Hire Refugees to Grow Your Business, Says Social Entrepreneur

A handful of social enterprises in England are on a mission to not only find work for refugees, but to specifically get them into the careers they were training for back home – and it happens to benefit the country too.

A small town called Grimsby, for example, is welcoming some professional refugees on a mission to improve residents’ health, with the help of the Lincolnshire Refugee Doctor Project (LRDP). The LRDP provides training, language courses and volunteer placements to help refugee doctors join Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). This way, refugees pursue their desired career while the NHS fills some of its 100,000 staff vacancies.

Another London-based social enterprise, Transitions, is also helping around 240 refugee professionals find jobs in architecture, engineering, business or other suitable fields to what they studied for back home. The founder, Sheila Heard, explains that hiring refugees shouldn’t just be considered “moral duty” or charity, because it just makes business sense.

“There are so many studies to say that if you have diverse teams, you’re going to be a healthier, more profitable, more engaged organisation with better retention – and of course you have better access to global skills,” she says.