Onboarding & ongoing support

• Day 1

• Supporting an employee with hidden vulnerabilities

• Navigating cultural issues and workplace expectations

• Learning and development

• Maintaining support for the program

Useful resources

A New Home at Work: An employer’s guidebook to fostering inclusion for refugee employees (62 pages)

Related:

Guide to disability inclusion in the workplace

The benefits of cognitive diversity at work

Prepare the new employee

• Provide pre-employment / job readiness training for refugees. Refugee employment services may be able to help.

• Call a few days before the first day to touch base and give the new employee the opportunity to ask questions. Make it clear to them that it’s OK to ask questions.

• Set up a “warm up day” where they can meet management, the team and tour the workplace before the first day.

• Support the new employee with the logistics of getting to work and preparing themselves for a work day (for example, is there a fridge where they can store their packed lunch).

• Give the new employee extra support with filling out paperwork and induction processes, as these may be unfamiliar.

• Make sure the new employee understands key information about WHS, work rights, how and when they receive their pay. Consider translating key documents or using an interpreter to communicate critical information.

• If the person is not familiar with an Australian corporate workplace, they might find the physically surroundings perplexing and intimidating. Give them support, and time to learn and adapt.

• Organise a supportive and enthusiastic person to be the new employee’s mentor or buddy. Sometimes, and if possible, it can be helpful if the buddy is someone from the same cultural background, or who speaks the same language.

Translators

Check out Ethnolink, NaTakallam, SBS, Language Loop, The Migration Translators and the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters.

• Have clear communication from leaders in the organisation, to build understanding of the refugee experience, and emphasise the value that refugee colleagues bring.

• Provide structured pre-placement training to management and host teams. Refugee employment services can help. The training can cover things like:

  • circumstances that cause people to become refugees

  • communication tips (eg avoid using jargon, acronyms, metaphors or colloquialisms)

  • how to check for understanding

  • being aware that body language and social behaviours like eye contact and shaking hands can be culturally specific, and may not have the same meaning for different people

  • exercising caution before asking about the new employee’s refugee experience or their family, as this could cause them distress.

• Provide management and host teams with a list of local resources that could help them answer questions a refugee colleague might ask, for example, how to open a bank account or what public transport options there are to get to work.

• Advise the host manager they may need to adapt their management style and expectations, to take into account the fact that the new team member has a lot more to learn and adjust to than other new recruits, and their self-confidence may be lower as a result of gaps in their working life and challenges of the refugee experience.

• Brief staff in corporate support groups such as payroll and IT, learning and development.

• Establish a clear support structure, so that host managers and colleagues know who to ask for help if they experience an unfamiliar situation. Some employers have set up intranet FAQ pages and hotlines.

Case study: “We’ll get a subbie to do that”

A refugee employee wondered why a particular contractor, who’s name was “subbie” seemed to get more than their fair share of sub-contracting work.

Having a job in itself can improve a person’s mental well-being. However, refugee employees may have ongoing stressors relating to past trauma, ongoing settlement issues, or concerns about families still in danger in their homeland. The physical environment of a workplace or situations that arise may cause distress that other employees wouldn’t experience (eg, light coming through venetian blinds may remind someone of a prison cell).

Some people may not feel comfortable communicating about their personal needs, as this may have been unacceptable in their previous workplaces.

• Ensure host managers are aware of these potential stressors. Give expert support to host managers on how to handle situations when they arise. Refugee employment services may be able to help.

• Clearly communicate to employees who they can talk to, who they can ask for help, and what role those people are expected to play.

• Choose colleagues with the right qualities to be a supportive mentor and/or placement supervisor.

• If necessary, connect employees with counselling services in your State that specialise in supporting refugees dealing with trauma.

• Touch base regularly (once a week/fortnight) with the manager and employee. 

• Help with personal issues affecting the employee, such as housing, transport issues, familiarity with their new home. As with other employees, provide flexible working arrangements to help people with family responsibilities.

• Embrace the cultural diversity of your workforce. Attend community events and celebrations. Organise celebrations at work. This can help the employee feel more welcome and give them a sense of belonging and acceptance.

Workplaces are idiosyncratic and run according to a set of rules and norms. Some of these come from society, some are particular to each workplace. For some refugees, this will be their very first job. Others will be used to working in workplaces with very different norms. There are practical measures that employers can take to manage the misunderstandings and feelings of disorientation that can arise.

• Invest some time in the first few weeks creating opportunities for the new recruit to make genuine connections with their colleagues.

• Matching the new recruit with a supportive buddy who can answer their questions.

• Set clear expectations, and provide clear information about your workplace’s cultural norms and processes (eg, the accepted way to address a person in a more senior position; expectations around punctuality in arriving at work; how much initiative employees are expected to show in completing day-to-day tasks; how much notice to give for leave).

• Give simple instructions for individual tasks, breaking things down step by step. Test for understanding by asking the employee to explain to you what they have understood from your conversation.

• Consider organising written translations or someone to interpret, for example, if the communication is about a critical aspect of the job (safety, key responsibilities).

• Give timely feedback on tasks, to give the employee certainty and guidance around how they are doing in the job. Be aware that in some cultures, it is not acceptable to question superiors, so people might not proactively seek clarification if they don’t quite understand something.

• Broaden managers’ knowledge of cultural, religious and community activities that might be personally important to employees. An annual calendar of cultural holidays can help managers anticipate when people may prefer to take leave.

• Ensure clear communication where disagreement or conflict arises, for example, where the employee appears to be having performance issues or experiencing discrimination from a colleague. Refugee employment services may be able to advise on any cultural factors at play.

• Ask, don’t assume. People’s individual needs will differ, even if they are from the same country, religion or language group. Ask the employee if there are any sensitivities around placing them in a team with other people from the same country or from the opposite sex. Issues can arise from different social norms and expectations around the roles of, and interactions between, men and women. Issues can also arise in relation to the formality of interactions with more senior staff, and how acceptable it is to show initiative.

• Be flexible to adjusting for practical issues that may arise because of different cultural practices (eg, some companies have adjusted their uniform policies to accommodate cultural norms around appropriate clothing. Others have placed employees who consider direct eye contact to be disrespectful in roles where this won’t cause misunderstanding).

Articles

Don’t drink? Have a disability? What to do when you’re left out at workplace events

Giving refugee employees the opportunity to improve the English they need for your workplace, and upskill in other ways, facilitates integration.

• Encourage and create opportunities for employees to learn and practice English in the workplace, with vocabulary relevant to your industry. One company paired refugee employees with other colleagues to practice English over lunch, which builds genuine connections and improves language at the same time.

• Support employees to learn skills and etiquette around different forms of written communication (eg emails, briefing memos) and verbal communication (eg meetings with larger groups, teleconferences).

• Provide formal or informal lessons in spoken and/or written English, tailored for your industry.

• One employer worked with a technology firm to build an app that pushed language lessons to refugee employees’ phones, focused on relevant business vocabulary specific to their jobs.

• One employer uses technology, Grammarly (an artificial-intelligence-powered writing assistant), to help employees produce written work of the business standard that’s required.

• Offer support such as opportunities to become certified, or study leave if an employee wants to study to re-qualify in their field of expertise.

• If an employee is with you in a temporary position or placement, help them improve their CV, write job applications, practice their interview skills, and show them where and how to find available jobs. If the chances of them re-qualifying in their field of expertise is low, help them identify which skills could be transferable and what other career paths may be realistic.

• Expose employees to opportunities to progress their career, eg by giving them opportunities to lead or showcase their skills, facilitating mentorship opportunities, and providing introductions to leaders in their areas of interest.

• One employer connects interns with the company’s preferred recruitment company at the end of their placement.

Success builds on success, but only if others in your organisation know about it. Word of mouth is the most effective way to share good news. Employers demonstrate the value and benefit of having refugees in the workforce in different ways:

• Embed the personal commitment of senior leaders by arranging for them to personally meet and hear the stories of successful refugee recruits willing to share their experiences. 

• Collect and report on data on progress and achievements of refugee employees, case studies and testimonials, conversion outcomes (to permanent employment if the employee was hired temporarily), and qualitative feedback about the program.

• Arrange for successful refugee employees to share their stories (if they are comfortable doing so).

• Encourage people who have worked successfully alongside refugee colleagues and personally benefited from this experience, to be strong advocates and share their stories.