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This week, between 20 and 26 June, is Refugee Week, which works to educate Brits on the positive impact of refugees and asylum seekers on our society. HR Grapevine has spoken to businesses who have hired talented workers who came to the UK to flee oppression, and their stories are inspiring...
*Fatima was a schoolteacher in her home country, but when she first came to the UK, her qualifications weren’t recognised. Despite the UK suffering a national shortage of teachers, she struggled to even get a volunteer teachers’ assistant role. Since teaching was a vocation, and had been a huge part of her identity, Fatima was determined to continue being an educator in her adopted country. She persisted, finally begging her children’s school for an opportunity to volunteer. Thanks to immense resilience and tenacity, she is now doing a PhD in teaching methodology, while working as a teaching assistant.
Stories like Fatima’s are not only inspiring, they’re also a valuable lesson. What can we learn as leaders and colleagues from the resilience of refugees? Read on…
Refugee Week 2022
Refugee Week was started in 1998 with the vision to help refugees and asylum seekers “be able to live safely within inclusive and resilient communities, where they can continue to make a valuable contribution,” according to its website. The week-long set of educational activities and more is UK-wide and “celebrates the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary.”
This year’s activities come at a particularly crucial time, when the UK government has come under international scrutiny this month as it attempts to implement the ‘Rwanda Plan’, a programme that, if enacted, will see most asylum seekers and many refugees who have arrived in the UK sent to Rwanda instead. The Plan has so far cost the government £120.5M, which does not include the legal fees it incurred when the EHCR halted the flights on the ground that they (and the Plan) may be illegal under international law.
“With current skills shortages and need for resilience in organisations, refugees can contribute their talent”
The United Kingdom (UK) is a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and to its 1967 Protocol. The UK is also a party to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Under these systems and conventions, as well as the UK’s Human Rights Act 1998 and the EHRC’s own rules, the government may be forced to abandon the Rwanda Plan and implement one that doesn’t seem to break both international law and the UK’s own claims to be a country that respects the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.
With approximately 10,000 asylum seekers arriving to British shores in 2022 so far (according to Home Office stats), many worry for their safety as well as the country’s ability to provide a decent life for these vulnerable people, with the UK’s cost of living disaster only just beginning to unfold and a recession looming.
But with the talent shortage still in full swing, can employers really afford to be turning doctors, engineers, chefs, IT talent and more away? The answer is up to each person to decide for themselves, but, during Refugee Week, HR Grapevine has spoken to several businesses around the UK and the US to see how employing asylum seekers has benefitted our economy.
Are asylum seekers and refugees an untapped talent source?
People like Mursal Hedayat, a one-time asylum seeker from Taliban-era Afghanistan in the 1990s and now an MBE and female British business owner, is living proof that the answer is, “yes”.
Hedayat believes that workers with refugee backgrounds can contribute, “so much more to society than they’re currently allowed to.” She set up Chatterbox, which helps businesses create a more holistic learning and development approach by incorporating cultural awareness and linguistic prowess – all while employing and empowering refugees.
She explains: “Under the Geneva Convention, refugees’ right to work is protected around the world. However, many countries – deliberately or accidentally – obstruct their ability to fully utilise their skills and experience. This doesn’t make much sense in the context of the 'Great Resignation'.”
Raj Burman is a venture philanthropist and the current CEO of Techfugees, a digital-first company developing and implementing tech products and services by refugees, for refugees. He spoke to HR Grapevine about how recruiters, HR and managers can change their way of thinking, saying, “if recruiters and interviewers are briefed properly, they can …recognise candidates' migration life experiences as unique strengths of tenacity and perseverance, rather than being perceived as potential barriers.”
Tarek Elnicklawy – Director of Sales and Operations for New York-based cloud document management firm DocPlace, agrees that the determination refugees are often imbued with can translate itself to dedicated employees.
“One thing I appreciate in anyone is the drive and grit that spurs ambition,” he says, “the yearning to make a better life for yourself when the deck is stacked against you. Rimma [one of DocPlace’s developers and an asylum seeker from Kazakhstan] is a prime example of someone who doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘quit’. There are superstars everywhere, but they are often overlooked especially when immigrating to a new country where the transition is rarely ‘apples to apples.’”
While these individual expert comments and experiences are valuable, perhaps the most compelling statements on hiring refugees come from Adecco, the world’s largest recruitment provider.
Bruce Roch, Global Head of Adecco Inclusion, told HR Grapevine: “Refugees are looking for a peaceful future in their new host communities and we can help them in their professional integration, and upskill/reskill them when needed, which will help them make the most of their new lives. In 2021 alone, 15,000 refugees were part of our associate workforce. With current skills shortages and need for resilience in organisations, refugees can contribute their talent and help build great professional opportunities for themselves, as well as contributing to ‘corporate citizenship’ for all organisations.”
And Adecco Group CEO Alain Dehaze agrees with him, saying: “We work hard every day to deliver on our purpose of making the future work for everyone and have been striving to support refugees from many countries - including Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq - and integrate them into the workforce for more than a decade.
“We are now taking our support to the next level, enabling refugees from Ukraine to bridge skills gaps with practical training, and thereby enhancing their ability to secure jobs (through the Jobs for Ukraine platform). I encourage companies to get involved so together we can make a meaningful impact in the lives of many people. I would also like to extend my deep appreciation to all the companies who have already joined this initiative and opened their doors to refugees.”
“Workers with refugee backgrounds can contribute so much more to society than they’re currently allowed to”
Tips for assisting your refugee staff
Remembering that many refugees like Fatima will have a stellar background and be highly skilled in their areas of expertise. However, language barriers and the UK’s monocultural outlook can often create unconscious bias against recognising these skills or qualifications from other countries.
“Education is key to help combat unconscious bias in the hiring process. It's important to provide team members with context of displacement-related differences that can appear during recruitment,” explains Burman. “For example, differences such as unavoidable interrupted education or work history, or internet connectivity issues, that have nothing to do with talent and potential, may become a setback for candidates.
“Where possible, employers should also seek to offer remote work, internships and apprenticeships opportunities which can be more easily attainable for displaced persons, and partner directly with talent agencies dedicated to supporting companies to connect with untapped displaced talent, such as Talent Beyond Boundaries, Techfugees, TENT and Remote for Refugees."
Hedayat cautions that language skills are a huge barrier to integration for many refugees.
She says: “One tip for making refugees feel welcomed in a workplace would be to have a dedicated language programme available for them to use. In tandem with that, it would be useful to help their colleagues to explore other languages and cultures and develop their cultural intelligence. This way, refugees won’t feel like they need to hide their backgrounds to fit in an environment with a monocultural mindset.”
*Name changed to protect identity
