Dalton Sirmans (00:00)

Refugees should be sourced as talent for organisations if an organisation is interested in taking giant leaps forward. The characteristics that are developed or revealed during displacement are incredibly beneficial to any and every business. These are people that you would want in any company. You want them on the payroll, not just because of the work, but because of the influence they have on your entire company, your other workers, even your customers. 

Siân Harrington (00:46)

Hi, I'm Sian Harrington and today we're asking are employers overlooking some of the most adaptable talent in the world?

We hear constantly about labour shortages, skills gaps and the struggle to find people who can cope with uncertainty and change. Employers say they need resilience, persistence, problem solving and adaptability. Yet there is a group of people whose lives may have demanded all of these qualities, often to an extraordinary degree, and yet we rarely talk about them as a source of talent: refugees. 

Most conversations about refugees begin somewhere else, with humanitarian crisis, politics, borders, or the cost to the countries receiving them. These are important issues, but that framing can obscure another part of the story. Refugees as employees, entrepreneurs, business owners, and economic contributors. 

My guest today, Dalton Sirmans, calls this the refugee advantage. And he is careful about what he means by this. Displacement can involve trauma, interrupted education, separation and enormous hardship. We shouldn't romanticise any of this. But Dalton argues that employers may be missing valuable people because they struggle to see beyond language barriers, unfamiliar qualifications or a life story that doesn't fit neatly onto a conventional CV.

And this raises a much bigger question about how we judge talent. So in this episode, you'll hear:

• Why refugees are far more entrepreneurial than many people realise. 
• What displacement can reveal about resilience, adaptability and problem solving. 
• Why traditional recruitment makes some of this talent almost invisible.
• How one manufacturer redesigned its training so people could learn without relying on written English and saw production rise as a result. 
• And what employers can practically do if they want to start finding refugee talent in their own communities. 

But first, let me introduce my guest. Dalton T. Sirmans is the founder of the Sirmans Global Impact Foundation, which works to reframe refugees and forcibly displaced people as economic contributors through investment, research and storytelling. 

He is also co-founder and senior partner of Amplio Ventures and Amplio Partners, investing in businesses that help stabilize refugee communities in the United States and internationally. Before this Dalton co-founded and led financial technology company, MainStreet Technologies.

And more recently, he has completed a Master of Liberal Arts in International Relations at Harvard, where his research focused on refugees, forced displacement and migration.

His work now brings together business investment and humanitarian innovation, with a particular interest in moving beyond traditional aid towards lasting economic opportunity. Because work's not working when employers say they cannot find adaptable people while overlooking people who may have had to practice adaptability simply to rebuild their lives. So I started by asking Dalton if employers need talent so badly, what are they failing to see?

Siân (04:16)

Well, I'm delighted to welcome you to the show today, Dalton, and we're going to talk about something that I'm very interested in, and I think a subject that we don't talk about very often, so welcome.

Dalton (04:27)

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

Siân (04:29)

Great, so let's dive straight into this. We keep hearing about labour shortages, we're hearing about skills shortages, and we're also hearing a lot in business about a lack of adaptable talent. Now, you have a new book and it's arguing that employers are overlooking millions of refugees who may possess exactly those qualities that we're saying we need. So what's going wrong here?

Dalton (04:54)

Yeah, it's an interesting time to be talking about refugees in this way for a number of reasons. But in the United States, we've resettled more refugees than any nation on earth. And that's due to our wonderful 1980 refugee policy. And so we have put together a great plan to both bring them here and then help them integrate into our society very quickly. And one of the key components of that is to help them find employment. 

But we also have to understand that refugees don't necessarily arrive speaking English. They don't necessarily understand the customs. They don't have a background in our financial system and understand credit. So there's a lot of other education that has to happen besides just skills training. But what employers often miss is because there's a language barrier or a cultural barrier, cultural misunderstanding, the talent is often overlooked.

And so what we have to do is help employers understand how to bridge that gap. And then they get to experience what we call the refugee advantage. These people are highly motivated to restart their lives. They don't come in desperate. They come in wanting. They come in wanting to contribute and be part of society to raise themselves, their families, and then it's mutually beneficial the way they benefit the communities where they resettle and the employers they work for.

Sian (06:22)

Well, let's just stand back a little bit first because it's an unusual subject for a business and investment book. Although, as you said, at this moment around the world, it's very timely. What first drew you personally towards refugees, displacement and then entrepreneurship, bringing the three together?

Dalton (06:42)

You know, it's been about 25 years of slowly becoming acclimated to this problem, understanding what's going on and why it is such a big issue. We formed a company in 1999 called MainStreet Technologies. It was a financial technology company. And during that time my wife and I also had an opportunity to begin visiting developing nations such as Nicaragua and some others, parts of Mexico that were terribly depressed, and we began to see the waste of humanity and the waste of human potential. But we really didn't understand our role in this during that time. We just happened to go because we had friends that were humanitarians invited us to go and witness and pray and think about how to become involved. 

And then in 2014 our nephew, Chris Chansey, formed a business in Clarkston, Georgia. This is a town outside of Atlanta that has resettled more refugees per capita than any US city since 1980. It's called the most diverse square mile in this country. And Chris put together a placement agency, a staffing agency, focusing on resettled refugees and finding them dignified work. So once again my wife and I became involved as mentors, as investors, became highly interested and engaged. When our company was acquired in 2018, I felt like, okay, this must be what I should do.

And then I realised how ignorant I was about the issues and the problems. And I didn't want to get involved with this fire, ready, aim mentality. So I entered graduate school and began to research for four years, write, study, you know, talk to other scholars, read a lot of scholarship, and then feel like maybe I know about enough to be dangerous now. But in truth, what I have found is that these are exceptional individuals.

Often that's the reason they are displaced. They are a threat to a regime, okay, or to, you know, in a civil war to the other side, and they are desperate. They have to leave their country under the threat of death, violence, or persecution. And and they have to start over with almost nothing. And so it just feels like over the last 25 years, this has become more of a calling. and I'm honored to be able to work with these outstanding people and hope to make some difference.

Siân (09:02)

I love this calling, something I agree with you on. But we know that whenever we tend to speak about refugees, it's always through language like crisis, or we talk in the political sense, which clearly is extremely topical at the moment. And also about the cost, the cost of rehousing them, the cost of rehoming them or whatever. How do you think that focus on the sort of vulnerability side has obscured their story as workers, as employees, as employers, as founders and, you know, economic contributors.

Dalton (09:39)

I think as we have positioned the refugee in terms of trying to raise funds and garner help for them, the quickest way to do that is to pull on the heartstrings. So the humanitarian sector has done a wonderful job of explaining the immediate problem when they are displaced, the moment they leave their country, the moment they go somewhere else, the moment they are banished, and they have to think about starting over without knowing what that would look like. And so the unintended consequence is that most of us who aren't steeped in this issue, aren't studying this issue, we think of refugees as always being in need, being desperate, being a drain on society. But but that's not the case. Okay, so it's an unintended consequence there. 

But secondly, when we talk about the cost of refugees you know, now displacement lasts over two decades. When a refugee leaves their home nation and they resettle in a camp or in an urban situation in another country, they're normally displaced between 20 and 25 years. Okay. So we go pretty quickly from emergency aid to need to we where we need to be thinking about development, economic development. Okay. And that's that's kind of a new way to think about refugees becoming a part of their own solution.

But now in the last two years that a lot of funding has been cut from many governments and other funders, it's become a necessity for host nations and humanitarian aid organisations and NGOs to think about shifting from traditional charity to development. And what's been really good about this is the governments that are hosting these refugees, they're beginning to understand we can play a role in this but it will also be for the betterment of our entire nation, not just refugees themselves. There's a great example going on in Kenya right now. Uganda is known for this, and we're going to see this happen in other nations around the world.

Siân (11:42)

One thing of course, is that this story gets caught up with the wider migration story and what we in the UK call economic migrants. But give me a sense of the scale of this forcibly displaced group of people around the world. What is it about the statistics there that really made you think differently and change your view on why these people are people that we should be accommodating and thinking of to use that HR and work word 'talent'.

Dalton (12:17)

So the size of forcible displacement is enormous. It's the largest in recorded history. So we really have three areas that we consider: those that are refugees, the ones that have left their nation, crossed an international border, again, under the threat of death, violence, or persecution. And then we have internally displaced people, IDPs, it's the same as a refugee, but they have not left their home nation. They've left their homeland, but they're in still inside their nation. So to give you an example, during the Syrian Civil War, over half of that nation was either a refugee or an IDP, which is unbelievable to think about. And then we have asylum seekers who are at the gates or within a country asking to be seen as a refugee to qualify for the legal opportunities that are given to refugees. So all total we have about 120 million forcibly displaced people around the world. We've never seen anything like this. And you couple that with the length of displacement, it is an enormous problem. Putting pressure on host nations and host governments, it is just incredible to think about the scale of this.

Siân (13:32)

I can't see how it gets easier actually looking forward because we've got obviously quite a lot of political polarisation, which will, end up in wars, but we've also got climate issues. So we're going to have more expectancy famines and other reasons people need to move. So, it's a tough issue to, to tackle, I think for host nations, as you've said, but one of the things reading your book, which is fantastic, one of the findings that jumped out to me is how refugees are just disproportionately likely to become entrepreneurs. And certainly if I look around me in London, in the United Kingdom, loads and loads of little businesses started by people who've come over to the UK. Why do you think it is? And what do you think that really tells us about qualities that you can develop through displacement?

Dalton (14:23)

Mm-hmm. A couple of things on refugees being entrepreneurs and and their characteristics. We're not really sure if those characteristics are developed during displacement or were they already there and they're just now being they're just now coming to the surface. Not sure which it is, but we do know, especially in the United States, they're almost twice as likely to become entrepreneurs as native born Americans and other immigrants. Part of that is likely out of necessity.

That is where they see their best opportunity for financial independence and security. And some of it again could be this is who they are. When someone decides they need to leave their home nation and become a refugee, that's a fairly entrepreneurial move. There's a lot to that. It's not as simple as just crossing into another nation. You're welcome with open arms. There are a lot of things that have to happen.

You actually have to be identified by the United Nations as a refugee in order to be awarded that status. So there's a lot of steps that that kind of signal this is an entrepreneur. But one of the most interesting facts about refugee entrepreneurs happens to be in food service. And so many of them, from what I've studied and the ones I've researched, have said, well, if I can't do anything else, at least I can cook.

So many of them start restaurants or food service businesses to the point that many humanitarian aid workers refer to them as chefugees. And it it's not a moniker to make fun, but it's just to identify how many do go into food service a lot of it has to do with taking control of their own situation, of their own future and applying themselves in a way where they have a lot of independence in what they do and how they do it. 

When you think about many refugees, especially women, childcare is an issue, okay? So if they're running their own enterprise they can address that. Transportation can become an issue. Again, language and culture. Those are the four impediments to employment. And many of those can be solved if they have their own business. And then they can leverage, you know, the family business model. So even if they're using you know, other relatives and other refugees, but it it makes it easier for them to take steps forward.

Siân (16:49)

So, you know, one of the interesting areas here is, which I alluded to at the beginning, is skills shortages. So we're talking a lot about skills shortages in many countries across the world at the moment. But can you make a distinction between what we might call skills and what we might call characteristics? You just said earlier that whether these are characteristics that you get through having to do the traveling, et cetera, go across boundaries, really tough choices. But what we do know, and I think you argue, is that there's persistence, there's resilience, problem solving, adaptability, having to live with uncertainty. These are things we talk about a lot that we need in the workplace at the moment.

How do you see that plays out and is there a distinction that should matter to employees here between these sort of characteristics and skills if we can say they're different? Or can we?

Dalton (17:49)

And and they are different, but the care yeah, and you know, and the characteristics inform the skills. Because of those characteristics that you've just mentioned and many others, I recall myself when we started our company we bootstrapped a fintech. And so we we generated our own revenues and that's how we capitalized the business over you know 18/19 years. But all of the characteristics you mentioned and and then others, the resilience, the problem solving, the adaptability and so many other qualities they developed for us while we were building the business. So think about being able to hire within the workforce people that have already honed these particular characteristics. And then you can address skills issues much, much easier. 

Now, not all of them have skill shortages. For instance, a lot of Afghan refugees work for the US military on helicopters. And so when they resettled in the US, although there was a language barrier, we soon learned how great they were at being diesel mechanics. So we had to we had to make this leap to understand where their skills were. But then once we were able to say, okay, this is where they are skilled, those characteristics were the ones that really put them on steroids in becoming, you know, top employees. 

And what I also found from talking to employers, that was actually my thesis, how US employers looked at refugee labourers that they had hired almost to the person they preferred refugee workers over native-born Americans and other immigrants. Even though they had to overcome things such as language, that was the big one. But the employers began to get involved. They actually hired interpreters or they hired someone from in there from within the community of the refugee that also spoke English. They were going to lengths to try to integrate these people into their workforce because they saw the overwhelming benefit of the moral character, you know, of the dedication, of the appreciation, all of that that they were not seeing, especially since COVID, from native born Americans. So it's been an interesting shift, more visible since 2020 than I believe any time in our recent history.

Siân (20:03)

Yeah, again, it's why it's such a difficult subject for many people politically, I guess, because again, over here, I've spoken to many employers who say that when they have employed refugees, you know, they have been fantastic workers. And that can put other people's noses out of joint, unfortunately. But I wonder, you obviously have delved deeply into this, is there any businesses or person in your book where you think there's a story that really captures what you mean by the title, The Refugee Advantage. 

Dalton (20:43)

Every single person I wrote about and it they all I think everyone in the book came from a different country except two individuals both from Vietnam. but let's start there. Andrew Lee in the late 1970s was in Vietnam and after the fall of Saigon, he escaped along with his brothers. Now they came at different times to the US and it took Andrew three attempts to get out of Vietnam, each time nearly losing his life.

But by fate, they all ended up in the United States and in San Francisco. And so for years, the brothers and their families lived together, worked together, and pooled their money. In 1984, they bought a small corner bakery called Sugar Bowl Bakery in San Francisco. And today, that is the largest Asian-owned bakery in this country. They ship internationally. It is incredibly successful. They employ hundreds of people on the West Coast and the East Coast.

And Andrew and his brothers give deference to immigrants and refugees when they're looking for employees. And Andrew Lee loves this nation. He is a devoted American. I have no idea of his politics. We don't talk politics, we talk policy. But I will tell you that he sees this nation as the golden ticket, as the opportunity not only to thrive, but for them to survive. And when I talk to Andrew and I listen to him and sometimes almost with tears in my eyes, I believe he personifies the refugee advantage, both he and his brothers.

Siân (22:16)

That's another thing you've just picked up there if countries are giving sanctuary to people, then their loyalty to that country, you hear again and again, people who talk about, you know, how strongly they feel about the country, because it's given them a new chance, a new life for their family, etc. I think that's an important point. But we do need to be careful not to romanticise displacement, I think, because there can be a lot of trauma.

Some of the things they've gone through, as we said, in their home countries or even in their traveling, their attempts to get a very long way into America or into Europe. They might also have education that's been interrupted, might have, as you mentioned earlier, been forced to move even within their country and then therefore broken down the traditional education and opportunities they've had. So not everyone's going to be an exceptional employee or an entrepreneur. How can we of make the case for this advantage of refugees without making it sound a little bit that we're saying suffering is a business credential, if I can be as crude as to put it like that? 

Dalton (23:28)

Yeah, I understand what you're saying, and we do have to look at refugees on the whole. A small percentage of the total will become successful entrepr entrepreneurs. When compared to other nations, you know, it's it's much more. But within the hundred twenty million forcibly displaced people, not so much. These are vulnerable people. The protections are there, but they're in a terrible situation for long periods of time, especially women and children.

And we need to think about safety and security for them, which is an obligation, I believe, for all of us, but especially the West. And when I speak of the West, I'm talking about North America, London, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan mainly. And and I do believe that is a responsibility, a humanitarian responsibility. But beyond that, there is an opportunity for every host nation to look at the refugees in a different light. And that is our problem right now. It is a perception problem.

I was thinking about this in an article that I'm writing. If you were to go to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Turkana County in Kenya and you step there, you will immediately see what are not really roads. They're washed out paths and lined either side by corrugated tin and plywood and tarps and any other material used to put up walls for homes and small businesses. And then you go into the little encampments where people have actually built mud and stick houses and you know, they don't have proper sewage or running water, they they've dug holes for latrines, and you would think about the depravity, you would think about you know, inhumane. But if you spent a little time and you didn't just look, but you observed and paid attention, you would see thriving businesses, you would see a marketplace, you would see education taking place, you would see people smiling.

You would see children playing. You would not see people sitting there doing nothing, waiting for what comes next. You would see people making a contribution. And what's also interesting about that place is that Turkana County in Kenya is very poor. And so the refugee camps there are making a difference economically in that community. If the camps were gone, it would have a tremendous economic negative for the county itself. So what's happening in Kenya that is so beautiful is they are attempting to collapse all of the refugee camps and turn them into municipalities, providing equal right to work for refugees along with Kenyans in a way that lifts the entire nation. It is incredibly I mean it's challenging. It's a big lift, but they've decided this is what they're going to do and it started in late 2025, when the caps are officially no more. They're as communities and municipalities. And so it it's a matter of perception. You have to see there's opportunity. You have to see there is value. You have to see there is a way to improve the lives of everybody, not just the refugees, but everybody in the community, everybody in the county, everybody in the nation. You know, that's how we have to start to change the way we look at the refugees.

Siân (26:47)

That's so interesting the camps to communities is fantastic. I really hope that succeeds and something other people could learn from, isn't it? We've got a lot of refugee camps around the world. So let's just push into that perception a bit more because bringing it back to today's working environment in the West, in particular, we talked earlier about managing with uncertainty and adaptability and resilience and all of this, but you're a business person, you've been there. Often when we're hiring for people, we use that language, but actually we don't really hire that way. We hire around recognised qualifications, what university you went to, what's your language, have you worked for a similar type of business, all of this. So do you think that if we could almost have this magic wand and we didn't have this word refugee and you were able to utilise your CV in a different way, that we might see these life stories in a different way. And how can we help employers to get across that? Because it's hard enough for aging people at the moment, it's hard enough for youth in a lot of countries. We're really making it hard for people to get work.

Dalton (27:58)

Yeah. Well, you know, this is interesting to think about how we interview and how we hire people and what we look for. I want to make a confession here. I was horrible at that at our business. I was normally the last person to interview before we hired. We did not have a lot of employees because of the nature of the business we were doing. But I I think it took 14 of our 19 years before we finally determined the qualifications and the skills we needed, you know, to hire. And and that that's where it begins. 

Yes, you're right. Being a refugee is not a qualifier, but it's not a disqualifier either. Okay. We need to be looking at other characteristics and skills in ways that benefit our businesses. And I know you have you have an HR background. You understand this far better than I do. But what we found for our company that's a little unrelated to this subject that made the most difference is we began to hire young people that were in their final year of college, either graduate or undergraduate, and their semester or next to last semester. And we gave them a fabulous job with a great salary and gave them real work. And this apprenticeship allowed us to look at them and for them to look at us. And then at the end of the term, we might offer them a job and most often did, and most often they would stay. So by the time we sold the company, about 20% of our employees came through this programme.

What we learned from that is it is so hard to have an interview or an or two interviews or three interviews and really know if there is fit there. It would be so much better if we could provide opportunities for people to, like I said, kick our tires and we kick theirs to see if that's really going to work out. some of the employers I talked to that hired refugees, some of them this started as they felt like it was an obligation.

You know, they did it because it was part of their mission. And then they soon learned what they'd been missing out because the refugees began to raise the entire business, raise the morale of other people. Also highlighted people that were not doing the job and helping the employer understand how do I make them better or do we need to move on. Okay. So I I don't know how we can do it in the short term. I think it has to take place in the long term. That's been my experience. So

I don't know if that helps or not, but you know, that that kind of go in that's kind of informed by the way we learn to hire and and how we had the most successful people. And and I believe that's what in that's what employers of refugees, especially the ones I've talked to, have found that at first, okay, I'm doing you a bit of a favour, and in a few weeks or a few months, they're like, no, I've hit the jackpot here. This is this is different.

Siân (30:48)

Yeah, yeah, they're doing me a favour. Yeah.

Dalton (30:50)

Exactly, exactly.

Siân (30:53)

Hiring is a toughie because we've been talking about skills-based hiring and trying to move away from that traditional CV for a while now and it's still a tough one to crack. 

I think one concern here could be about seeing this all through that lens of inclusion. And I know what we're talking about here is we're very much trying to move away from that and say, look, it's talent to use another of those lenses that we tend to use in organisations.

We talked about one example earlier of an entrepreneur, but have you seen businesses that have managed to make that shift? You've talked about a few that have looked at it through initially that lens of the humanitarian obligation. But when a company does make that shift and sees it as, just another great talent source how have they integrated people? What have they done to make sure that refugees get as many opportunities as anyone else? And I don't know if you've got a particular example you could utilise or just, you know, thinking that you've got over time of speaking to organisations.

Dalton (32:05)

Several, several great examples, but one that always comes to mind is a food manufacturer in North Carolina who desperately needed workers. I believe they're in the pickle business and they're putting putting food into jars. And so you're dealing with food safety, you're dealing with heavy machinery manufacturing. So have to be really careful. But they were having a terrible time hiring locals and I can't remember the nationality of a refugee community there. And and sometimes in the US, the way refugees are resettled, they they bring several from one nation and put them into an area so it that they they adapt easier, they integrate much more quickly because they don't feel totally alone. 

Okay. So this particular community, he began to hire from within the community, and they had a terrible language issue. But this manufacturer had always thought, you know, if I could just drop language, written language, out of our training materials and create materials that just use diagrams, I could teach anyone to do this and do it the right way. So this was the push he needed. That's exactly what he did. He was able to train people who did not speak English initially. And in a year, production was up 30%. And so it was it's a success story that plays out over and over.

There is another gentleman that owns his company owns several apartment complexes, I believe in the Clarkston area. And he had a shortage of HVAC because you know we have heating and air AC systems here in the US, and all the apartments had that. But trying to find someone that he could train and keep on staff was proving to be a problem. So there was this one talented, I believe he was an helicopter mechanic from Afghanistan came and spoke to them one day and said, if I get my HVAC certification, would you raise my pay by X number of dollars? And this this owner said, Yes, I will. He said, well, what about you go ahead and do it now and I'll get the certification? And he said, I tell you what, I'll do half now and half when you get the certification. So the next day the guy came in and he said, here's my certification. He already had it. He was just negotiating a raise and he and the employer said that started a beautiful friendship but he he also attracted others from Afghanistan that had worked on helicopters, and so now the the the apartment owner has all kinds of HVAC experts because of one great relationship with one individual. And we see that playing out too. see hear from employers who hire one member of a community who'll bring them five more just like and the same characteristics. So yeah, that's that's what I hear from employers about that.

Siân (34:54)

Yeah, that's good, isn't it? And I like the example of the manufacturer with the visual instructions because that's also relevant anyway because that can help people perhaps who have come from more disadvantaged backgrounds anywhere to understand it, as long as they're not Ikea type or Ikea as we say over there. Ikea type visuals, so they're a bit more easy to understand. I that one.

Dalton (35:25)

I understand. You're making me feel better about me. I thought that was my problem, not everyone else's.

Siân  (35:31)

I think that's everybody's. You talked a lot about the situation in the States. Are there government bodies or could employers work with charities? Or how could you start tapping into this? Because it's an area I think a lot of people wouldn't really know much about.

Dalton (35:51)

So in the in the United States, of course, we have a few great private businesses. Amplio recruiting is one who you who can source talent. And then Catholic charities, the International Rescue Committee, organisations like that that would help identify where an employer could go to find you know refugee source, refugee labor. And then we have a handful of communities in the US that are known for resettling refugees, several in Texas, Raleigh, North Carolina, Detroit, Michigan, Buffalo, New York, Seattle, places like that where there is an abundance of refugee talent. But I have to say this, you know, I said earlier that we've resettled more in the US, more refugees than any nation on earth.

But since 1980, we've only resettled a little over three million. Okay. And today we have 120 million forcibly displaced people. So we we have not done all that we're capable of doing. There is so much more that that can be done. But any nation that actually welcomes refugees and tries to integrate them into society, there are going to be government agencies, nonprofits, and humanitarian aid organisations that where you can source talent. You just need to contact them.

Siân (37:08)

So going back to those who start their own business because that may be an easier way to get into the workforce. They're having to do this in really difficult circumstances, but often you will find that they're trapped by having a small micro business. maybe one restaurant or one shop on the corner or whatever it may be, because they're not able to tap into the finance and the networks and the markets that others are perhaps taught to do better in the native workforce. What can employers, what can investors and what can leaders generally do to help unlock this talent and the value of these people better, help them to expand?

Dalton (38:00)

Yeah. So there are several organisations now in the US that provide credit and and lending services to refugees and immigrants, specifically to them because they don't have a background in the American financial system. And so these organisations like a company capital in New York, they don't just provide loans, they provide financial training. The IRC has a community development financial organisation, a CDFI, that also does the same thing.

And they're providing the financial training. It's not enough just to just to provide a loan. They have people have to understand the obligations, and they also have to understand how this will improve their credit scores and what that means. when my mother raised me, it was so interesting. She was a small town banker, and she believed in the King James Bible and a credit score. And so she was hammering this into into my head and my sister's head, you know, have to have good credit, have to have good credit. Well that means something different to people from other countries. And so we have to think about ways to to teach as well as to lend. There needs to be financial literature literacy and an understanding of the obligation there. 

And we are seeing more and more organisations that are doing that. And then one of the gentlemen that I wrote about the means of ride in Austin, Texas, he has a company called StellarFi. And StellarFi helps people that have poor or no credit improve their credit score by actually automating the bill payment on on you know for for individuals. And this is his third startup all have to do with finance and help people with financial inclusion. So that that's what's necessary. And we need to introduce refugees and and other immigrants to those types of organisations, not just a traditional lender, but one that yeah, again, provides education and training as well as access to capital. 

Siân (39:59)

I'm reminded as we're talking of a company I came across, gosh, it's a long time now, probably 25, 30 years ago, who worked in fabrication. And I remembered speaking to the CEO there and they'd employed quite a lot of non-English speaker refugees and they were holding special language classes for them at lunchtime. But again, this came very much from that leader. It was very much their personal view around helping people into work and helping people to start a new life. 

And I guess one of the biggest issues here is that we need to move away from it being, you know, that one off leader, that CEO that, one person trying to help somebody which is all good, and we still want that, but this is just another normal group of people who can bring great things to your business. So, let's end with some real practical advice for our audience of HR directors, CEOs, entrepreneurs, people who could be employing refugees. So, could you give me some concrete actions that they can start doing?

Clearly they can read the book and get some good information there, but if you could maybe think about three sort of concrete actions somebody could do today to try and help move this forward.

Dalton (41:20)

Yeah. Let me let me say this first though. The enormity of the problem requires the private sector to be involved. We are not going to solve this the way we've been going about it. many governments are doing great things. A lot of nonprofits are doing great things. Many NGOs are doing great things. Academics are doing great things. It's an enormous issue. We need the private sector involved. So your call to action is exactly what needs to happen. 

And first and foremost, an employer needs to look in their community, okay. Where the resources? Who is helping refugees here? And make contact with them. Again, Catholic charity, Catholic charities comes to mind. The Lutheran Church comes to mind. There are a number of local organisations. In the US, we have in Georgia, Department of Family Children's Services is called something else in different states, but there are organisations you can contact. That's number one. Okay. 

Number two, most businesses are in contact with other businesses in their community talk to other business leaders and owners about their employees and and employers that are finding talent other than from you know the normal channels of just people come in and apply where they get out of college or whatever. Because I'm I'm telling you there are employers in every community that are realizing the refugee advantage and they may they may not even know they have refugees on the payroll because that's not exactly something someone leads with when they're looking for a job. So that's another step you can take. 

And then one of the things that I've been doing a great deal of the last year is I'm working with other colleges, not just the major universities, but local colleges and talking to professors that are teaching social entrepreneurship, or they have classes that are working in international politics, international relations. And they are great sources both for talent and information because an employer may be a little bit on their own and trying to think about integrating people that have language barriers and cultural differences. And so the the local colleges, the local colleges are great sources for assistance and help. And we'll talk about that another time, but there are some there are some small colleges that are doing some amazing work in this field and that that's really flying under the radar. But those are the those are the things I would suggest right off the bat.

Siân Harrington (43:43)

That was Dalton Sirmons on what he calls the refugee advantage. I loved his description of this as a perception problem. Once you start looking beyond the label refugee, you find mechanics, cooks, entrepreneurs, engineers, business owners, and people with experience and capabilities that our recruitment systems may simply fail to recognise.

 I also think he makes an important distinction between skills and characteristics. Employers can teach skills. What is often harder to find are people who can keep going when circumstances change, who can solve problems with limited resources and who can cope when there is no obvious path in front of them. 

We do need to be careful here. Nobody should have to experience displacement to acquire these qualities. And being a refugee tells you nothing on its own about how someone will perform at work. But it should make us question some of those signals we currently use to decide who has potential. There are now more than a hundred million forcibly displaced people around the world. Business clearly cannot solve this crisis alone. But employers can decide whether they continue to see these people primarily through the language of vulnerability and cost or whether they become better at recognising the contribution some of them could make.

And at a time when organizations are searching everywhere for adaptable talent, this feels like a question worth asking to me. So thanks for listening to Works Not Working, Let's Fix It. I'm Siân Harrington and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow me on LinkedIn and for more bold and practical insight into the future of work, head to www.thepeoplespace.com. This episode was produced by Nigel Pritchard. Until next time, stay bold, stay curious, and let's redesign work for everyone.