Over 40 businesses pledged to hire and train refugees at the Tent Partnership for Refugees business summit in Paris earlier this week. If these promises are realized, more than 250,000 refugees could start work in Europe in the coming years.

The non-profit organization Tent Partnership for Refugees was founded in 2016 with hopes to encourage the bloc's business community to employ refugees.

Tent held a business conference on Tuesday (June 20) for World Refugee Day. Over 40 companies attended, including Amazon, fashion retailer H&M, adidas, hotel groups like Hilton and Marriott, the beauty company L’Oréal and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. All pledged to offer jobs to refugees in the coming years.

There are now 4-5 million refugees in Europe. Many are women displaced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Companies pledging to offer jobs

Tent said “leading brands including Hilton, Marriott International and Teleperformance” have committed “to hire 13,680 refugees into their workforce."

Staffing agencies like Adecco, ManpowerGroup and Randstad are also offering to connect 152,000 refugees with their clients.

Training will be offered to more than 86,000 refugees at companies such as the professional services company Accenture, the insurance conglomerate Generali and the German job agency Indeed.

Google.org announced funding for Tent’s work in Poland, where a huge proportion of Ukrainian refugees reside, and Linkedin and Visa are offering funding support and professional mentorships, Tent said in a statement.

According to Tent, Amazon has committed to hiring at least 5,000 refugees over the next three years. Hilton has pledged to hire at least 1,500, while Marriott International pledged 1,500, ISS at least 1,000 and Teleperformance at least 500 refugees.

Read more: Germany: A job is more than just a source of income for Ukrainian women

Economic benefit

Tent said the commitments were expected to “generate over €2 billion in income for refugees across Europe each year.”

Margaritis Schinas, Vice President of the European Commission, who delivered the keynote speech at the summit, said: “With no end in sight to the Russian invasion of Ukraine – and with the European Union welcoming millions of Ukrainians -- it’s imperative that refugees are offered longer term inclusion and hope through integration into the labour market.”

Speaking about Ukrainian refugees, Schinas added that “far too many ... remain unemployed despite our endemic skills shortages, their high levels of education, desire to earn a living and legal right to work through the Temporary Protection Directive.”

Support for female migrants from Ukraine

The Commissioner said he hoped that “this unprecedented show of support from businesses across the continent will be critical to enabling tens of thousands of Ukrainians to provide for themselves and their loved ones back in Ukraine.”

Founder and president of Tent's Partnership for Refugees, Hamdi Ulukaya, acknowledged that “Ukrainian refugee women face many hurdles when finding jobs – from not knowing the local language to having to juggle childcare responsibilities. Businesses must do more to reduce these barriers, and help these incredible, strong, talented people enter the workforce.”

Ulukaya added that obtaining a job would change the lives of refugees.

"The moment a refugee gets a job, is the moment they stop being a refugee," he said, adding that he hopes the pledges from the companies enable “250,000 Ukrainian women and other refugees across Europe stand on their own two feet, giving them a chance to live lives of dignity.”

Diversity helps business

J.Ofori Agboka, Vice President of People eXperience and Technology (PXT) for Amazon’s Global Operations, said having a diverse workforce makes the company stronger.

That’s why “we actively seek to hire people with different backgrounds, skill sets, and levels of experience," he said.

The various staffing agencies making commitments were looking to place around 155,000 refugees in jobs.

Poland, a country that currently hosts around 1.5 million Ukrainians, is expected to benefit substantially from these commitments.

Kelly T. Clements, Deputy High Commissioner of the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR noted that “having a job puts refugees on the path to self-reliance, enabling them to support their families.”

Clements called refugees “innovators, taxpayers, employees, consumers, investors and entrepreneurs.” She added that there was “no better investment than helping refugees find work or gain the skills they need to enter the labor market. It simply makes good business sense.”

Read more: Germany looks to migrants and foreigners to fill employment opportunities

Proven impact

Daria Sedihi-Volchenko is one of the women who has already benefited from these types of schemes. Born and raised in Kyiv, Sedihi-Volchenko was employed as a project manager for the Ukrainian government with a solid CV and several languages including English and German, reports Euronews.

Upon her arrival in Poland, Sedihi-Volchenko managed to secure a job with Amazon Web Services as a project manager for Amazon’s launch of Skills 4U, a workforce development program helping Ukrainians pursue cloud computing careers.

Even with all her skills and experience, Sedihi-Volchenko admits to being “super anxious” as she began her job. “I just lost all my life and, you know, over 15 years of my career and then had to start over.”

Gideon Maltz, CEO of the Tent Partnership for Refugees, said that hiring refugees makes business sense, because it helps companies fill labor shortages and “harness amazing talent.”

He also acknowledged that it helps refugees begin to rebuild their lives and start the process of integration.

He concluded that if “Russia had hoped that the exodus of Ukrainians would destabilize Europe, today’s summit shows that Europe will be stronger and more prosperous for embracing Ukrainians and other refugees.”