Trinity Tech Inc. – 2012 RBC Immigrant Advantage Award for SMEs

When Dunstan Peter, President and CEO of Trinity Tech was growing his company, he needed highly skilled people to give his small business the advantage. His skilled immigrant hires did just that.

 

The immigrant advantage for a small/medium sized business (SME):

• Diversity of thought and experience to develop innovative solutions for clients
• Language skills and cultural know-how to build relationships and establish the business in other countries

By the numbers:

• 60% of Trinity Tech’s 120 person Canadian workforce are skilled immigrants representing 15 countries
• An estimated 30% of company growth and 40% of innovative solutions is attributed to skilled immigrants
• Nearly 20% of Trinity Tech employees were hired as newcomer clients from ACCES employment

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Profile

When Dunstan Peter arrived in Canada from Sri Lanka in 1993 at the age of 17, he had only a grade five education and limited prospects. Yet, 20 years later, Dunstan is at the head of his own successful engineering consulting firm, Trinity Tech Inc., and giving many other new immigrants their first professional opportunity in the country.

Started in 2009 and focusing on three sectors – quality assurance, automation & green energy – Trinity Tech has over two hundred employees in Canada, Mexico and the United States. A hundred and twenty are based out of Toronto, and of these over sixty per cent are skilled immigrants. In fact, Dunstan attributes much his company’s success to this skilled immigrant workforce.

“Our diverse workforce really helps to keep the company innovative,” says Dunstan. “The diverse work environment gives us the opportunity to learn about different business practices from around the world.”

Trinity Tech has put that diversity of thought and experience to use finding innovative solutions for their clients. For example, the diverse background of Trinity Tech’s engineers helped them develop innovative solutions for one of the top three automotive manufacturers, dramatically reducing the reject rate for their product coming off the production line.

Trinity Tech’s international workforce has other advantages as well. With an opportunity to expand into Mexico, Trinity Tech’s Spanish speaking employees, with their language skills and cultural know-how, helped to build relationships and establish the business there. Now the Mexican operations make up approximately 15% of Trinity Tech’s total revenue.

As a small business with limited human resources capacity, Dunstan works closely with ACCES Employment for his hiring needs. ACCES is an employment service provider working with new immigrants. They make the hiring process easy for Trinity Tech by pre-screening their clients to match Trinity Tech’s job requirements. At the same time, Trinity Tech gives new immigrants, many of them internationally trained engineers, the opportunity to get their first Canadian work experience, and in many cases, the opportunity to work towards getting their Canadian designation.

In the end, it is a win-win for Dunstan and his team. Dunstan attributes an estimated 30% of company growth and 40% of innovative solutions to his skilled immigrant team and for many of these, Trinity Tech is their path to their own Canadian dream.

 

Find solutions to better integrate skilled immigrants into your workplace or contact TRIEC for more details.