This qualitative study explores the onboarding of immigrants in four small to medium Canadian companies in less popular immigrant destinations and the perceived efficacy from the perspectives of non-immigrant executives, managers and non-managerial employees. Results from the inductive analysis of 28 semi-structured interviews produced a grounded model for onboarding immigrants in less popular immigrant destinations based on three main findings. First, onboarding is an iterative learning process consisting of seven overlapping phases. Second, onboarding programs should be framed by a culture of continual development, communication, and teamwork. Last, a novel contribution, onboarding is bi-directional, where training should be provided for both incoming and existing workers. Practical and theoretical implications as well as future research directions are discussed.
