners together, all working towards common goals. It’s important that all partners see what is in it for them. Having broad sector employer organizations, such as chambers of commerce, sector councils, etc., are key to helping not only bring employers in, but also to create legitimacy for the approach and project.
Build on what works. Employment support services for one vulnerable or precarious community provide models and lessons that can be adapted for others.
Have strong employer partners. Magnet is connected to the Syrian Refugees Jobs Agenda roundtable, made up of employers initiating or interested in starting employment projects to hire refugees. Working with these employer champions that already see the benefit of hiring refugees provides additional pathways for companies to hire top talent. It can also bring other employers on board.
(originally published on the Cities of Migration website)
Immigrant and refugee-serving agencies provide important services, they also coordinate with and refer to other human service providers. Coordinating complex services can be challenging. In Windsor, Ontario, community agencies are tackling complex system navigation with the goal of creating more effective and client-centred services.
The WE Value Partnership appears to be a technology and data project. And it is. The YMCA of Southwestern Ontario, along with Workforce Windsor-Essex and its community partners, is creating a customized Client Management System that will allow settlement workers and, eventually, other service providers to streamline newcomer client intake, assessment and referral. WE Value wants more accurate, timely referrals for newcomer clients into the community, leading to better client outcomes.
Better systems can have an impact on a newcomer’s integration. But the goal is broader, to have an impact on the entire community. As a digital transformation AND community engagement project WE Value is leading a community cultural shift in how the city looks at settlement of newcomers. By increasing service accessibility, they hope the entire community will be improved.
Clients are seen as asset-based, rather than needs-based. Project partners recognize the skills, experience and energy newcomers bring. and their potential to be long-term contributors to local community health, wealth and well-being. It’s an important shift in how immigrants, whatever their initial status, are seen: as assets to and within the community rather than people with needs or vulnerabilities to be fixed.
Creating seamless community service access
WE Value seeks to break down service silos, coordinating service provision to help newcomers at the right time. The simple act of bringing community stakeholders together in the project’s first year has already led to more responsive and effective service coordination.
They’re bringing together organizations that act as key system navigators for other human services in the city and region. A newcomer-specific health clinic has connected more deeply with a mainstream health-care coordinating organization that maintains a database of doctors who only work with them to manage wait-lists and referrals. Moving
from a gatekeeper to a system partner and navigator, newcomers can be referred to the mainstream health-care provider to better navigate the system and find a permanent doctor or family health team.
Relationship and trust building are key to creating these system navigators. Connecting the right people to each other in the community requires taking the time to build trust, collaboration and partnership. Partners want Windsor to move to a two-way approach to newcomer integration focused not only on newcomers adapting, but making sure that the community adapts and is welcoming as well. The goal is not only to better outcomes for newcomers, but for the community to fully understand that it’s success and growth is tied to newcomers genuinely being able to meet their full potential.
Local organizations understand the benefits of streamlining services and the two-way approach, but there are concerns. There are real fears about how policy or regime change might affect their services, programming, organizations and funding. Acknowledging these concerns has sparked conversations that are building trust and new relationships that are moving the community to a truly reciprocal relationship with newcomers - and will serve them well in the future.
Using data to drive innovation and relationships
As the digital transformation in case management moves forward more reliable local data based on the actual information and needs of newcomers entering the region will emerge: “The only thing more exciting than all the data and the research that could be created from this project, is the creation of personalized, community-wide, referral plans for newcomers so that they can be referred to the right service, at the right time and at the right location. This silo-busting approach to service will best serve newcomers and their families, leaving these new Canadians in the strongest position to contribute to their country and community. With better service referrals and better outcomes, I think our newcomer-serving organizations will not only experience increased service volume, but also stronger community recognition of their work.”
The new case management system will give WE Value partners the data they need to measure service impacts and
outcomes with newcomers. This will allow them to pivot where needed, change, modify or create needed services, as well as help community partners know the impact of their system navigation.
By creating more robust intake and assessment processes with newcomers, they can be more accurately referred to the systems and services needed to speed up their integration process. Settlement professionals can also focus on the work they do best and trust that their community partners are meeting other newcomer needs.
Success
In building a better and more client-centred system, WE Value partners have already started to build a more connected
community. For immigrant and refugee-serving organizations, referring clients into the community is an essential part of how they help. As WE Value brings organizations that provide important services to the table, the community is already seeing more streamlined referral processes and more awareness of each other.
Valuing newcomers in the community means being open to system change. WE Value is building on the premise that
newcomers are valuable for the community. Investing in a better welcoming and settlement experience will ensure that their value is felt across the city. To do that, all city actors need to work together to remove complex barriers, work better together and seek to make what is complex simple for all newcomers and, inevitably, for employers and more.
Watch the WE Value Partnership Final Forum (webinar recordings) for more information.
In this P2P Promising Practice, New Language Solutions provides an overview of their venue-LearnIT2teach Project,m which includes two key components: a Canada-specific learning management system (LMS) built on Moodle, and a structured training program for instructors that is hosted on the platform:
"The Avenue-LearnIT2teach Project aims to modernize settlement language training across Canada. Its primary goals include improving newcomers' language proficiency, enhancing their digital literacy, and supporting their employability and successful integration into Canadian society. Additionally, the project seeks to build a professional community of language educators proficient in technology-enhanced language learning (TELL) who actively collaborate and share best practices."
Download the full promising practice brief.
In this P2P Promising Practice, the Together Project provides an overview of the digital adaptation of their Welcome Group Program:
"The Welcome Group Program has been running since 2017. It matches ‘Welcome Groups’ of volunteers with GARs and refugee claimants for at least six months to provide social support focused on each household’s unique integration priorities (e.g., language learning, service navigation, youth tutoring). Matches are based on a preference matching system. In other words, newcomers and volunteers are matched based on the interests and priorities of newcomers and the experiences, preferences, and characteristics of volunteers. Prior to the pandemic, the program delivery was primarily based on in-person support. Volunteers and newcomers met face-to-face. There was also a small ‘virtual’ component in that newcomers and volunteers used digital messaging platforms to stay connected between visits and used video calls for language practice...
The primary goal of the remote program is the same as the goal before the pandemic. The program aims to connect GARs and refugee claimants with volunteers for six months of social and integration support. A secondary goal of the remote program is to provide additional support to volunteers to provide responsible and effective support to newcomers in a virtual environment. Finally, the program also aims to work collaboratively with settlement agency partners and Local Immigration Partnerships to share emergent programs and resources with volunteers to enhance pandemic support for newcomers."
Watch a video overview of the promising practice (P2P has ridiculously chosen to restrict embedding permissions).
Download the full promising practice brief.
In this P2P Promising Practice, International Student Development at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver Campus) provides an overview of digital tools manage a high volume of inquiries, and strategies to help international
students avoid common pitfalls:
"The aim of the Digital Immigration Advising Tools is to effectively and efficiently scale up the delivery of robust immigration advice on temporary resident immigration application procedures and policies."
Five tools have been developed:
Download the full promising practice brief.
In this P2P Promising Practice, the London Cross Cultural Learner Centre (CCLC) provides an overview of their social media strategy:
"The primary goals of CCLC's social media strategy are to grow brand awareness and effectively engage with key audiences. A major objective is to increase awareness among newcomers, ensuring they know that the CCLC is a supportive resource to help them integrate and feel at home in London, ultimately increasing the number of newcomers supported by the CCLC. Another important goal is to raise awareness among donors, volunteers, prospective employees, and members of the community at large about the opportunities at the CCLC to make a positive impact. Additionally, the new social media strategy aims to increase overall revenue for CCLC’s social enterprise, the Interpretation and Translation Department."
Download the full promising practice brief.
Shared Digital Guides is a Catalyst initiative, contributed by CAST in the UK. Catalyst is a network that connects non-profits with services and resources to make digital easier. Organizations share guides to how they use digital tools to run their services and operations.
Even better, you can to copy, replicate, and learn from what they've done.
Too often organizations feel left alone to figure out their digital transformation. While they're anxious and stressed out, it's likely another organization has figured it out. What if there was a way to share those solutions?
That's what Shared Digital Guides offer.
According to Catalyst Shared Digital Guides "collects practical examples to help charities reuse and learn from one another’s digital services. We have been referring to those as recipes: they show the ingredients and steps needed to deliver a service. By charities, for charities, for inspiration or straightforward implementation. These recipes can be reused as they are, or tweaked as necessary.
We believe that re-using existing tools and code can help charities solve service design and delivery problems more quickly than building a tool from scratch. It can save time and money, and build a team’s confidence along the way."
What can you find there? Guides cover things like:
Here are some specific guide examples:
Organizations are encouraged to share, with the caveat "Most organisations have something worth sharing, but don't realise it!"
I've also found that even when an organization realizes they have something worth sharing, they're not sure how to do it, or find the time to share.
It's in that spirit the Catalyst works with organizations that submit an idea. Through a simple and manageable interview process that doesn't take too much time (2 40-minute interviews), Catalyst pulls together the information and then creates the guide. Organizations get a final review before a guide goes live on the site.
Open working and sharing is key to this approach. There are currently 61 Guides shared by 45 organisations on the site. You are free to use, reuse and adapt Guides to improve your services and operations. You can also republish the text of a Guide, with credit and link back to the Guide.
International Student Connect is a service of COSTI Immigrant Services. It's a rare service from a large Immigrant and Refugee-serving organization that is mainly funded by IRCC. IRCC doesn't allow these organizations to serve international students. This, in spite of the fact that those students need services and are increasingly part of two-step immigration pathways to permanence in Canada.
This is where provincial funders have typically stepped in. In this case International Student Connect is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services.
According to the site the "International Student Connect project offers information and orientation resources to international students found on the ISC website and in printed format. Resources include A Handbook for International Students in Ontario, Ontario International Students Guide, ISC webinars and fact sheets on various settlement topics."
What is particularly unique is that International Student Connect offers both online/virtual services and information, along with in-person services across Ontario through partner organizations. This includes a mix of educational institutions and settlement agencies.
The online services have expanded in recent times to include the above resources, the Orientation to Ontario chatbot, accessible on the site, as well as the ArriveON app, available on Android, iPhone, and Microsoft store (for PC download).
What makes this a good idea?
International Student Connect provides International Students with an authoritative information source along with connections in their community where they can get needed help and support. That alone makes it useful.
But from a technical perspective, International Student Connect is connected to the broader Orientation to Ontario program, which provides a glimpse of what an emerging omnichannel information system can look like. Whether an International Student accesses information through the chatbot, app, webinar, PDF downloads, or in-person at a service provider, they get access to the same consistent information.
That consistency and no-wrong-door approach to providing information and access to the information increasingly in seamless ways is essential for the future relevancy of the sector.
You can read more about International Student Connect on their website, or download this brief from the Sharing Settlement and Integration Practices that Work site, as well as watch their video overview.
The YMCA of the National Capital Region’s project, Wired: Evaluating Settlement Online (WESO), is a research-based program that addresses the challenges/barriers that service providers and newcomer clients face in delivering/using remote and hybrid services. The project is uncovering evidence-based practices that Settlement Service Provider Organizations (SPOs) find promising in delivering remote/hybrid services and engaging clients, creating a toolkit/framework and resources for SPOs to evaluate the effectiveness of your service delivery and adapt your models accordingly to improve services, and creating a network of knowledge and promising practice sharing.
The WESO team has created an evaluation tool for SPOs to assess the quality of your hybrid services and increase client intentions to use hybrid services. This toolkit also includes a data collection tool, in the form of a client questionnaire, that SPOs can use to collect client feedback.
Their Quality Assessment Toolkit for Hybrid Settlement Services provides a methodology and tools you can use immediately to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of your hybrid service delivery. It also highlights tips and best practices to support SPOs to adapt and improve your hybrid service delivery models.
The WESO project defines hybrid services as:
Hybrid service refers to a service delivery mode where clients have the option to interact with service providers both offline or in-person and through online platforms. It combines the convenience of online access with the personal touch of in-person interactions, empowering clients to choose the mode that suits them best based on their specific needs at any given moment.
Why does it matter?
Like many SPOs, you may be struggling with questions like:
In February 2021 I moderated a panel that asked the question: How do I know my transition to virtual service delivery is effective? There were some great insights, tools, ideas, and discussions.
But the question has hung over our sector during the pandemic and as we more or less formally shift to a hybrid service delivery model.
The WESO toolkit is helping to answer all of these questions (disclosure: I have a small consulting role on the project).
Most importantly, the analysis you get from the Toolkit will provide you with specific areas where you need to take action to strengthen your service delivery and improve client performance. It will help you to prioritize your efforts, based on what your clients are telling you is important to them and where you perform or under-perform.
Feedback from your clients is the most essential information you need to collect and analyze to ensure your services are meeting their needs and creating necessary outcomes.
The Toolkit will tell you where you need to improve. You'll know where you’re doing well. You'll also see where you may be over-focusing (i.e. you perform highly, but they’re not as important to your clients). As well, you'll identify areas that are not particularly important to your clients, where you don’t need to focus.
The WESO Toolkit and approach take the guessing out of your evaluation work. Replace anecdotal perception of what is working with evidence from Newcomer experiences to focus on what is actually working.
What do you need to know?
The WESO toolkit is based on the findings of extensive research and engagement with newcomer clients and staff at SPOs across Canada.
The survey focused on 5 dimensions that affect hybrid service quality and drive clients’ intention to use hybrid services in the future:
A client experiment was created and implemented focused on Newcomers who had not or had not wanted to access online services. The goal was to find out if a small training intervention might help Newcomers. 40 Newcomers received digital literacy training and the WESO team evaluated their experience and feedback.
Training covered areas related to everyday practical computer skills including:
It turns out even a small intervention makes a big difference.
Two-thirds of participants overall agreed that their knowledge and skills improved by taking our training. 85% of participants have had a positive experience accessing online Settlement services after the training.
A vast majority of Newcomers WESO surveyed and trained think hybrid services should continue (85.8%) and 86.3% of Newcomers surveyed appreciate a multiple service delivery mode.
We know that there is no one-size-fits-all-Newcomers approach to hybrid service delivery. We all know that our Newcomer clients are diverse. It isn’t surprising that this diversity should extend to how Newcomers want to access services.
We need to get the hybrid service mix right.
What you can do right now
Getting it right means knowing you got it right, where you didn’t, and how to learn from what you know and incorporate it into your service planning.
The WESO team has created not only the Toolkit, but training and tools to help you implement it in your work.
The toolkit and training includes:
In addition to the existing toolkit and training, the WESO team has developed three self-paced learning modules to enhance your ability to evaluate hybrid services. These modules focus on key areas of data collection, research methodology, and statistical analysis skills. By completing these modules, you will gain the necessary knowledge to assess your services effectively and make informed decisions for service planning.
The WESO team is running training sessions now. You can attend one of their upcoming sessions. If you're on SettleNet.org, the sector’s Community of Practice, join WESO’s SettleNet.org group for info and updates. You can also access their toolkit materials and more on the Y website.
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