Teleworking has made employers realize that they can hire professionals remotely beyond the usual borders. Quebec is no exception to this phenomenon, which does nothing to alleviate the labor shortage in the province. First article in a series of three on this new paradigm of the labor market: when teleworking breaks down borders.
Teleworking has made employers realize that they can hire professionals remotely beyond the usual borders. Quebec is no exception to this phenomenon, which does nothing to alleviate the province’s labor shortage. First article in a series of three on this new paradigm of the labor market: when teleworking breaks down borders.
Pier-Hugues Pellerin is a team leader at Elastic, a company with 2,700 employees in around 30 countries which specializes in the development of research tools for complex computer databases. When asked where Elastic is based, he pauses before answering. The company was founded in 2012 in Amsterdam, but is headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Above all, it does not have large offices where most of its employees meet every day. Pier-Hugues Pellerin himself rarely leaves his home in eastern Montreal to work. As his team has members on the West Coast of North America, in Europe and as far as Australia, his work schedule is highly variable.
His salary conditions are above the industry average in Canada. Most importantly, he participates in a stock option plan that his employer offers him on a regular basis. If he ever thinks of leaving Elastic, he will have to quickly liquidate shares he owns and will obviously lose access to call options that he has not yet exercised.
“It’s a lot better than receiving an end-of-year bonus, since stocks improve as the company gains in value. If a new employer were to approach me, he would have to compensate with a big signing bonus … But whatever, because I do not plan to return to a more traditional job from 9 a.m. to 5 a.m. offered $ 50,000, ”he says.
Golden handcuffs
Pier-Hugues Pellerin was hired by Elastic seven years ago. At the time, few employers offered such a teleworking formula. Five years and – above all – a pandemic later, the phenomenon has grown sufficiently large to seriously annoy many Quebec and Canadian companies, which have their best employees taken by foreign companies.
As if the labor shortage was not glaring enough in Canada, foreign employers are taking advantage of the increased financial power they have at home thanks to a weak Canadian currency to come and poach the most qualified professionals. They are offered dream hiring conditions with bonuses and stock options that bind them in the very long term to their new employer.
“It may be good for the employees, but it’s a big problem for the employers”, summarizes Pierre-Philippe Lortie, director of public and government affairs of the Canadian Council of Innovators (CCI), sort of think tank founded a few years ago by Ontario businessman Jim Balsillie, former boss of BlackBerry (which at the time was called Research in Motion).
“Where Canada has talent, foreign companies are present,” he says. “Microsoft and Google see good profiles on sites like LinkedIn and offer advantageous conditions. They have deep pockets and can offer $ 130,000 to an employee who is currently earning $ 100,000. This is a serious problem for just about all of our members. The CCI has representatives from some 140 companies in Canada, including about sixty in Quebec.
This raiding is significant enough to have an upward effect on wages in certain sectors, especially in technological jobs. All jobs that involve software or that can be accomplished exclusively using cloud computing tools that are on servers hosted anywhere in the world are targeted.
No job creation
What works for workers, who see their wages thus being generously increased, annoys employers, who consider the practice unfair: it is not new professionals who have just entered the labor market who are in the sights of foreign giants. Their prime candidates usually already have a job and are just getting kicked out.
We are not talking about job creation here, but outright raiding. “It’s a real tsunami,” explains Pierre-Philippe Lortie. He recalls that, for the Quebec computer technology (ICT) sector alone, there are currently 13,000 positions to be filled immediately. Not new jobs, but already existing ones for which companies have no candidate to suggest.
And how are Canadian employers reacting? “They in turn will hire workers abroad. Quebec SMEs are looking for professionals in Africa, Asia or South America. “
It is no longer just a question of labor shortages. It is the very bursting of the labor market, which no longer knows borders. “This is the new paradigm; we are now living this reality and we do not yet have the solution, but I am not sure that it will be viable in the long term, ”concludes the spokesperson for the Canadian Council of Innovators.
Tomorrow: Who benefits from video game wage assistance?