Episodes

After work usually comes retirement, except that the line between the two is not quite what it used to be. With people living longer and with investments not always working out, there are a lot of people aged over 65 who make their way back into the labour force, sometimes by plan by often because after leaving their jobs they realize that they are not yet done with work. To talk about how this is playing out, Linda Nazareth is joined on this episode by Mike Drak, author of and Simon Chan, CEO o...

Despite the inroads women have made in the workforce over the past decades, the progress may not be as good as it looks particularly when it comes to the C-Suite. On this episode Monika Hamori, Associate Professor at the IE Business School in Madrid joins Linda Nazareth to take about a study she co-authored looking at 40 years of data on executives in the largest U.S. corporations and what it reveals about women’s progress – or lack thereof – and what companies can do to turn things around. Gue...

The workplace is in a state of flux, and that includes the physical workplace. It used to be the place we went to because that is where we could work – that was where the computers were and we had to sit in board rooms to meet with each other but that has changed. To discuss how to create new physical workspaces to go with the hybrid world, Linda Nazareth is joined on this episode by Doug Shapiro, VP of Research and Insights at global furniture manufacturer OFS and the host of the podcast Imagin...

Is it time to deconstruct jobs and how do we do that? On this episode Linda Nazareth is joined by Ravin Jesuthasan, co-author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Work Without Jobs How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System. They talk about why it may be time for a radically new way of looking at work and why the systems we have now around work are out-dated. Going forward, we may need to think in terms of a new “work operating system” that deconstructs jobs into their component pa...

Resilience has become a kind of buzzword when it comes to business and when it comes to our lives. We are told to be resilient and to bounce back from setbacks, and we also hear about the need for resilient organizations, especially in the wake of the turmoil in the world. But what to leaders need to understand about resilience and what are they getting wrong about it? To discuss that, Linda Nazareth is joined on this episode by Danielle King, Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences at Ric...

The finance sector has been one of the economic leaders over the past few years, with companies seemingly hiring as many workers as they can. And it isn’t just the finance sector…workers with skills in financial analysis have been in hot demand in all kinds of sectors and even if the economy slows a little over the next few years it does not seem like that will change. Then again, technology is disrupting everything and there are reasons to think that both the nature of jobs in finance and maybe...

This year has been a tough one for a lot of organizations. They have needed workers, sometimes needed them desperately, and it has not been easy to find them and they have been continuously losing them as we go through this thing called the Great Resingnation. Now there have been a lot of things that companies have tried in terms of attracting and retaining workers, like money and bonuses and time off. One thing that is also being tried, and perhaps will be one of the more successful ways to ho...

As we move to new models of work we have sometimes wondered whether remote workers are too isolated but are hybrid workers also isolated – and maybe even lonely? And if that is true, as some evidence suggests, what should organizations be doing to help workers with that isolation? On this episode Linda Nazareth is joined by Dr. Caroline Knight, Research Fellow at the Future of Work Institute at Curtin University in Australia, who has done research into the loneliness of hybrid workers. They talk...

What do concerns about ESG mean for the future of work? The pandemic aside though, we have a building awareness of what is going on in terms of environmental change in general, and a building awareness of ESG Investing. ESG-of course being the acronym for Environmental, Social, and (Corporate) Governance, the three broad categories, or areas, of interest for what is termed “socially responsible investors. At the same time, we are building a new workplace, changing the rules around work and the d...

Have you ever been asked to do something at work that you thought compromised your morals? It could be something big and dramatic like in a movie, where a worker is asked hide a report on safety even though it might mean people die or might be something more mundane. Maybe you were asked to tell your team that their jobs were safe even though you did not know if that was true, or maybe you had to tell a client that their work was going to get the company’s best resources even though you suspecte...

How we work impacts many things including the environment and equity and income distribution as welI and there are indications that moving more work remote could help us achieve our societal goals. To discuss why remote work could have so many spin-off benefits, Linda Nazareth is joined on this episode by Chase Warrington, Head of Remote at Doist. Guest: Chase Warrington Head of Remote, Doist Chase Warrington is the Head of Remote at Doist, a pioneer of distributed work that specializes in produ...

Is there a way to turn the Great Resignation into the Great Retention? For the past year we have heard a lot about the Great Resignation, the rush of people who are quitting jobs because they are not happy where they are, often for reasons that have nothing to do with compensation. That is leading to some good conversations within organizations about how to make people happier. To talk about some of the trends around retention, Linda Nazareth is joined on this episode by Mark Mancuso, Country Ma...

This is a special episode of work and the future sponsored by Microsoft, and it is on a special topic as well, the subject of disabilities in the workforce. More specifically it is about the disclosure of disabilities because there are far more people dealing with them than is easily visible to the eye. Disabilities span a wide swathe from mobility issues through to having a chronic illness through to having a learning disability. Sometimes organizations know about the disabilities that their w...

Is leadership training going to the wrong people? Typically organizations give leadership training it either to very senior people or those who they have identified by conventional metrics as future senior people, but maybe that is not the best way to do things. On this episode Linda Nazareth is joined by Navio Kwok Vice President of Research and Marketing at Kilberry Leadership Advisors, and Winny Shen an Associate Professor at the Schulich School at York University. They have done research tha...

As companies scramble to find hourly-paid workers, what can companies do to attract them? One thing would be to recognize that many of their workers are dealing with considerable financial stress, and that helping them to counter that would be of mutual benefit to workers and company. To talk about that, Linda Nazareth is joined on this episode by Sabina Bhatia, Chief Customer Officer of Payactiv a platform that gives workers ‘Earned Wage Access’ or basically the right to get their earnings with...

Toxic workplaces are everywhere and are frequently cited as one of the main reasons why people quit their jobs. What kind of culture allows toxic workplaces to flourish? And if you are a manager, what can you do to turn things around? To talk about how to avoid creating a toxic work culture, Linda Nazareth is joined on this episode by Charlie Sull, the Founder of Culture X and the co-author of an article on the topic in the MITSloan Management Review. Guest: Charlie Sull Co-Founder, Culture X ...

How do art and the world of work go together? If you are an artist, is that a conflict with working in a conventional environment? And if you are running an organization, is it good or bad to have artistic people working for you? The knee jerk is to say of course, we need people with creative minds so we embrace all kinds of skills, but the reality tends to be a little different. In many organizations we tend to overlook the skills that people bring to the table and that includes artistic skills...

When you hear the word ‘negotiation’ you probably think of a high stakes deal being made, but the reality is that we all have to negotiate in our work lives as well, whether that is for a raise or a promotion, or with workers that we manage. Many people however, have never really had a chance to develop those skills. Andres Lares is the Managing Partner and CEO of the Shapiro Negotiations Institute and the co-author of the book Persuade The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions. Andre...

Is hybrid work the best of both worlds or the worst of it? Even before the pandemic organizations struggled to find the right mix of having workers in the office or elsewhere and two years into it many are still trying to find the right model of work. To talk about this options, Linda Nazareth is joined on this episode by Prof. Nicholas Bloom, economics professor at Stanford University. Prof. Bloom thinks there is a happy medium with hybrid work and discusses his own research as well what he has...

How will work have to change to accommodate longer life spans? A child born today has a 50 per cent chance of living to one hundred, but even now we know the workforce is aging. In turn, that means we need to change both organizational policies and our own actions. Ken Stern, host of the new podcast Century Lives joins us on this episode to talk through the issues as we focus on the likelihood of more years of life and more years of work life as well Guest: Ken Stern is the Founder and Chair of...

How do we give graduates the skills they need to make a decent living and give organizations the tech skills they need to operate productively? Ryan Craig is the Managing Director of Achieve Partners and he joins us to talk about ways to give students outside of tech programs the skills needed by companies, with a view to both growing the economy and putting graduates on the path to making a solid living and being able to pay back the debts incurred to get their educations. Guest: Ryan Craig M...

What do space missions and remote work have in common? A lot as it turns out, which means that there is a lot that remote workers and those who manage them can learn from looking at what it takes for astronauts to operate effectively when so far away from their base stations. our guest on this episode is Dr. Louis Brennan, Professor of Business at Trinity Business School at the University of Dublin’s Trinity College. Dr. Brennan has done extensive research on the business of space and he shares ...

How do you not just accommodate hybrid work but actually create an effective hybrid culture? To talk about the effective strategies for doing that, we are joined on this episode by Carolyn Byer, HR Lead for Microsoft Canada who shares her experience of leading a hybrid team during the pandemic and discusses the best strategies to create and manage a hybrid culture, not just through a crisis but for the long term. Guest: Carolyn Byer Human Resources Lead, Microsoft Canada As Human Resources Lead...

Virtual meetings bring people together but as they do they also shift power dynamics as compared to live meetings. Who will be the winners and losers in this virtual world? As we virtually bring people into our homes, how are we changing our work lives? And what does it all mean for diversity outcomes? Our guest today is Laura Simpson, Chief Intelligence Officer of McCann Workgroup. She shares some interesting work done by McCann Workgroup on how virtual meetings are changing work and how we sho...