Canada is experiencing a labour shortage and historically low unemployment rates¹.  A shortage that is accentuated among small to medium enterprises, those with fewer than 500 employees, which represent 99.8% of Canadian companies and 53.2% of the gross domestic product².  To address this labour gap the Canadian federal government is planning to increase immigrant intake numbers to 500,000³.

However, there are three challenges with this solution.  First, it takes immigrants 5 to 10 years to economically integrate⁴.  Second, not all employers have equal access to this pool of workers because 61% of the immigrants move to three major Canadian cities: Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver⁵. As a result, employers, in less popular immigrant destinations, are increasingly turning to temporary foreign workers whom they see as a permanent source of labour.  Third, in the current job market turnover and the high costs associated with replacing workers is a reality that employers must contend with even for those who hire temporary foreign workers as they too, may change employers before the expiry of their work permits or after they obtain their permanent residence.  

For these reasons developing a strategic onboarding program is crucial.  Onboarding, new employee attraction, hiring and skills development programs, are credited with improving the attraction and retention of new employees⁶.  As such, this study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of the onboarding strategies used by small to medium enterprises and immigrants’ perceptions of those strategies to identify discontinuities between the two and better practices for onboarding workers.