Practical insights:

When it comes to onboarding recent immigrants and refugees, there’s a good chance your process is moving too quickly, according to Claude McKenzie, founder of Axiome Génie Conseil International.

In a breakout session at the Health and Safety Professionals Canada Professional Development Conference in Edmonton, McKenzie noted that many organizations rely on these workers to fill a labour gap. “We need them now,” he stressed. “Not tomorrow, not next week, now. This is where we have a problem.”

The push to fill a labour gap can lead to an onboarding program that moves too quickly for an employee adjusting to a new language, culture, social structure, or some combination of the three.

In fact, McKenzie shared, the four main causes of injuries in migrant workers are language barriers, lack of training, a mismatch between their education and their job, and the length of their stay in Canada, with workers here for less than five years being more apt to be injured on the job.

“People will take positions that are totally new to them, or they take positions that are similar, but not in the same conditions,” McKenzie said. “So, you are in Africa and you work in construction. You come here, you work in construction. I tell you – those are two [different] worlds.”

He related an experience on one construction site in Africa, where a worker fell from the fifth floor of an apartment building and died. After the fall, his coworkers gathered around him. “What did they say?” McKenzie asked. “Not ‘too bad’, but ‘it was his destiny.’”

This tragic example highlights how people’s understanding of the importance of protecting themselves can be highly cultural.

It also highlights another important cultural factor that health and safety professionals should bear in mind when working with recent immigrant and refugee populations.

“The price of life is not the same everywhere in the world,” McKenzie said. “How much does it cost if we have a worker getting killed on the job here in Alberta? Compared to Pakistan [where it’s] maybe a thousand dollars, maybe not even? So, do they put a lot of effort in health and safety? Do they train people in health and safety? No.”

That’s why McKenzie says health and safety professionals here in Canada need to understand the diversity that currently exists in their organization and how workers approach on-the-job safety. With that understanding, they can develop a plan to overcome any barriers that exist, and tailor onboarding as needed to ensure every new hire gets the information they need to stay safe on the job.