“ Guns & Roses ” : Counter Attack on Challenges in Refugee Inauguration in Europa region.

 

World has seen many wars in the history and yet persistence in the so called modern civilization context. Peace keeping and establishing the security is crucial in fighting against refugees, asylum seekers and poverty in war zone countries. The number of refugees and asylum seekers are rising every year causing an immense social, health and economical drawbacks.

Ongoing and new conflicts have driven displacement across the world in 2022, seeing the largest ever increase between years according to UNHCR’s statistics on forced displacement with over 108.4 million people forcibly displaced by the end of 2022 (UNHCR, 2023).

Refugee statistics:

> 108.4 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced.

> Among them are nearly 35.3 million refugees, around 41% of whom are under the age of 18.

> Children account for 30% of the world’s population, but 40% of all, forcibly displaced people.

One of the spotlight issue in the world at present is the Russian & Ukraine war which led 6.8 Million people to flee from their country, most have crossed neighboring countries such as Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Belarus.

Statistics of Ukrainian war refugees crossing into neighboring countries

Despite the efforts, refugee integration in employment remains a challenge to refugees. Globally, 62% of refugees live in countries that restrict access to formal employment (UNHCR, 2021).

The large‐scale migration of refugees poses challenges for their integration into receiving nations. Whether refugees find employment is a key factor that predicts their successful resettlement and integration into their new community (Bloch, 2002; Colic‐Peisker, 2005; Feeney, 2000 cited in Hirst et al 2021).

Europe is now swamping with high number of refugees into the region and warrant the state governors to response to the social and economic issues. Refugees are looking for an employment even though they are caring by the particular governments or UNHCR, as refugees willing to integration and resettle with the new society. Hence it could anticipate an increasing number of attempt to job seeking application in the region.   

“Refugees didn’t just escape a place. They had to escape a thousand memories until they’d put enough time and distance between them and their misery to wake to a better day.”

- Nadia Hashimi -

 

The challenges HR faces in Refugee recruitment.

The role of the Human Resource Personal is a key factor in the process of screening and recruiting the refugees, however there are key areas that can be identified as challenges that HR person could encounter in this process.

 

1. Language Skills:

The paramount challenge is the understanding of the level of Language ability of the refugee. Language barrier will impact to the smooth communication in a work place. The accent, tone of voice might disrupt to a gentle communication. Native people and refugees will face hard time to understand each other.

Language programs to learn native languages will help refugees to overcome from this issue. In the other hand companies can invest on learning programs on their existing employees to learn new languages so that they can easily communicate with other nationals.

It can also add in to the Job Description (JD), that language training is part of the employee career and same will be one of the Key performance indicators of employee’s performance, this could apply to both native and refugee parties. 

 

2. Identify and scrutiny of personal skills:

Screening and reference checking is one of the HR practice that manager does during a new recruitment. This is applied to the same process when recruiting a refugee. Screening the candidate’s qualifications and experiences, conducting reference checks, background checks are some of it. However, refugees are finding difficulties in facing such screening as they are unable to provide their education certificates, previous employer confirmations, or skilled based qualification evidences as they might have left at home or lost during the flee.

As an alternative approach, company can provide them an employment in less skilled or less paid roles which will be an opportunity for them to demonstrate and prove their credentials. 

Arranging the job shadowing option will be another value addition to the refugees to showcase their skills, capabilities, wisdom. Job shadowing refers to, newly joint employee works side by side with the senior employee or supervisor. That way he/she can prove his/her talents and skills with the on the job training option.

 

3. Training and Developments:

Along with the opportunities stated above, company can also support the newly joined employees to acquire professional certification by providing study packages, study incentives, free educational consultancy in order to regain their lost credentials during the flee.

Provide a probation period or neutral period for such new refugee employees to regain his/her knowledge. This will help the refugees to come back strong in mentally and physically.

 

4. Instill Discipline:                    

One of another challenge that HR personal would encounter is the discipline of refugees. Due to the stress, mental instability, family responsibilities amidst the flee can direct a refugee to indiscipline actions, resistance.

Providing onboarding strategies such as induction programs to tackle the cultural differences will enhance the discipline of a refugee. This way refugees will understand how to respect and response to other ethnic values.

Teaching code of ethic and compliance trainings will make them understand the organizational structure, culture and ethics.

 

Despite being a refugee, many companies seek new talent coming into the organization as it is vital to acquire new talent, skills, ideas, thinkers for an organization to gain competitive advantage whilst attending as the social responsible unit which helps to overcome from this refugee crisis in the particular country.

References

Al-Ayed, H.M.S., 2021. Human Resources Management Practices and Challenges: A Quantitative Study of HR Managers' Perceptions of Jordanian Workers and Syrian Refugees in Jordanian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) (Doctoral dissertation, Universidade do Minho (Portugal)). Available at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&scioq=Ukraine+war+and+immigrant+job&q=HR+challenges+in+refugee+recruitment&btnG= (Accessed : 14 August 2023).

Clip 1: UNCHR – The UN Refugee Agency (2022) ‘UNCHR’s Global Trends Report: 100 Million Displaced’ (16 June). Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl8gYm4nNDQ (Accessed : 14 August 2023).

Filipenco, D (2022 ) ‘Top 10 world problems and their solutions’ (02 August), development aid. Available at https://www.developmentaid.org/news-stream/post/147458/top-10-world-problems-and-their-solutions (Accessed : 14 August 2023).

Fig 2: Filipenco, D (2022 ) ‘Top 10 world problems and their solutions’ (02 August), development aid. Available at https://www.developmentaid.org/news-stream/post/147458/top-10-world-problems-and-their-solutions (Accessed : 14 August 2023).

Fig 1: Available at https://www.westend61.de/en/imageView/BLEF02666/girl-placing-flowers-in-gun-barrel-of-tank (Accessed : 14 August 2023).

Fig 3 : UNCHR – The UN Refugee Agency (2023), ‘Key facts and figures’ (14 June). Available at https://www.unhcr.org/ (Accessed : 14 August 2023).

Hirst, G., Curtis, S., Nielsen, I., Smyth, R., Newman, A. and Xiao, N., 2021. Refugee recruitment and workplace integration: An opportunity for human resource management scholarship and impact. Human Resource Management Journal. Available at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&scioq=Ukraine+war+and+immigrant+job&q=challenges+in+refugee+recruitment&btnG= (Accessed : 14 August 2023).

NDAYEZA, E.M. and MBUTI, E., 2022. The role of human resource management in refugee integration. Available at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&scioq=Ukraine+war+and+immigrant+job&q=HR+challenges+in+refugee+recruitment&btnG= (Accessed : 14 August 2023).

Rehman, M., 2021. Changes in Human Resource practices of Multinational corporations for recruiting and acculturating skilled immigrant women during 2020 pandemic. Available at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=HR+challenges+in+immigrant+recruitment&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&scioq=Ukraine+war+and+immigrant+job (Accessed : 14 August 2023).

UNCHR – The UN Refugee Agency (2023), ‘Key facts and figures’ (14 June). Available at https://www.unhcr.org/ (Accessed : 14 August 2023).