Business Case

Tap Into Global Expertise

Are you maximizing your access to growing global markets?

The expanding markets of China, India, Brazil and Russia alone are home to some three billion people entering the global marketplace as consumers and offer tremendous market opportunities for Canadian companies.

Immigrants have hands-on experience, language skills and interpersonal connections that enable them to develop sales to these markets which few Canadian-born employees can match.

Tap Into Growing Local Markets

Are you maximizing your share of the changing Canadian marketplace?

In 2006, 40% of metro Vancouverites were foreign-born (so was 27.5% of BC’s total population). Over one million people in Canada are Chinese (our largest single visible minority group), and 75 per cent were born outside Canada. (The Conference Board of Canada. Business Critical: Maximizing the Talents of Visible Minorities (Ottawa, 2005).

The foreign-born population of Canada is projected to increase four times faster than the rest of the population.

39% of Canadians were foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent in 2006.

By 2031, nearly one-half (46%) of Canadians aged 15 and over will be foreign-born, or would have at least one foreign-born parent.

Here too, immigrants have the cultural know-how to access these key areas of potential growth.

For example:

“The Bank of Montreal saw its business among Chinese-Canadians jump by 400 per cent over a five-year period, after it began to focus specifically on this market segment. The bank developed 60 Chinese branches across the country. In each of these branches, it hired employees who could speak Chinese languages and who understood the cultural nuances of the community. In addition, bank branches were redecorated using a colour scheme that would appeal the Chinese community, and banking forms were translated into Chinese languages.” (The Conference Board of Canada. Business Critical: Maximizing the Talents of Visible Minorities (Ottawa, 2005, 94).

Tap Into Innovation

Are you getting the creative thinking you need to get (and stay) ahead of your competition? How’s morale? Your relationships with your clients? Studies show a culturally diverse workforce improves the bottom line, work teams and the workplace quality.

Surveys into the business impact of diversity found overwhelming agreement that a diverse workforce improves corporate culture, recruitment of new employees, and client relations. All of these factors have been correlated with reduced costs and improved profitability. (From Hiring and Retaining Skilled Immigrants: A Cultural Competence Toolkit).

Tap Into Resilience

Do you want employees willing to go the extra distance? Employees up for challenge and change?

Immigrants, by definition, are strategic and highly motivated risk takers. They’ve changed countries and cultures in search of a better life. They don’t take opportunities for granted. They are the kind of people you want on your team—not on your competitor’s team. 

Tap Into Education

Are you getting the most highly skilled employees you can?

If you’re not hiring immigrants, you are probably missing out. Canadian immigrants are better educated than non-immigrants. They are much more likely to have a university education than Canadians born here: 36% have at least a bachelor's degree, compared to only 22% of native-born Canadians.

Recent immigrants are even more highly trained. They are twice as likely to have a degree than the Canadian-born labour force, and are four times as likely to have a graduate degree.

They also probably have the kind of education and experience you need. Over the next ten years, 56% of job openings are forecast to be in sales and service, trades, transport, and related occupations, and business, finance and administration. These are the same skills held by 59% of our immigrant population.

Beat the Labour Crunch

Do you want to get ahead of the looming employee shortage?

By integrating immigrants into your workforce now, you’ll be ahead of the curve when the coming demographic crunch hits and other employers are scrambling.

Baby boomers — people born between 1945 and 1960 — are starting to retire, and there aren’t enough younger workers to replace them. As a result, economists are forecasting a severe labour shortage in Canada in the coming decades.

Immigrants will become an increasingly important source of skilled employees. By 2011, immigrants are expected to account for 100% of net labour force growth in Canada. But other industrialized nations with retiring baby boomers and low birth rates will also be competing for those well-educated immigrants with global expertise.

Companies that have already integrated immigrants into their labour pool will have significant competitive advantages over those who have not.