The Refugee Advantage: How Hiring Refugees Boosts Innovation and Diversity
And to survive in an increasingly fast-paced global economy, businesses will need to continue to innovate, think outside the box and diversify in order to scale, grow and compete. Refugees present a talent pool that businesses can tap in order to innovate and develop creative solutions to business problems. Hiring refugees offers a double-dividend. Not only does it address a pressing social need by providing jobs to a population hungry for them, it might also make for a more competitive business.
The Role of Diversity in Driving Innovation
Diversity breeds creativity. Numerous studies show that more diverse teams tend to be more innovative, and more effective in tackling complex problems and adapting to changing market demands. Having been forced to come up with new ways of satisfying urgent needs, refugees could bring some of those novel perspectives to the workplace, with the potential benefit of creating novel solutions to otherwise intractable problems for firms. Newcomers’ motivation and work ethic are often high. Many of the people we’ve hired are refugees with long histories as entrepreneurs and business people – a resource that comes with its own network of suppliers, distributors and customers. Most importantly, refugees usually have a solid track record of being resilient, adaptable and proven problem-solvers, with a desire to succeed based on their own merits.
For example, refugees who have endured and persevered through significant challenges to rebuild their lives also demonstrate the talents of resilience, creativity, and flexibility – qualities that are highly valued in knowledge-intensive sectors such as tech, engineering and the creative industries, as well as in health professions such as urgent-care providers or hospice workers. Both businesses and entrepreneurs can tap into refugees’ strengths by hiring them, and gain some of the energy and vitality that diverse teams can bring.
Additionally, refugees’ international experience and cross-cultural skills are capital on the global market. As companies become ever more multi-national and their customers ever more geographically and culturally dispersed, employees with cultural sensitivity and global nous become increasingly important. Many refugees have lived in multiple countries, and often in multiple regions of each one of those countries, and have a perspective that can be crucial in informing the global strategy of a company.
Harnessing Refugees’ Skills and Expertise
They frequently bring professional experience and qualifications with them, and yet often they are the most barred from the jobs market. Yet, look at the skill there – almost every industry is facing skills shortages. Refugees arrive with degrees in mental health, and tax degrees, and nursing degrees, and engineering degrees.
What is good for businesses driven by profit is that they can actually compensate for labour market shortages by employing refugees. Even better than that, appreciating their skills will help them compete in labour markets. Refugees often come with good work ethic, resilience and a great desire to rebuild their lives, which are exactly the qualities that increase productivity and loyalty.
For example, the Refugee Employment Economic Outcomes Report highlights some of the value-adds that businesses must invest in, such as training and development programmes to enable refugees to adapt to new roles in new social and working environments; for example, mentoring programmes. Further examples include access to professional development opportunities as well as the ability to upgrade language skills; all of which can contribute to ‘psychological resilience’ and or support refugees to adaptation to their working environment. Financial investments in training and development will therefore add to the effectiveness of refugee employees while contributing to increasing overall performance of the company.
Creating an Inclusive and Innovative Workplace Culture
Organisations benefit much more than the employment of a refugee. They gain the aura of the culture that the refugee embodies, as well as the powerful ‘status boost’ and ‘public relations’ dividend. The workplace becomes more inclusive; thereby, it becomes the workplace of choice when employees are drawn to creativity, collaboration, out-of-box thinking – all of which come with employees who are energetically and expansively multilingual.
Moreover, continued presence of refugee employees can inspire their co-workers through potent narratives of resistance and fraternity. The resilience they demonstrate in surmounting adversity might instill in coworkers similar tenacity and resolution to stay the course, thereby translating into improved collaborative performance. In turn, this often surfaces the very best in the involvement of their employees.
Conclusion
The right choice, and the smart business choice, is almost always to hire refugees and empower them to use the skill, experience and views that can bring ideas, inspire innovation and supercharge diversity in service to a business. Companies that hire refugees bring new ideas, energy and new perspectives that can help to create a future for success, giving an organisation a distinct competitive edge. A new (or redefined) culture of innovation that rewards new ideas, new partnerships and newfound bravery to explore the untapped possibilities of new ways of working.
it’s hard to compete on the global marketplace without a culture that is comparably diverse and accommodatingOverall, refugees will be a good fit for companies that want to keep in the race. They’ve held up under the worst of circumstances, and their emergence into Western society can be attributed to nothing more than bad luck. That low-maintenance ethos plus the ability to cope with new contexts will stand out. At the same time, unconditional refugee status unlike the multitude of illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States in the 1980s from Central America, isn’t a result of poor decision-making or desperation; it was prompted by war and other exigent events. Having faced the worst of the worst in the world, refugees have been subject to the kind of selection that Westerners, with their well-developed guardian angels, rarely experience. As a result, they’re likely to be rather resilient and tenacious, and especially suited for adaptable, fast-paced work environments. And they’ll likely have a mature feeling about what lies beyond one’s borders.
