BMO Financial Group has launched an initiative to recruit talent from a group of unemployed professionals in desperate need of a fresh start — refugees.
From the streams of families fleeing war and hunger around the world, the BMO Newcomer Talent Program aims to boost the Toronto bank's hiring of recently resettled professionals arriving with skills developed in their home countries that are apt for use in the United States and Canada.
"Our strategy is to build a high-performance, digitally enabled bank that's ready for the future," said Craig Alexander, head of talent acquisition at the $1.04 trillion-asset BMO. "We see technology and banking skills as globally transferable."
As banks compete in a tight labor market to recruit and retain talent, Alexander said, the refugee talent pool is "underleveraged" and holds potential to find qualified professionals with skills "you can plug in irrespective" of North American education and training standards.
Refugees offer businesses new and diverse talent with lower turnover rates than typical workers, according to a 2018 survey of U.S. employers conducted by the Fiscal Policy Institute. The study found that employment turnover was 7% to 15% lower for refugees compared with a business's overall workforce.
"By and large, U.S. companies are incredibly welcoming of refugee job applicants, particularly in a labor market right now where there's a shortage of people to fill millions of jobs," said Erica Bouris, director of economic empowerment at the International Rescue Committee.
"Unfortunately, it's quite common" for refugees who held highly skilled jobs in their home countries to take lower-level positions shortly after resettling, according to Bouris. She cited certification requirements, English proficiency, as well as transportation to and from work, as challenges refugees face when trying to land a new job.
In a digitizing economy, literacy in both language and technology "impacts how they engage with the labor market," Bouris said. "In many instances, the specific degrees or industry certifications that they have may not translate easily into similar types of jobs here in the United States."
BMO — which has several units in the U.S. and Canada, including the $165.8 billion-asset BMO Harris Bank in Chicago — is opening an online employment website dedicated to job placement for displaced persons, immigrants and refugees in the bank's branches and offices throughout North America.
With Canadian and U.S. governments estimating more than 200,000 refugee arrivals this year, BMO has partnered with two resettlement job organizations — ACCES Employment and Upwardly Global — to "drive the inflow of talent and track what's possible," according to Alexander.
Welcoming newcomers has "always been a tenet" of the bank's diversity efforts, Alexander said. But new and ongoing refugee crises — from Ukraine and Afghanistan to Latin America and Southeast Asia — have "given newfound urgency" to launching the recruitment program "both for ourselves and for the arriving newcomers."
The Polish American Credit Union Support Fund is gathering donations from members to help purchase ambulances and medical supplies, while also securing more stable housing for those fleeing the conflict.
BMO has not set a hiring target for the newcomer program during its first year, according to Alexander, but plans to "lay a baseline" to develop a "sustainable program that's not just a flash in the pan."
To prepare refugees for employment, BMO is positioning the bank's mobile-learning platform BMO U and the tech-focused BMO Forward program to help candidates acclimate to new jobs.
The newcomer program builds on recent efforts the bank has taken to support refugees, including donations to the American and Canadian Red Cross organizations and membership in the aid program Tent Partnership for Refugees.
BMO has also expanded the NewStart banking program to offer no-fee banking services to qualified newcomers in Canada, unlimited free global money transfers and discounts on lending and home financing programs.
In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, many banks in North America have stepped up support for refugees through donations and aid initiatives. In June, JPMorgan Chase said it plans to hire in Poland as many as 50 refugees to work in the bank's Warsaw office.
In addition to an untapped pool of skilled professionals, who are less likely to seek new jobs after they are hired, refugees offer BMO an intangible talent in their "resilience and learning agility," Alexander said.
"Employing newcomers just makes good business sense, and great sense from the perspective of purpose and values," he said.
