Great Britain: more than a hundred companies mobilize in a drive to hire Ukrainian refugees

Major supermarket names including Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Iceland, Morrisons and Aldi, as well as food giant Nestlé’s subsidiary, along with telecommunications company Vodafone and the online retailer Asos have all joined forces in a consortium of companies, the aim of which is to offer jobs to Ukrainians fleeing the war in their county who have arrived in the UK. Conceived of and coordinated by Emma Sinclair, managing director of the software and enterprise brand enhancement company EnterpriseAlumni, more than 100 employers have joined the drive to hire more than 10,000. It’s continually growing, it’s a reflection of the goodwill of everybody, people and businesses have felt a sense of powerlessness about what is happening in Ukraine and want to do something to help,” explained Emma Sinclair, chief executive of Enterprise Alumni. For Ms. Sinclair, this initiative is “purely altruistic”, even if it is a fact that UK businesses have been facing staff shortages due to the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit. In a meeting with the UK government on 14 March, Emma Sinclair asked in particular for the creation of a database to know where Ukrainians are living in order to facilitate their recruitment. “We want to see movement on rising numbers of refugees ,” Ms. Sinclair also said in the press, while the business consortium also called for stronger government engagement. As of 15 March the UK had only officially issued 4,000 visas to refugees, and the UK government has been repeatedly accused of lacking humanity.