What we can learn from Canada – FoodShare Toronto case

FoodShare Toronto, a Canadian organization that promotes food security with a cultural diversity emphasis, attracts managers and human resources specialists for its job interview payment policy in 2022.  

This company recently announced that $75 would be paid to people who attend job interviews daily.  

The primary motivation behind this policy is to recognize the effort of candidates put into preparing and attending consecutive job interviews.  

Undoubtedly, companies, human resources departments and experts, and staffing agencies can learn significant lessons from the FoodShare policy.

In this blog post, you will learn more about FoodShare policy and the exciting debate on the four-day work week programs that are taking place in Canada.  

People Are Not Just Workers  

Job interview payments policies have provoked significant debates on how organizations and businesses must appreciate people’s time and efforts to obtain a job with decency in Toronto and Canada. These discussions apply for job interviews and interviews for media or journalists.  

For instance, Adina Solomon asserts that journalists and public figures are often unaware that media industries and companies must pay for their appearance in TV shows. There is a widespread belief that no interview payment must be recognized, no matter its purpose. People are seen as simply workers but not as human beings. 

Do companies and staffing agencies pay for the job interviews they request daily to potential candidates? In a strict sense, yes. In the opinion of many experts, paying for interviews entails a recognition of the workers as human beings that need a great job to fulfill their dreams and aspirations to have a dignified existence in Toronto.  

In addition, candidates do not just attend job interviews in Canada to answer questions merely. Sometimes, recruiters ask for free jobs during interviews. Louise Carleton recounts how she was asked to submit an article to move forward with the hiring process during a job interview. Carleton did not get the job, and the company never paid for the article she wrote.  

Your company could benefit from a human resources policy that contemplates remote workers as human beings with aspirations and emotions in 2022. You may want to hire human resources generalists, coordinators, administrators, and project managers to develop this policy.  

Foodshare Toronto’s Policy to Pay for Interviews  

FoodShare Toronto affirmed that job seekers need to be compensated to struggle against poverty, guarantee food security, and achieve social justice in Canada in 2022. By implementing this policy, FoodShare intends to promote in all potential candidates their need to prepare correctly for job interviews and take enough time to meet the requirements for a specific job position.  

According to Paul Taylor, this organization’s executive director, “We recognize that when you prepare for an interview, that is labor. It’s labor we feel employers have been expecting candidates to pay for a long time and that’s kind outrageous, especially when you think in those situations about who has more resources and who has more power”.  

In this video, you will know more about Foodshare Toronto’s policy.
 

A Four-Day Work Week Program 

In Canada, a discussion is taking place on whether companies should implement four-day work week programs. For example, Alida Inc., a Toronto-based technology company, introduced this program as a significant element of its human resources policy. This decision was motivated by the concerns of many workers during the pandemic, such as burnout, government restrictions to mobility, and mental health issues. In this program, employees maintain the same pay rate while enjoying the benefits of shorter work periods.