B.C. Workplace Diversification: Culture Shock
Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Indians, Iranians, Ukrainians, and all the rest – B.C. needs them. Badly. The baby boomers are teetering toward retirement, and our strong economy is churning out jobs. With new immigrants streaming over the border to fill vacancies, multiculturalism in the workplace is no longer a feel-good slogan; it’s a business imperative.
BCBusiness invited a panel of experts to discuss diversity in the workplace. We learned just how difficult it can be when people with different backgrounds, customs and expectations try to work together. We also learned what businesses need to do now to prepare for increasing diversity.
Absorbing this cultural variety is critical because B.C. isn’t the only region that needs these people. If new immigrants can’t find a home in our growing economy, they’ll move on to another one.
Meet our panel of experts: Mackie Chase is the director of the UBC Centre for Intercultural Communications. Ray Holdgate is the chief of the Vancouver Fire and Rescue Service, who is working with other B.C. fire services to increase the diversity of their staffs. Carmen Grant is the director of HR for RC Purdy Chocolates Ltd., helping manage a factory workforce where 75 per cent of the workers are visible minorities. Matthew Stevenson is a job coach and industry liaison with the Immigrant Skilled Trades Employment Program, helping new immigrants land jobs in B.C. and coaching them through the learning curves.
BCBusiness: What kind of trends are we seeing today in workplace diversity in B.C.?
Mackie Chase: People are talking so much about labour shortages and looking ahead. It seems like in every sector, you talk to people who can’t fill places. What I’m hearing from the work that we do at the centre is that it’s not unique to Canada and that, more and more, we’re going to be in competition with the rest of the world. One exception is the United States, and they have a higher population replacement that we do.
BCB: B.C. is known for its ethnically diverse population. How does that relate to this labour shortage?
MC: It’s creating lots of challenges. One is that we have a wealth of people power that we’re not tapping into very well. We’re good at making gatekeeping regulations, but we’re not so good at looking at alternate ways of gatekeeping: bridging systems.
BCB: What sort of danger is there for businesses and for organizations if they don’t address these issues?
MC: We’ve seen that in Paris and in lots of places in the world where people get more and more isolated and feel that they’re being held back and aren’t being integrated. We don’t have a very healthy, safe society when people are feeling frustrated and angry.
Ray Holdgate: I think business won’t exist; that’s what will happen. If this city doesn’t do something in terms of the employment situation, then the businesses are going to migrate toward somebody who is doing something. So it’s up to Vancouver as a city to foster a new way of thinking.
In my profession, we do a lot of the same. We traditionally sit and wait. We float out an application and we ask, “Why isn’t somebody coming to my door?” And because of our criteria, these gates, it’s a difficult issue.
BCB: Carmen, workplace diversity is no surprise to you. Tell us about the workforce at Purdy’s.
Carmen Grant: Our manufacturing workforce, with about 140 people, is probably about 75-per-cent visible minorities. When you see doctors and lawyers who are driving cabs, we have those people working in our factory. They came to Canada but their qualifications didn’t apply here. So it was, “We need to work, we need to support our families; here’s a job, I’m there,” and they stayed.
BCB: What issues have come up with a 75-per-cent visible-minority workforce?
CG: Last year we started to hear some talk that was a bit concerning for us. It was “them” or “they” or “you hire too many of those kind.” So I brought in a consultant who did some work on respect in the workplace. She did half-day sessions with our workforce in the factory. We set up something so they had partners, so when they heard some of that going on in the workplace, they could go to that partner and say, “I’m hearing this and I’m not liking it. Do you have any ideas on how I might handle it?”
We also have production meetings before production starts every day, and we remind them of the things they have agreed to, the things they were uncomfortable with and the solutions that they had come up with. It was, “Remember when we talked about this? Here are the things you said you didn’t like about what happens in the workplace. Do you still see it happening? And if it is, how do we address it?”
BCB: So it really takes some following up after you do something like this.
CG: It does, and that’s actually the hardest part, because people forget. They walk out of that room and they go, “Okay, that was all very nice and well and good and yeah, we heard a lot of stuff.”
BCB: Talking about these things seems to be a big part of it. Ray, what does this look like in the fire service?
RH: The challenges we face are really just management problems. People don’t get along in the workplace, and they’re afraid to talk to each other. And probably our biggest problem today is the difference in age gap. So you’ve got “Xers” and “Boomers” and all these things put in one work setting. And you all have to get along. And, of course, we’re a paramilitary structure. When you take this supervisor who’s the captain and he says, “I have no problems at work,” I say, “You have lots of problems at work; you just don’t see them.” And he says, “What do you mean? If I tell them to do it, they do it.” Well, that’s the [uniform] stripes, the structure. And I say, “If you think those young folks over in the corner are sitting looking at all this stuff exuding out of us, this experience and so on, I got news for you: it’s not working.”
BCB: In the fire service, the workforce is traditionally young, white males. Do you see a danger that this history makes your workforce inflexible when dealing with diversity?
RH: Yes, it does. Recognizing it as an issue is number one. Unlike a lot of organizations, the fire service has long-term employees. Out of a workforce of 830 people, we lose three or four annually, if that. I just spoke to a recruit class of 14 people. There were probably five visible minorities in that group.
Ten years ago I wouldn’t have seen that. So for us to make that change is not easy because you have to have people leave to start to accommodate other groups.
And you need to attract people to the workplace that have the qualities that you’re looking for. This population dip we’re into right now, it’s going to affect the quality of employee you’re hiring. It’s easy to go out and just get someone to come and work for you. It’s difficult to get a quality person to come who you want to keep.
I’d much rather have a person come right off the street with virtually no skills other than soft skills – good with people, get along well, a good fit. We’ll teach you to be a firefighter. What we’re doing right now is exactly the opposite; we’re hiring for skills and hoping it fits, and it’s a disaster.
MC: And sometimes I think it’s hard to know if you’re hiring for fit when you’re doing it. In job interviews, for example, we have a game and we expect people are going to know how to play that game. I saw one person who was asked that typical question, “Why are you interested in this organization?” The answer was, “Because I need a job.”
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