TalentEgg Trends

Today’s Talent, Tomorrow’s Leaders

Knowledge Hub For Employers, Career Educators And Coaches

Tag: diversity (page 3 of 4)

CIBC’s Strategies to Create Inclusive Career Paths

Having received diversity and inclusion awards for over a decade, CIBC is internationally recognized as a global leader for its initiatives. To get an understanding of how CIBC’s strategies create meaningful and inclusive career paths for students and new grads we spoke with Shalise Goffe, a Senior Manager of Campus Strategy and Recruitment at CIBC. 

Shalise Goffe Headshot

Shalise joined CIBC because of the great things she heard about the culture and people. After seven months with CIBC, she can say that it is all true! 

“The people are open, inviting and supportive. The culture is one of transparency, empowerment, and growth and it really does feel like a family because everyone wants to see you win!”

Student and New Graduate Initiatives

As one of Canada’s largest banks, CIBC knows the importance of bridging the gap between post-secondary education and the workforce. That is why they have set up dedicated initiatives for students and new grads to successfully hatch their careers

We asked Shalise how CIBC’s Student Leadership Academy (SLA) enables students to succeed in the workplace. “It allows students the chance to grow both professionally and personally by pursuing their interests and passions in addition to their work term. Our students have access to workshops that help them gain new skills or simply refine their existing set. Through our workshops, leadership connections, and other SLA activities our students get to explore life at CIBC and their future careers. Providing them with a supportive environment, learning opportunities and the ability to showcase their leadership skills enable them to succeed in the workplace.”

CIBC also runs a co-op program for students and new grads. This program “encourages our co-op students to bring new, creative, and innovative ideas to CIBC. Selected summer students are challenged to work on a real CIBC business problem in a team with other students, along with the support of an Executive Sponsor and Project Lead. It’s an opportunity for them to push themselves by thinking outside the box and collaborating with others to come up with solutions.”

“It’s important to be a student of life and that means the learning doesn’t stop once you’ve left school.”

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategies at CIBC

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have come to the forefront of recruitment and internal dialogue over the last few years as their necessity has risen to attention. With 10 groups throughout CIBC focussing on like-minded individuals coming together with shared interests or backgrounds, there is a place for everyone at CIBC.

We wanted to dive deeper into CIBC’s initiatives, so we asked Shalise to describe why diversity, equity, and inclusion are important at CIBC. “At CIBC we want you to feel a sense of belonging. We want you to come into work each and every day truly believing that you can be your authentic self without hiding or covering who you truly are and that you will be accepted for it. Only then will you feel like it’s a safe space that’s open for you to bring your whole self to work.”

When it comes to the CIBC’s internal strategies and the future of recruitment, Shalise had this to say: “Candidates are interested in a company’s diversity and inclusion strategy and how they fit into it. Going back to the belonging piece, people want to join a company that they feel safe in, that they feel cares about them and that are making commitments to be inclusive and equitable. It’s important that we are hiring diverse candidates so we can be reflective of the communities we serve.

Final Thoughts

CIBC has built an array of initiatives to foster an inclusive and diverse workplace for students, new grads, and experienced professionals alike. It is a workplace where everyone is welcome and CIBC is constantly evolving to stay at the forefront of critical initiatives. 

“We want you to grow both personally and professionally and there are a number of ways to do that at CIBC.”

To learn more about CIBC’s student and new graduate programs check out their employer profile on TalentEgg!

The Modern Workplace and Hiring in the Pandemic World with SNC-Lavalin

SNC-Lavalin is a Montreal-based company focused on engineering, procurement, and construction services. Boasting over 50,000 employees worldwide, SNC-Lavalin is one of Canada’s biggest companies. Their teams are agile, collaborative, and driven by possibilities. By employing anti-discrimination hiring practices, SNC-Lavalin has built itself a diverse employee roster. They believe diverse groups make better decisions – which in turn, leads to better business. They put resources into each and every one of their employees, creating a structure of support and training. This helps them develop their employees, giving each one the power to enhance their performance in positive, impactful ways. The digital, modern workplace has been accelerated due to the pandemic. However, SNC-Lavalin had already adopted many of these practices well before Covid-19  began, allowing them to lead the transition for Canadian companies.

Career Opportunities

SNC-Lavalin provides many career paths for students and graduates within their organization.  The most obvious example is the vast opportunities available in a wide and international company like SNC-Lavalin. Their vast resources allow employees to work on a diverse range of projects across industries. In many large companies, a person can become lost in the sea of employees. SNC-Lavalin avoids this by providing mentorships throughout their company and a graduate development program that allows its employees to further their knowledge and refine their skills.

Being such a large and important company, SNC-Lavalin had to adjust quickly when the pandemic hit. Luckily, they already had the necessary online and virtual tools in place to continue business as usual. They were able to continue focusing their priorities on ensuring the safety and wellbeing of their people and candidates. The new workplace model the pandemic has brought requires employers to help students and new grads transition. When asked about this, Ariane Lamy, a Campus & Diversity Recruitment Manager, replied, “We’re a company that drives innovation, so we’re committed to the next generation of original thinkers, wherever you are in Canada. You’ll work on our major projects in Canada, where we will provide you with excellent mentoring and learning support. Great team spirit and collaboration define our culture. And guided by our transformative leadership, we’re always improving our workplace for all, with the necessary online and virtual tools in place.”

Anti-Discriminatory Hiring

At any organization, it is essential to keep hiring processes fair and anti-discriminatory. SNC-Lavalin approaches this topic seriously. Each job description is reviewed with a gender decoder tool to reduce subtle biases in job postings. This increases the chances of candidates from less common gender demographics, particularly in industries dominated by one. Their next two approaches focus on blind hiring. Resumes are often stripped of names and headshots to ensure personal prejudices are not factored into the hiring process. Secondly, they employ skill scorecards to examine each employee based on their practical knowledge rather than aspects of their personality or appearance. By engaging in these practices, SNC-Lavalin reduces the chances of any discriminatory hiring practices occurring, keeping the hiring process fair and leading to a much more diverse workplace.

Hiring and the Modern Workplace

As this new workplace model continues to develop, recruitment and hiring trends will continue to be impacted. Unlike many organizations, SNC-Lavalin’s recruitment process wasn’t affected during the pandemic as they were able to adapt rapidly and implement the necessary tools to develop a virtual recruitment process. However, they do believe they will see changes in major hiring trends in the future.

For a company like SNC-Lavalin that predominantly hires employees with professional designations, campus programs will continue to be a significant source of potential candidates. Next, the team at SNC-Lavalin believes that worldwide team collaboration will also increase. As the pandemic has accelerated remote work, the ability to work internationally and collaborate with teams across the globe will undoubtedly rise. Their final few thoughts all focus on an increasingly digital workplace. As documents become digitalized, SNC-Lavalin believes they will see a rise in no-resume hiring and video introductions for their candidates. The team here at TalentEgg thinks the same thing, which is why we have developed our Candidate Video Showcase, which allows candidates and employers to facilitate video applications and interviews. The modern workplace and hiring processes are undoubtedly becoming much more digital. Being aware and staying at the forefront of this transition period allows companies like SNC-Lavalin to succeed.

An Amplification of HR Legal Trends from the Last Decade

In our ever-changing workforce, it’s more important than ever for employers to stay on top of HR trends and what legal implications they may have on their organization, workplace culture and overall brand. We had the chance to speak with Greg McGinnis, Partner at Matthews Dinsdale & Clark LLP, about upcoming trends in employment law. What we discovered was that the trends from the latter half of the last decade are amplifying. Read on to see how. 

Although there have been many societal shifts within the last few years, Greg comments that there really aren’t any new or radical changes in employment law, but rather previous trends are continuing. He does mention, however, that there’s a common theme or phenomenon happening as a result of previous trends, like the #MeToo movement, legalization of Cannabis and diversity in the workforce, which is fostering an increased demand for flexibility and zero tolerance for toxic workplaces. 

Flexibility and Accommodation

“The main trend, if I can call it that, is that people are looking for flexibility in their work. They’re looking for flexibility in terms of hours of work, days of work, time off when they need it. The big trend is that employees want their work to fit in with their lives, and so employers are increasingly having to accommodate that kind of flexibility. That comes in all kinds of different forms. One form would be people who have young children, who want the time for child care or to attend events in their kids’ lives. Then you also have, especially in Canada, a large population of people who come from other places originally and they travel, so they want to have longer periods of time off to visit family or just travel. There’s an increasing trend towards flexibility at work, where it could be accommodated.” 

“The idea that work is Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 and you better just show up – that concept has slowly been eroding for a long time and it’s continuing to erode. There are of course jobs where you need to be [at work] for certain time periods, but even then, people will want extended time off. We see this in every domain, from factory workers to office workers. People are demanding that their personal life and needs are reflected at work.” 

Zero Tolerance for Toxic Workplaces

As a result of the same societal factors that gave rise to the #MeToo movement, Greg has found that the number of complaints being made that require the employer to carry out investigations has significantly increased. “I would say the #MeToo movement is a reflection of the same underlying phenomenon that people aren’t prepared to be treated poorly or suffer in silence. There’s next to no tolerance for toxic workplace behaviour. It is increasingly important for employers to ensure their workplace provides a positive, constructive atmosphere for people to work in and if they don’t do it, they will be facing a requirement to invest in workplace investigations…There’s a whole raft of time-consuming expensive consequences that can result from not dealing with these problems.” 

Diversity 

Diversity is an important value for many organizations. In Greg’s experience, diversity hiring has to be managed effectively by most employers to ensure all job seekers are given an equal opportunity to join a positive workplace, but that’s not always easy to achieve and maintain once your workforce becomes diverse. “Diversity has an impact on workplace culture because when you have new people or experiences, people come to work with different cultural expectations or behaviours that may require an adjustment on the part of the employer.”

Once you recruit a diverse workforce, you need to ensure your policies are, and the workplace is, welcoming, accommodating and, again, flexible. “You have a diverse workforce, you need a diverse workforce, then you need to find ways to reconcile new and different expectations where you need to get the work done. The challenge of diversity is that you don’t really know what’s next, you have to adapt to the people you are employing the best you can, and they need to adapt to you too.” 

Cannabis: Biggest Issue That’s a Non-issue

Now that Cannabis has been legal in Canada for over a year, there have been minimal impacts on employment law, according to Greg. “Cannabis is the big nothing. It may have a long term impact, but the short term impact has been next to zero.”

“It’s not that all of a sudden people are bringing their drugs to work or consuming drugs in a different way. Most employers in anticipation of the legalization of cannabis took another look at their fitness for duty policies, and perhaps even their testing policies and gave some thought on how to approach that. Then legalization occurred and people braced themselves for the onslaught of stoners as if all of a sudden we were all going to turn into Cheech and Chong and it just didn’t happen!”

“Outside of safety-sensitive positions where someone could be seriously injured or killed or your actions could result in someone being seriously injured, or death or property damage, the issue of cannabis has not made any difference. And I think the reason for that is – cannabis is just one intoxicant. There’s a wide array of drugs out there, legal and illegal, and the legalization of cannabis has had a marginal impact on the way cannabis impairment, specifically, has been addressed when it’s been detected.”

Gig Economy

There were concerns about the ‘gig’ economy and the impact on the career prospects for millennial and Gen Z workers, but in regards to employment law, it’s really only made employers consider instituting more flexible work environments. 

“My perspective on the gig economy is that it’s provided opportunities for people to work in small amounts on their schedule that competes with the regular employment pool. So people who want more flexibility can get it by becoming a gig worker. I think the gig economy has expanded opportunities for people. [Employers] have to recognize that their employees can go and do consulting or gig work as an alternative to regular employment. So it forces more flexibility onto employers as well.” 

 

With the evolution and expansion of trends from the last few years, Greg notes that in the legal sphere, changes in the law are harder to predict. “The world of work is driven more by cultural change than by legal change. We’re not seeing a lot of radical legal changes now or anticipated in the future. The society is changing, so we have to respond to that.” It’s important that employers are staying on the cutting edge of emerging and continuing societal and workplace trends, especially when considering incoming talent will come into the workforce with new and sometimes challenging expectations for employers to meet. 


For more TalentEgg Legal Briefs, be sure to subscribe to our monthly employer and career educator newsletter. 

Diversity and inclusion: Showing support and taking action

It’s as true in business as it is in life: we are better when we work as one.

Diversity and inclusion are societal values that Canadians hold in high regard, and Canadian employers are adopting these values into their overall corporate structures.

In order to thrive, businesses must understand the connection between a diverse, inclusive workforce and long-term success.

Continue reading

Older posts Newer posts