Almost every second person in my close circle including me has lived, studied, or worked abroad. The life lessons and work experiences that we have gained are priceless. The most enriching experience remains the opportunity to meet people from different races, cultures, and ethnicities. Meeting people from diverse backgrounds allows you to see the uniqueness of various customs and traditions. While we are so different in many ways at the same time, we are quite similar.
The reason why I decided to talk about this topic is my realisation that in Bulgaria we are quite limited in terms of ethnic diversity. According to the last census in 2021, the Bulgarian ethnic group represents 84.6% of the population, the Turkish people are 8.4 %, and the Roma people around 4.4%. In the meantime, both in Bulgaria and the EU we have a shortage of workers and an ageing population. Therefore, we are witnessing different agreements between countries to employ workers from 3rd countries. In Bulgaria, the employment of seasonal workers has been practiced for years applying the national legislative requirements.
Recently, a proposal of law was tabled to simplify the recruitment process and to allow for the extension of employment contracts. To lessen the administrative burden companies often use the services of licensed local and foreign recruitment agencies that take care of everything in the employment process.
Recently I heard the following: “We don’t have problems attracting workers, we have problems with retaining the workers”. Some of the reasons behind the problems with retention are differences in wages between the workers and their Bulgarian counterparts, delays in payments, limited spare time, insecurity, and lack of certainty regarding visa extension, especially regarding the seasonal workers, and language barrier when dealing with public administration. While there is evidence of some improvements in the administrative processes, what could employers do to retain the workers?
Good practices
In Bulgaria, the initiatives about diversity and inclusion are growing, however, they are mainly focused on gender equality, and not so much on ethnic diversity and sexual orientation.
Some good practices that could be applied are unconscious bias training, mentoring programs, diversity, inclusion, and belonging training, celebrating different cultural and national holidays, employee resource groups, opportunities to provide feedback and mental health support. In Bulgaria, we already have workers from Nepal, Uzbekistan, Moldova, India, and Vietnam who represent different racial and ethnic diversity and could enrich our experience. We can only learn from them and ensure that we treat people with respect and make them feel welcome not only at the workplace but also in Bulgaria.
For companies, this means that diversity is not limited to women, age, and different abilities, but includes race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Having diverse teams will contribute to having more diverse customers which can lead to opening new opportunities for business and partnerships.
