Entrepreneur gallup: About every sixth SME has hired an immigrant

From Finns 17 percent of SMEs have hired an immigrant, according to the Yrittäjägallup commissioned by Suomen Yrittäjie. In companies with ten or more employees, the share rises to half, in companies with 5–9 employees to a third.

Most foreigners have been hired by young and under-middle-aged entrepreneurs.

Most immigrants have been hired in the capital region, followed by the most in Western and Southern Finland. Most immigrants are employed by industry. Regionally, the best experiences have been gained in Eastern and Northern Finland.

According to the survey, the company’s ability to serve different customers has quite clearly strengthened as a result of hiring an immigrant. The atmosphere in the working community has also improved, as has the staff’s ability to develop new solutions and the company’s ability to find the talent it needs.

“Hiring an immigrant has developed companies. For example, the staff’s attitudes have become more tolerant,” says the Yrittäjie expert Sonja Antosalo in the bulletin.

According to the companies, problems have arisen from language challenges, adopting the rules of the workplace and adapting to the work community.

“Language challenges are probably related to adopting the rules of the workplace and adapting to the work community. It is important to ensure that the work instructions and rules are understood and that language barriers are broken down,” says Antosalo.

More than 1,050 representatives of small and medium-sized companies answered the survey carried out by Verian at the beginning of November. The confidence interval of the results is 2.9 percentage points in each direction.