Browsing by Subject "inskolning"

This study examined how work orientation is carried out at the workplace for workers with immigrant background, how immigrants have integrated to the chosen workplaces and how they see their future work related development. Immigration to Finland has expanded during the last decades and many immigrants are of working age, which makes the multicultural issues relevant in working life. Research in Finland has focused on how well immigrants get into the labour market. Studies have also been carried out in multicultural work environments, including nursing, expert and customer service occupations. Studies exploring cultural differences between working cultures have been popular on an international level and in business life, but they have not answered the question how differences of working cultures are visible and influence in the multicultural work environment. Research with a more critical view has been carried out at multicultural workplaces. In this study challenges and good practices, which have developed in work orientation and integration of immigrant workers, are being explored. Fifteen workers with immigrant background and five immediate superiors in two organizations in the metropolitan area were interviewed for the study. Two immediate superiors have immigrant backgrounds. Organizations that employ workers for duties which do not require former education and that already for a longer period of time have employed immigrant workers were chosen for the study. The interviews proceeded according to the semi structured interview guide. Many of the challenges for both work orientation and integration that the organizations, work communities and workers with immigrant backgrounds face turned out be connected to language skills. Moreover in relation to differences in working culture the significance of personality was often stressed. Certain phenomena related to different background and working culture emerged and require accommodation to the Finnish workplaces. To overcome the challenges of language skills and working culture different methods were used for job familiarization and work orientation. Four informants had though moved to Finland as children and did neither face language nor cultural challenges. The study helps to understand how it is to take part in the Finnish working life as an immigrant and how multifaceted the concept immigrant is at the workplace. It also shows that rather than placing the focus on finding cultural differences it would be more beneficial to study what their actual significance is in the multicultural work environment and how the immigrants' language skills develop in the Finnish working life.