Human Resources Issues for Senior Management
Issue link: https://digital.hrreporter.com/i/747024
14/CANADIAN HR STRATEGY immigration regime that currently applies to non-EU nationals applying to EU nationals as well." Firms will need to come to grips with the citizenship and res- idency of their staff and consider encouraging key contributors to apply for permanent residency or citizenship to safeguard their status, says Verweij. "Longer term, the recruitment of EU nationals and the ease of movement of existing employees to EU of ces will likely be negatively impacted." For a Canadian company in the U.K., that could translate to a lot of red tape. "Let's say you're a Canadian company operating in London, in some high-tech space where you've got a lot of creative de- signers and programmers from Italy or France or Germany, coming and going," says Bronstein. "You will nd that all of a sudden you've got a whole new bureaucracy imposed on you to justify employing those people." It could also come with a signi cant price tag. "For organizations with a large representation of non-U.K. employees, leadership will have to consider a serious reorgani- zation or reallocation of funds in order to pay for possible spon- sorship," says Verweij. TAKE PROTECTIVE STEPS "Grandfathering" citizenship to EU residents currently living in the U.K. is an option on the negotiating table. "The indications are that in some way, shape or form, people who've been in the U.K. from the EU will be allowed to stay but there'll also be some question about what the cutoff point is," says Bronstein. "Similarly, for British citizens living and working abroad, there's likely to be a sort of quid pro quo, but it's a bit of an open question." The message for Canadian employers, he says, is to review, examine and prepare. "Have a look at your current employees and do a kind of stress test," says Bronstein. "How many workers from the EU do you currently have? How critical are they? How would you manage if you suddenly had to get visas for them or weren't able to employ overseas workers?" U.K. natives living in other EU states. "The labour market will be seriously impacted by Brexit, tightening signi cantly in the U.K., and most likely loosening in others," says Alexander Verweij, managing director and head of talent, rewards and performance at Aon in Amsterdam. "This means that talent will be more dif cult to nd in the U.K., add- ing more pressure to an already volatile labour market." "A recent survey found nearly 80 per cent of tech workers believe Brexit would make it more dif cult to address the cur- rent skills gap." In addition to tech, a few areas in particular are likely to ex- perience the pinch. "In the U.K. construction sector, 12 per cent of the 2.1 mil- lion construction workers come from abroad," says Verweij. "This sector in the U.K. will certainly see wages increase, put- ting pressure on rms' margins." "Depending on the outcome of the exit agreement, the cur- rent quota would be insuf cient to sustain the required amount of workers in health care, nancial and professional services as well as manufacturing, hospitality and agriculture, expanding the wage pressures to all major economic sectors in the U.K." CHANGES IN EMPLOYEE MOBILITY As members of an EU country, U.K. citizens had the right to live and work in any member states, and citizens of other coun- tries could freely live and work in the U.K. "The big question is what is going to happen with that right, assuming we do eventually leave the EU?" says Bronstein. "In terms of Brexit, there are two extreme possibilities," he says. "One is if the deal the U.K. negotiates with the EU is access to an EU single market for goods and services, and we agree in some shape or form to free movement of labour, then quite possibly not very much of anything would change." Politically, that would be quite a dif cult sell because immi- gration was one of the key issues in the referendum campaign that motivated people wanting to leave, says Bronstein. "At the other end of the spectrum, we would end up in a situation where we're not in a single market so we don't have free movement of goods and labour and you'd have the same "The labour market will be seriously impacted by Brexit, tightening signifi cantly in the U.K., and most likely loosening in others... this means talent will be more diffi cult to fi nd."