Canadian HR Reporter

CanaDian hr reporTer July 14, 2014 NEws 7 COMPENSATION (416) 498-7800 ext. 141 www.resourcecorporation.com Compensation Surveys Incentive Programs Job Descriptions Job Evaluation Pay Equity Performance Appraisal Salary Administration Sales Compensation COMPENSATION (416) 498-7800 ext. 141 www.resourcecorporation.com Compensation Surveys Incentive Programs Job Descriptions Job Evaluation Pay Equity Performance Appraisal Salary Administration Sales Compensation CONSULTING e reforms are not a move in the right direction, according to Richard Truscott, director of pro- vincial affairs in Alberta at the Ca- nadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). "Had these changes taken place in the context of broader reforms to our immigration system, to make sure that it aligns more closely with the needs of employ- ers, then it might be a different story. But since they've shut off ac- cess to temporary foreign workers for employers, especially in places like Alberta, it's going to do seri- ous damage to our economy." It seems like there is a real bias in that we only want engineers and scientists and highly skilled tradespeople to come to the coun- try on a permanent basis, he said. "(e CFIB wants) to see things like more pathways to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers at all skill levels." e TFWP has been a critical lifeline for a lot of businesses, said Truscott. "Now that they've shut that off, it's certainly going to cause major disruption within the economy and prevent employers from hav- ing access to people that they have a verified need for. So it's pretty much bad news all around, cer- tainly for smaller firms." But the changes, on the whole, are not that bad, according to Howard Greenberg, partner at KPMG Law in Toronto. "The ministers of employ- ment and skills development and citizenship and immigration could have imposed draconian measures to limit or suspend the Temporary Foreign Worker Pro- gram. Given the possibility, the measures taken were, for the most part, balanced and reasonable in the circumstances," he said. "Employers must take a bal- anced view of a program which has been under high scrutiny and which requires additional controls in order to gain the confidence of Canadians." New programs created As part of the overhaul, the TFWP is being reorganized and new International Mobility Programs (IMPs) are being cre- ated. e TFWP will now refer to those streams under which foreign workers enter Canada at the request of employers fol- lowing approval through a new Labour Market Impact Assess- ment (LMIA). e IMPs will in- corporate those streams in which foreign nationals are not subject to an LMIA, and whose primary objective is to advance Canada's broad economic and cultural national interest, rather than filling particular jobs, said the government. Under an LMIA, employers must provide information on the number of Canadians applicants, interviews and rejections. The LMIA fee is also increasing from $275 to $1,000 for every tempo- rary foreign worker position re- quested by an employer. e fees appear to be going up sevenfold, said Truscott, as appli- cations have to be made more of- ten because timeframes are short- ened. So the costs are going to be a lot higher and require a large volume of additional paperwork. "ey've taken a bad program that was costly and bureaucratic and slow and made it even worse," he said. "e program has been tightened considerably, it's been made much more expensive and more difficult to use." The good news is the high- end foreign labour force is going to enjoy 10-day processing, said Greenberg. "It's not the old ALMO (Ac- celerated Labour Market Opin- ion) but it certainly is business- friendly," he said. "e bad news is that there has been a substantial increase in fees. However, in the context of other countries, it is a fraction of what is charged by gov- ernment agencies." However, offside employers could face administrative fines of up to $100,000, said Greenberg. Caps, shorter stays Employers with 10 or more em- ployees applying for an LMIA will be subject to a cap of 10 per cent on the proportion of the work- force that can consist of low-wage temporary foreign workers. ose rules will be transitioned in for employers already over the cap, said the government. LMIAs for low-wage tempo- rary foreign workers will be re- duced from a two-year standard duration to one year. And applica- tions for the lowest-wage, lowest- skill, entry-level occupations in the food services, accommoda- tion and retail trade sectors will be barred from the TFWP in areas of high unemployment (six per cent or higher). Employers seeking to hire high- wage temporary foreign workers (with limited exceptions) must submit transition plans to dem- onstrate how they will increase efforts to hire Canadians. e government will also pub- licly post data on the number of approved positions for temporary foreign workers on a quarterly basis, and post the names of cor- porations that receive permission to hire these workers through LMIAs. Employers are going to have to make their case in the arena of public opinion, said Greenberg. "e scrutiny will not be merely a matter of compliance. at said, there are many projects undertak- en by foreign workers that would have the confidence and approval of Canadians if appropriately ex- plained by Canadian employers — the challenge is going to be one of communication," he said. "Employers should not be con- cerned about compliance if they put the appropriate checks and balances in place, innovate their processing procedures and create specific paths of accountability within their businesses." Improved enforcement, data In addition, the number and scope of inspections will increase so one in four businesses employing temporary foreign workers are in- spected each year. "at's something our mem- bers believe is a good step because a few bad apples are certainly causing major problems for a long list of employers who have a veri- fied needs and are following all the rules," said Truscott. e ability to publicly blacklist employers that have been sus- pended and are under investiga- tion will be expanded, as well as those that have had an LMIA re- voked and are banned from using the program. at's a bit of a double-edged sword, said Truscott. "Transparency is typically a good thing but we also don't want a big target on the backs of em- ployers who are using the pro- gram so that unions can organize boycotts and protests — we've seen some of that in the last cou- ple of months, so that certainly worries us." The government also an- nounced funding for two new surveys by Statistics Canada. A quarterly job vacancy sur- vey will be based on a sample of 100,000 employers, not the cur- rent 15,000, and provide data by local areas, occupations and skill levels. A national wage survey will also double the sample size from 56,000 households to 100,000 em- ployers, and data will be available by region instead of only at the provincial level. "Everybody, without exception, has been skeptical of the use of the surveys — they are too blunt and out of date. If the program is about filling labour market shortages as a last resort, then clearly data is the key," said Greenberg. Better data is appreciated, ac- cording to Truscott. "It's always good news to hear governments are looking for bet- ter information with which to make public policy, and perhaps that's one critique here — they're making these decisions in the ab- sence of good information." Higher cost, more paperwork tFwP CHANGEs < pg. 1 Zappos will market openings and headhunt in a targeted and direct fashion. "We will use our existing em- ployees for referrals, run targeted ad campaigns and aggressively headhunt on various channels. ese actions will provide a feeder into our insider pool," he said. Zappos is very much about liv- ing its culture and core values, said Jon Wolske, culture evan- gelist for Zappos Insights, part of the Zappos Family of Companies in Henderson, Nev. "We want to get to know you and have you get to know us so by becoming an insider... when there's a job posting internally that we have that matches your skills and passion, we can then say, 'Hey, here's a heads-up, here's a posi- tion we think you'd be good for,'" he said. "e recruitment process, really, in the standard form, has been very corporate so we want to make it about personality." Zappos has a strong employer brand and corporate culture, so people are drawn to it, said Tara Talbot, vice-president of human resources at Workopolis. "ey're also so engaged in so- cial (media) already, so they have a really strong presence. So they would be amongst the few that would already have that degree of ability to stand on their brand from an employment perspective, not just the product or service that they sell," she said. "Obviously, for a small or medi- um-sized company, this is prob- ably not a sustainable approach." It will be intriguing to see how Zappos engages with the com- munity once people sign up, said Talbot, as this requires good re- sources and sustainability to keep people involved and active. "It'll be interesting to see how they keep the life going in it and the momentum. But we've got to try new things, different ap- proaches and they're out there in- novating, and hats off to them for doing that." However, Zappos may limit it- self in terms of the pool of candi- dates, she said. is new model will cut down on the volume of people who just want to submit an application to see what sticks, said Wolske. "is'll get rid of that aspect of people just applying for the sake of applying because they've heard of the company… It'll actually be people who have done a little bit of research, really get what we're about and then have decided to take the next step and communi- cate with us." Nowadays, it's so much easier for people to take a chance on applying for something without a lot of thought, which creates a huge number of applicants for each position, said Dana Shaw, a job description analyst at a gov- ernment organization in Toronto. "e current jobseeking sys- tem, whether you're on the job- seeker end or the recruitment end, is broken because it's become so decentralized and automated to make it more efficient, that it doesn't really work as a great re- cruitment tool," she said. Recruitment is changing quick- ly for seekers and employers, and everyone is trying to sort through this with social media and differ- ent networking opportunities, career sites and traditional job boards, said Talbot in Toronto. And people are realizing there's a real balance between art and sci- ence on the whole match piece. "Technology can't necessar- ily decide fit and figure out fit, so the whole industry is trying to figure out the balance between how much can you do with an algorithm versus actually having conversations and understanding the culture of an organization. And what someone truly brings as far as work ethic and ability to problem-solve and creativity doesn't necessarily come across in a profile." Employers still want a good vol- ume of job candidates, she said, but it's about having the ability to tailor those down to a core group of people that you really want to take further. But it's not clear whether Zap- pos' approach will lead to better- quality candidates, said Shaw. "(People will) be more specifi- cally interested in their organiza- tion, and I think that's what their target is. It just will make it harder for people to hear about them unless they keep marketing… they lose out if they're looking beyond the pool of people who already know about them as an organization." But there are pluses to what Zappos is doing, namely to de- velop relationships with potential candidates, said Shaw. "One of the disadvantages of the current process is that if you're looking for people with specific skills that have written resumés that are targeted for a specific kind of work — that's great, that's going to work well. "But if you're looking for some- body who has a broader range of experience and skills, you're going to find it much harder to meet those skill requirements be- cause describing breadth instead of depth is much more difficult in the current standard of what people are looking for in recruit- ment, because they're targeting to key words and ideas." Ad campaigns to be targeted ZAPPOs < pg. 1 "transparency is typically a good thing but we also don't want a big target on the backs of employers who are using the programs so unions can organize protests." "is'll get rid of people applying for the sake of applying."

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