Background Note on the Role of PCPI’s Research - Past, Present, and Future
With the world’s highest rate of immigration, Canada is the most globalizing of nations. Playing host to talent from every corner of the globe, our country’s most basic obligation is to have an accurate picture of the challenges facing Internationally Educated Professionals (IEPs) and an accurate sense of the most effective actions that both employers and IEPs can take to help smooth the transition and assist IEP’s towards meaningful, sustainable employment in their occupational field.
The 2009 HR Best Practice study among employers is part of PCPI’s ongoing program of research and its desire to provide a strong empirical basis for advancing the situation of IEPs. PCPI’s 2008 study focused on employer attitudes towards hiring Internationally Educated Professionals. It reported that employers were generally favourable to hiring IEPs, whom they saw as essential to the effectiveness of their businesses. A sizeable number of executives saw their own firms’ efforts to hire and integrate IEPs as not especially effective.
Building on the foundation of the 2008 study, the 2009 HR Best Practice study explores in more detail specific attitudes and specific practices that employers judge to be especially effective for advancing the engagement and integrations of IEPs.
The main objective and benefit of the 2008 project was to get a general overview of employer attitudes towards the recruitment and advancement of IEP’s. The main benefit of the 2009 study is to elicit a better understanding of the most effective ways for employers and, to some extent, IEPs to proceed. Another benefit of the 2009 study is to explore differences in the perceptions and experiences of small vs. medium and large employers.
Both the 2008 and 2009 studies involve moderate but effective sample sizes - 124 in 2008 and 150 this year. Future employer studies could ultimately increase sample size so as to allow comparisons by sector and region of the country.
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