Learn It

Onboarding is often reported by businesses  to be the most difficult part of working with Newcomers to Canada. Onboarding is difficult for everyone, and represents a significant amount of learning and growth for any individual. For Newcomers, it can be the first real window into Canadian workplace culture. It’s also a chance to understand unspoken rules and build early relationships. A newcomer informed onboarding process includes trust-building, cultural orientation, and clear expectations.

Trust Building

Anyone going through an onboarding process can feel vulnerable. Much of the learning on the job happens during this period, and it’s often condensed and rushed. It can be easy for an employee being onboarded to a new position  to mask any lack of understanding for the sake of smoothing things over. That’s why it’s essential to be patient and work with newcomers according to their level of understanding. The gap between newcomers and those that have extensive experience in Canada is never more apparent than during this stage. What might be perceived as common sense is only common when it’s held in common. What that means is that there are lots of small things that are taken for granted in a person's knowledge base.. There are many behaviours, expectations and practices that come as part of a Canadian workplace culture education. When individuals lack that education, that common sense is in turn missing. 

Bridging this gap in knowledge must be done with patience and respect. How employees perceive the attitude of the trainer can affect their performance. Frustration by the trainer doesn’t serve the trainee. Learning a new way of doing things, and perhaps doing so in an entirely different language can be difficult, and mistakes can be humiliating for the learner. Always approach training newcomers with patience and respect. Remember that they may do things a little differently, may ask for clarification, or may even make mistakes. The more you invest in the person at this stage, the easier the workplace integration as a whole will be.

Did you know: Visual onboarding tools like checklists and videos work better than written manuals for individuals with limited English.

Digital Onboarding

Digital onboarding can be a deal breaker. One of the major issues people may face when coming to Canada is a lack of digital skills. This barrier can often manifest itself as a lack of applications to your job posts. Many people may not feel confident enough to work through the online application process or deal with a job website. In person events and outreach can bridge this gap and help you to meet people that are looking for work, without them having to learn complicated digital processes.

Did you know that digital barriers in the onboarding process, such as requiring online training modules to be completed at home without providing computer access, can lead companies to inadvertently miss out on highly experienced newcomers, even those with decades of relevant work experience from their home country?

Digital barriers can be a significant challenge for many new employees, especially newcomers who are still developing confidence with technology. Digital barriers are often the reason that newcomers might leave a job in the first few weeks. In some workplaces, digital training is a key part of onboarding—often involving long hours in a back room with an outdated computer and minimal support. Now imagine facing that scenario with limited experience using a computer, or while navigating it in a second language.

This can be overwhelming and discouraging, particularly in the early days of a new job. Consider how the same information might be shared in a more supportive or accessible way. If digital training is essential, be clear that the goal is to understand the material—not to test someone's tech skills.

Ensure the job itself isn’t unintentionally gated by unrelated digital skills that aren't required for daily responsibilities. Build trust by regularly checking in, encouraging questions, and offering guidance. When possible, look for ways to supplement or replace digital training with hands-on learning or mentorship.

If expectations are hidden behind digital barriers, it may take a bit of extra reinforcement when training. Give newcomers in your workplace a chance to learn and follow the workplace expectations. This can mean giving grace to actions  deemed unacceptable at work until it’s clear that the expectation has been effectively communicated. Clearly communicate what is expected from everyone, and reinforce it if your employees are not meeting the standard you wish to see.

Remember: If the skill isn’t part of the regular work duties, it isn’t a necessary skill for onboarding.

Take the example of Komang. The company had given him a week to do all of his online training modules from home. After the week, they sent his employment counsellor a message asking why he didn’t fill them out. He hadn’t seen the email. The counsellor called him, and he agreed to do them if the company was still interested in hiring him. Another week goes by, and the company still doesn’t have the modules completed. The counselor called him, but he didn't answer. 

Months later the counselor and Komang see each other at another job fair, and Komang is asked what happened with the modules. He explained that he didn’t have a computer at home, and that he didn’t know what to do. 

At first it may seem that Komang lost out on a great opportunity, because he missed out on a job that he had 20 years of experience doing back home, but don’t forget that the company lost out too. By creating digital barriers, they missed out on someone that was essentially a journeyman applying for entry level at their company

Reminder: providing a peer mentor or using a buddy system during onboarding increases new employees' sense of belonging and can help them adapt to the work environment more quickly.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Addressing it Before it Becomes a Concern

When you’re working with something as diverse as a human being, it can be hard to keep up with all of the ways that workers rights and responsibilities can interact with their diverse backgrounds. An important example is the right to pray at work. 

Do you know how to handle employees praying at work? Workers have a charter right to express their religion, up to and including prayer at work, provided they don’t cause undue hardship to the company. That can sound intimidating as an outsider, especially if you want to be respectful and productive. It can be handled fairly easily if you have conversations and onboarding documents that set expectations up front. Here’s three things you can do to make it easy:

1. The most important part about prayer at work is that workers should know where each other are on the worksite. If people leave to pray and find a quiet spot, they could miss emergency orders or emerging hazards while away, or even miss an evacuation notice and be left behind. Designate a suitable place for prayer, and make sure employees know where each other are when necessary. 
2. Set time expectations clearly. Prayer doesn’t need to take a huge amount of time, often being about as long as a smoke or bathroom break. If you’re concerned about productivity or essential coverage of certain positions, you can subtract time from regular breaks to accommodate prayer breaks. Nobody at work should be taking more break time than anyone else, but workers are allowed to spend some of that time for their spiritual well being. 
3. Include these details in your onboarding process. Make a piece about prayer in your employee handbook. People might be afraid to ask, and it might lead to unsafe or inappropriate behaviour. 

DEI (Diversity, equity and inclusion) measures should be included in onboarding documents, and made accessible for individuals so they don’t have to ask. Having to ask represents an unnecessary barrier that can cause people to suffer in silence. Truly accommodating diverse needs needs means getting in front of the issues before workers have to face them.

Different onboarding practices can lead to drastically different results for workers. Sometimes the company culture is intimidating and forces people to adapt in inhumane ways. Take the example of Mohammed, and the standard practice he adopted to pray at work within the oil industry:

As a new guy, he faced a lot of rough treatment and high expectations on the job site. He would make sure that he wasn’t taking longer than anyone else with his bathroom breaks, but he did time them for certain parts of the day. As a Muslim, he prays 5 times a day, and as a trades worker, he generally worked from before sunrise to after sunset. Nobody else at work was muslim, nobody spoke to him about what he could do for his prayer time, so he just did what everyone else did for any alone time: he said he was going to the bathroom. He prayed in the portable toilet. 

On one hand, Mohammed did a great job adapting, because he shielded himself from perceived exclusion from his coworkers, and he was able to keep the job site safe by notifying other workers of his location when away from a task. His supervisor never got angry when he wasn't at his post, because his coworkers knew he was in the bathroom. 

On the other hand, one of his charter rights and personal freedoms was essentially forced into the worst conditions possible. No one at the company was trying to do harm to him, nor curtail his rights, but a lack of onboarding and a missing procedure document resulted in dehumanizing conditions.

Onboarding is like IKEA instructions—confusing without pictures! Visuals help everyone, even long-time employees.

Reflect On It

Think of your current onboarding process. What would a newcomer find confusing or missing?

Produce It

Create a Newcomer Onboarding Packet

Design a short, newcomer-friendly packet that includes:

• A welcome message with cultural awareness in mind
• Key policies in plain language
• Workplace norms and tips for success
• Contact info for support and mentorship
  
  

This packet can be printed or digital and used with all new hires going forward.