SmartCity Blog

RBC Supports Diversity

Guest blog post by: Glen Dormody, Regional Vice President, Metro Halifax, RBC

Last fall, I spoke at a conference for the Canadian Association of Career Educators and Employers over at Mount Saint Vincent University.

They asked RBC to speak on the topic of diversity. It was a difficult topic to prepare for, simply for the fact that we have so many great things underway in our company right now in support of diversity.

But when I reflected on it, there were two things that stood out in my mind. First, having a focus on diversity is clearly the right thing to do. Second, it’s a smart thing to do from a business standpoint.

There are so many different ways to describe diversity. It can mean things like values and purpose, life experiences and perspectives. And certainly some people who have a diverse perspective in our community are new immigrants.

At RBC, we’ve been blessed with having some new immigrants as employees who have made a big contribution to our company.

One of these employees, Makafui Atloko, grew up in Ghana. He came to Canada for school.

After graduation, he went to a job fair at Pier 21 and I spoke with him about his experience joining RBC.

“I spoke to a few people at Pier 21 who told me about RBC and the opportunities they have for people with diverse backgrounds. When I first started, every employee I met was very forthcoming. They wanted to know about where I was from and what brought me here and they were all really welcoming. Initially I thought I was going to be out of place, especially with my accent and all that. But I wasn’t and I love it.”

Mak has excelled at RBC. In fact he is one of our top employees, not just in Halifax, but across the world, and was recently recognized at an international employee convention as a top performer.

The rewards of hiring immigrants are many. It creates a high performing workplace with a variety of ideas, cultures and languages. Furthermore, it helps make our clients more comfortable when someone is serving them in their own culture and language.

In my view, immigrants are individuals who have already surmounted a great deal simply by leaving their country and coming to a new one. As such they show a great propensity to adapt to change. They also bring a different perspective and a willingness to learn, which are incredible assets.

One of the challenges for our business is to continue searching for and developing an available pool of immigrant talent to draw from. We also need to do a better job of making conscious decisions to hire people with diverse backgrounds.

And we don’t want to stop at the employee experience. We serve a lot of customers in Metro Halifax, and we are driving hard to ensure a fantastic experience for new immigrants when they come to our branches to open accounts. To that effect, we’re designating one person in each of our branches as a diversity/immigrant expert. In many instances, our experts will have been immigrants themselves. We want our experts to be able to truly understand the new immigrant experience in order to better introduce banking in Canada and find the right solutions for their needs.

Truly, when you reflect on Halifax’s economy, many of those who have created opportunity in this community are immigrants themselves. It’s up to us and other businesses to support and facilitate the entry of the next generation of newcomers to greater Halifax. They will only make our community stronger!

For more information on how you can hire an immigrant, click here.

RBC partners with Greater Halifax Partnership on an awareness campaign promoting the benefits of hiring a newcomer.

Glen Dormody, RBC Regional Vice President

Glen Dormody is Regional Vice President, Metro Halifax at RBC. Glen understands Halifax's need for immigrants and he supports efforts to diversify our city.

More International Students Coming to Canada

By: Jackie Guo

One of the Partnership’s Connectors, Alex Farrell from RBC recently forwarded an article about the increasing number of international students coming to Canada.  This caught my attention immediately as I am the coordinator of the International Student Connector Program at the Greater Halifax Partnership.

The article says that Canada welcomed 96,147 international students (http://www.cic.gc.ca) in 2010. According to a study commissioned by the Government of Canada entitled Economic Impact of International Education in Canada, international students are estimated to contribute more than $6.5 billion to Canada’s economy every year.

Based on our research, we know that Canada will need immigrants/permanent residents in many years to come because of the low birth rate and baby boomers retiring from the labour force.  280, 636 permanent residents came to Canada in 2010, the highest number in more than 50 years (http://www.cic.gc.ca).  If all 96,147 international students could become permanent residents to Canada after graduation, then Canada would only need about 180,000 permanent residents to meet its immigration target.

Of course, it won’t be that easy as immigration and labour shortage issues are much more complex. However, international students can naturally be part of solution to the labour shortage in Nova Scotia and the rest of the country. 

The International Student Connector Program is helping international MBA and Master of Finance students and graduates expand their professional networks, increasing their chances of finding employment in their field.  This helps deepen their attachment to the community and facilitates their transition from university the labour market.

With this initiative, we give our connectors a chance to explore international talent and see experienced international talent firsthand. Alex is one of our over 300 connectors who help newcomers and international students develop professional networks and successfully settle into our community.

Let’s get more international students connected. The more, the better!

For more information on the International Student Connector Program, please contact Jackie Guo at jguo@greaterhalifax.com. 

Jackie Guo is the Coordinator of International MBA Student Connector Program. In addition to his work at the Partnership, Jackie is an active volunteer for Halifax United Way.

SmartCity Business Show - Episode 1 in Review

“When you assess everything and you distill it down, this is one wicked place to live”. I know Paul Kent and I aren’t the only Haligonians who think this city is wicked. But why are so many people happy to call Halifax home?

The reasons usually seem very obvious. Things like:

•    our friendly people
•    world-class scenery
•    a unique balance of the old and the new.

However, there are many reasons most of us tend to forget, or we simply haven’t been told about. Over the next few months, Greater Halifax Partnership & Haligonia.ca will be giving you 13 reasons to love Halifax even more, and to show the world what we’ve got to offer.

As a twenty year old student, I’ll admit I’ve got a narrower grasp on Halifax than I should. When I think of downtown Halifax, I associate it with smiling faces, lively streets, and a place where most of my favourite memories have came from. The first thing I think of is far from multimillion dollar building developments and a busy international port. This series digs deeper and highlights exactly why Halifax is such a smart place for people to live and play. And all in three and a half minutes per program? That sounds pretty good to me.

 

Maeghan Murphy, Marketing & Communications Co-op Student

Maeghan is with the Partnership on a four month work-term. She is in her third year of Public Relations at Mount Saint Vincent University and had her first taste of the working world on her work-term with Nova Scotia Power this summer. Altthough she'll always be a Cape Bretoner at heart, Maeghan is happy to now call Halifax her home.

Guest SmartCity Blog post: "And How Was Your Meal Tonight?"

Guest blog post:

As you finish your meal at most restaurants, the staff will ask you how your meal was. Standard operating procedure for them and it makes absolute sense...get feedback in case something went wrong and perhaps they might be able to fix it before you leave and spread the negative reviews. Additionally, not asking would be implying they didn’t care about the customer’s experience. Seems smart doesn’t it? Yet most business other than the hospitality industry forget to ask (or worse, forget to listen) “how they did and how they are doing”. By setting up a twitter search filter within their Twitter program and using Google Alerts, a business can take care of such issues. Not only does it give you a heads-up as to what your customers really think, but it shows that your company cares when you publicly and proactively take care of complaints.

Recently I rented a vehicle for a shoot. When we picked up the vehicle, they asked our plans and they upgraded the rental (at no additional charge) to a model that would better suit our needs. During the last part of the rental, however, the rear hatch failed and we had to do our loading and unloading through the passenger doors for a day- not a huge deal. Upon returning the vehicle, they asked how everything went and I explained it was great except for the hatch. They promptly gave us a day off our rental contract for the minor inconvenience. Fantastic! That afternoon, I tweeted about the experience and thanked the company using the "#" (also known as the hash tag) in front of the name. Within five minutes I had a direct tweet back from the company with a thank you.  Shocking!  I decided to do some research and discovered they were following their name in Twitter and actively responding to comments and complaint issues (and in the open!).  SMART!

A few days later, I received a call from my computer suppliers Customer Support.  Having dealt with their support before I was mildly curious as to why they were calling.  The conversation started by the rep asking me if I was happy with my system and if I had experienced any problems during the past year. Ah! Finally they were showing me they care (in the past dealing with them was like getting a root canal)! I went over the small issues I’ve had and the work-arounds (using posts from other users and not from the company's site) and expected to hear how they have some solution for me…To my dismay, the call quickly moved to a sales pitch for the extended warranty!  I emphatically told them I was not interested. We went back and forth and I explained how I didn’t need the $400 extended warranty at which point she went into full script mode for 3 minutes without letting me get a word in. I put the phone on hands free and went back to what I was doing before she called. Eventually she hung up. I twitted the experience expecting to get a response like I did from the rental company! Surely a computer company would be as or more advanced than a vehicle rental company! Nope. Nothing. Now what was supposed to increase this companies revenue has only succeeded in further frustrating a customer. FYI, a few days ago they called again…I explained they had already called me and I wasn’t interested….they hung up. Wow, not smart, but it appears that’s “standard operating procedure” for them!

Coincidently in the same week I sat down with friend for a beer. We started talking about my recent experiences with companies using Twitter as a customer support tool and he told me one of his experiences with his cellular supplier. He tweeted about being dissatisfied with a support call on his account….and know who contacted him back via Twitter offering help?  His cellular suppliers’ competition! Now that’s taking it to the next level.

It takes all of a few seconds to do a Twitter search and just a little longer to set up a Google Alert. Not following your brand and company on Twitter and via Google Alerts is the same as saying “I don’t care about what my customers experience with my company.” Why? You’re not listening to what they have to say about the experience! It would be the same as the waiter not asking how your meal was. So, on that note, how did you enjoy this blog today? Can I get you anything else?

SW

With over 25 years of award winning experience in television, film, video, marketing, communications, web, radio, print, and events, Scott Westerlaken has the ability to maintain focus on the big picture and offer a wide range of solutions appropriate to the clients message and budget. He has been recognized with dozens of awards in business, communications and film making from around the world. For the client, this means a truly unique balance of hands on technical knowledge and high level strategic experience that always leads to unique and creative solutions.

Read PHI Group's blog.

PHI Group has been an Investor in the Partnership since 2001.

The views and opinions expressed in this entry are those of the author alone, and may not necessarily reflect those of the Greater Halifax Partnership and those affiliated.

Halifax ended the year with an economic bang!

If you think the Halifax Economy is under-performing, it may be time to rethink.

Halifax ended the year with an economic bang.  First the labour force survey tells that we have done better than most other Canadian cities of any size in job creation.  Indeed this has been going on since the summer of 09 when Halifax posted net job gains of 9300 over the previous 12 month period. 

We’re number 1…. in employment creation

Then CIBC tells us that Halifax, helped along by big employment gains, is the top city in the country according to its metro monitor index.  In arriving at this CIBC looked at 9 economic variables ranging from population growth to non-residential building permits and all looked pretty good.  Population grew at a pace double the rate of the third quarter of 2007.  Employment grew by 3.1% in the third quarter, easily tops in the country.  The unemployment rate jumped, but in an environment of nation-leading job creation and fast population growth.   Business bankruptcies are in steady decline.  Other economic indicators were flat or negative, but compared to other cities we were still doing well. 

We’re number one…. In economic performance


And today, CFIB (Canadian Federation of Independent Business) released its December Business Barometer survey of small business across Canada.  Turns out Nova Scotia business are more confident than those in any other province in Canada except BC, who, by the way happen to be in pre-Olympic euphoria.  Indeed, the index shows that business confidence in Nova Scotia has been climbing steadily every month for the last year and is now at its highest point in more than 4 years.  

We’re number two…and still trying harder.

Halifax seems to be on a roll.  But even in these times nay-sayers are easy to unearth. Fact is though, we are coming out of recession with surging employment and growing business confidence.  No other City in Canada can claim this.  Few cities have our potential moving forward.  Few cities would pick this time to take a step back. 

2010 will be a telling year for Halifax and our economy.

Fred Morley is the Executive Vice President and Chief Economist at the Greater Halifax Partnership

Dodging the Meltdown: Finance and Insurance in Nova Scotia

Halifax’s 2005 economic strategy “Strategies for Success” predicted that the finance and insurance sector would be a key growth driver in the second half of the decade. This prediction has proven startlingly accurate. Good thing too, because this stable and vital sector has been a big factor in keeping us out of recession.

The Canadian finance and insurance sector is the best run in the world.  Canada was the only industrialized nation that didn’t have to prop up its banks with significant cash injections this year.  The well-managed Canadian insurance sector continues its successful drive to world prominence.  Finance and insurance companies created more than 13,000 jobs in the second quarter of 2009 in Canada compared to the same three month period last year.  This occurred even though national employment in all industries declined by 340,000.

This national strength is trickling down to Nova Scotia where many new high wage finance and insurance jobs have appeared in recent years.  This growth has come from a continued expansion of deep rooted Canadian firms and a sprinkling of new international investment; all taking advantage of high quality labour and nation leading increases in productivity.  The heavy concentration of this sector in Halifax has been a big factor in keeping our economy growing even as the rest of Canada slipped into recession. 

Halifax has always been a significant financial centre in Canada. Many of Canada’s biggest finance and insurance companies have roots here.  Even today we have the second highest concentration of big bank employment and the highest concentration of insurance jobs in Canada relative to our size.  Over 50% of all insurance firms with operations in the Maritime Provinces are located in Halifax and all but one of the region’s investment dealers are based in Halifax. At the time of the last census, in 2006, there were some 14,000 people employed in the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector in Nova Scotia’s Hub city. Deep roots of firms like Scotiabank, Royal Bank, Manulife, and others serve us well in tough times.

This regional concentration makes Greater Halifax’s finance and insurance cluster one of the more impressive in Canada.  The same value proposition and high productivity that has kept domestic operations strong is now attracting a new wave of international investment in finance and insurance.

This new wave of investment began in 2005 with Flagstone Reinsurance Holdings Limited, and this year
Flagstone expanded its commitment to Nova Scotia and is expected to add 80 new jobs in the next few years. United Kingdom based Admiral Insurance brought 400 jobs to Nova Scotia in last year.  New York based Citco is the largest new financial services player in Nova Scotia with over 600 jobs announced for its hedge fund and IT operations. 

While the world financial crisis has slowed the job ramp in Halifax for a few of the new players, Halifax is now on the international map and growth in inward investment seems secure.  The high productivity and competitive cost value proposition that drew them here has become even more important to these firms in tough economic times.  Some domestic firms continue to expand their footprint in Nova Scotia for the same reason.

The finance and insurance industry is as much a part of Halifax as the bedrock, and just as stable.  As Nova Scotia and Halifax look to renewal of their economic strategies, finance and insurance will likely have a prominent role.

Fred Morley is the Executive Vice President and Chief Economist at the Greater Halifax Partnership