Plenty of mid-sized employers in Canada and the US now hire people who trained or worked in another country. Plants, warehouses, finance teams and technical groups all draw on newcomer talent, because the local pool is tight in many trades and professional roles.
The hire is the easy part. The harder part is the first 12 months. When a newly arrived employee leaves in that window, the employer pays for recruiting, paperwork, training and lost output, and then starts over. Most of the time the reason is not skill. It is how the workplace treated them.
The skills are not the gap
Someone with 10 years as a maintenance technician, a payables lead or a data analyst abroad usually has the technical ability. What they lack is local context:
- How work is actually assigned and how decisions get made here
- Which unwritten rules matter, such as how direct to be with a supervisor
- Safety, quality and documentation systems that differ from what they used before
- Software, terminology and shorthand that nobody ever explains
- How a Canadian or American workplace expects people to raise a problem
A manager who reads that gap as poor performance will coach the wrong thing. A manager who reads it as missing information fixes it in a week.
Belonging decides who stays
People stay where they feel they count. For a newcomer, that is more than a welcome lunch. It shows up in small, repeatable things:
- Whether their questions get a patient answer or a sigh
- Whether they are included in team meetings, group chats and shift handovers
- Whether coworkers pronounce their name correctly and bother to ask
- Whether their past experience is treated as useful or ignored
- Whether anyone notices when they go quiet
Isolation builds fast and quietly. A person who is new to the country, the city and the job at once has few other reasons to hold on when the work feels cold.
Five fixes that cost little
You do not need a new program or a large budget. You need a few habits applied consistently.
1. Assign a guide, not just a trainer
A trainer teaches the task. A guide answers the questions people are embarrassed to ask: how breaks work, who to tell about a schedule change, what that acronym means. Choose someone with patience and some tenure, give them a bit of protected time, and name them on day one. Check in with both people at 2 weeks and 6 weeks.
2. Write down the unwritten rules
Most workplaces run on assumptions nobody has put on paper. A one-page sheet covering how to report an absence, how to flag a safety concern, how overtime is approved and how performance is reviewed helps every new hire, not only newcomers. It also forces managers to notice how much they take for granted.
3. Train the frontline supervisor
The supervisor shapes the daily experience more than HR or the owner does. Spend an hour with supervisors on plain-language instructions, how to confirm understanding without talking down, and how to give feedback that is clear and not harsh. Poor supervision is the most common reason we hear for good people leaving.
4. Show the path forward
People stay when they can see a next step. Tell a new hire what the progression looks like: a lead role, a certification, a move from the floor to planning, a step from analyst to senior analyst. If foreign credentials need to be recognized or upgraded locally, consider helping with time off or part of the cost. It signals that you plan to keep them.
5. Check in early and ask real questions
At 30, 60 and 90 days, ask direct questions. What is confusing? What would you change about how we trained you? Is anything about the team making work harder? Write down the answers and act on at least one. People stop answering when nothing happens.
Watch for the early signs
Turnover in this group tends to follow a pattern. Attendance slips a little. Questions stop. The person eats alone, stays out of group conversation, or does only what is asked. These are cheap signals to catch and expensive to ignore. A short, private conversation at that point beats an exit interview.
Treat retention as part of the hiring plan
If you are filling roles from a wider talent pool, build the support into your cost per hire from the start. Count the guide's time, the supervisor training and the check-ins. Then track 90-day and 12-month retention for these hires against everyone else. If the numbers differ, you know where to look. If they match, you have a process worth repeating.
It also changes how you screen. Ask candidates what kind of onboarding helped them in past jobs, and ask your own team whether they are ready to support someone new. A strong candidate placed into an unprepared team still leaves.
What to do next
Pick one open role or a recent hire and walk through their first 90 days as they would have lived it. Note where they had to guess. Fix the first two gaps this month, then set a standing check-in schedule for every new hire.
If you are hiring across operations, manufacturing, finance, sales, contract or data roles and want help finding people who will stay, a Traverse recruiter can help with that.