Episodes

We put so much into our careers, trying to do our jobs well and impress management with our performance – but is that enough? The fact is that there are career skills that go beyond the scope of our job and a lot of people are not cognizant of them. Our guest today is Mark Herschberg, and as well as being a startup executive for the past 20 years has taught for a class called ‘Career Success Accelerator’ at the Massachusetts institute of Technology. He has now written a book called The Career To...

All of a sudden the term ‘The Great Resignation’ is everywhere as worker leave their jobs in droves in the wake of the pandemic. The U.S. has seen this hit record numbers, and we have seen it in Canada and in other countries as well. There are lots of reasons for why people are quitting, but one of the ones cited most often is that they feel unappreciated in their current positions. It is something to think about for companies, since the average cost to to replace an employee is twice their sala...

If some of your workforce is ‘visible’ in an office and some are ‘invisible’ at home, how can you ensure that everyone is treated fairly? There are many considerations for managers, particularly since hybrid work may disproportionately affect some groups of people, whether they are parents or older workers or anyone else; To talk about all of it, we are joined on this episode by Stephanie Dismore, Managing Director of North America for HP. Stephanie talks about the ways that HP has had to pivot,...

How do you bring together workers from different organization with different corporate cultures? Combining organizations may make sense from a business point of view, but when you do it you are often bringing together many disparate parts. Doing it effectively means crafting a communications strategy to get everyone communicating with each other, and then putting out a coherent message to the outside world, which can both be difficult tasks for managers and for workers alike. To talk about all ...

If you watch any kind of high level sports, you have to marvel at how much training it takes to get to an elite level as well as the training it takes to perform on game day. Doing things under pressure is not the same as doing them day to day in practice, and that is something to think about in the business arena as well. What are the lessons that elite athletes can give business leaders in terms of how to perform? To talk about that, we are joined on this episode by Diana Drury, Director of Te...

At one time mental health may have been a subject that organizations wanted to avoid discussing, but those days are rapidly disappearing . With the pandemic still ongoing, this is a very difficult time for many and as it is taking a toll on mental well-being. In turn, organizations are starting to realize that supporting their workers means supporting their productivity. Our guest today is Paula Allen, Global Leader and SVP, Research and Total Wellbeing at Lifeworks. Lifeworks has done considera...

It is the fourth quarter of 2021 and we are still in a state of flux in the work world.. Companies are struggling with whether to bring everyone back to the office, there are labour shortages all over, and just what normal looks like in terms of work is not really clear. But some organizations are handling things better than others. Our guest today is Tammy Browning who is President of KellyOCG. KellyOCG has done a comprehensive survey called the 2021 Global Workforce Agility Report that has lo...

Even in a post-pandemic world, it seems unlikely that we will ever go back to an old-style workplace where everyone comes into the office on a daily basis. Work from home arrangements and hybrid workplaces will be the norm, which means we will lean on technology more heavily than ever. The digital workplace will be our reality, but what makes an effective digital workplace? Our guest on the episode is Neil Miller, the host of the podcast The Digital Workplace. Neil talks to us about what we need...

With the pandemic not behind us yet, how can organizations be agile and willing to change up how we do things, maybe several times more before we get to the end of this? And how can workers come together to get things done effectively as we go through this phase of the pandemic? Jason Brommet, Head of Modern Work and Security Business with Microsoft Canada. joins us on theis episode to give us his insights on how to keep productivity high through the next phase of the pandemic, as well as how to...

Can you turn departing employees into loyal alumni? When a worker leaves, most companies bid them well, perhaps doing a hasty exit interview on the way out. That, however, may be a short-sighted way to do things. Today’s guests are Dr. Alison Dachner of John Carroll University and Erin Makarius of the University of Akron, author sof a recent article n the Harvard Business Review on the subject of how to turn departing employees into loyal alumni, and what they say is well worth listening to. Gu...

Sooner or later we will be going back to offices and work space, but we will be doing it with a different mindset. Partly that is around how safety how do we set things up so we don’t spread the next virus, but there are other considerations as well. We have gotten used to working from home, maybe from outside on our patios or in different places and we are going to bring a different sensibility to where we work when we come back. Given all of that, what should workspaces look like? Our guest on...

How do you create a corporate culture where workers have a voice, and if you are a worker how do you decide to speak up? Employees are the ones on the front lines, the ones who know what is going on in a organization and who could point out burgeoning problems before they become real trouble. That said, they often find it better to not speak up rather than raise their voices or they do raise their voices and they get ignored. There are so many examples, from alligators at Disney to planes at Boe...

Is there a way to fairly adjust salaries so that there are no disparities by race or sex or anything else? Our guest today says there is and she has put it into practice at her company. Marie Rose Roiux is CFO and VP Business Operations at Unito, a tech company that has developed a meticulous system to weed out disparities and ensure fairness – although that process means undoing some of what we consider normal business practices. Guest: Marie-Rose Rioux M. is Unito’s CFO and VP of business ope...

Can you use scenario planning to prepare for the future and the future of work? As the pandemic has shown, you can never be completed prepared for what might happen, but planning and imagining scenarios can definitely give you an advantage. Our guest today is Lance Mortlock, the author of Disaster Proof; Scencario Planning for a Post-Pandemic Future and he joins us to talk about how organizations and individuals can get read for the post-pandemic future by imagining the scenarios ahead of them a...

Have you ever been ghosted? Not on a dating app or by a friend, but in your work-life? It happens all the time. It may be the old we should have lunch thing- someone says it, you try to follow up and they never answer your call. Or, much worse, you are looking for a job and all seems to be going great with a company you are interviewing with and then you get radio silence. Why do people do that? Our guest today is Kristi De Paul, founder and principal at Nuanced, a thought leadership firm focus...

Is data-driven hiring the future, and if it is should we be happy or a little bit scared? With the economy heating upm we are seeing a surge in hiring, or at least a surge in companies trying to hire. As they look for the best hires, some are turning to ‘data-driven hiring’ basically making the best use of technology to fill roles rather than culling through resumes the old fashioned way and relying heavily on interviews. As might be expected this is a huge and controversial way to hire and ther...

How do we present and communicate now that we are in hybrid work world? .We have gotten used to presenting virtually to a team that is perhaps far-flung, so what happens now when we have to get back to the office and communicate to a team that partly in person but partly somewhere else? Do the same rules apply? And what about in-person presentations and interactions – do we even remember how to do them? Our guest today is Nick Dalley, President of Intentional Communications. He works with all k...

As we move towards the future of work, it is becoming increasingly clear that that that might mean re-thinking education models. We tend to think of education as being a few years after high school then maybe the odd course to pick up new skills when you are working, but really we should be thinking in terms of continuous retraining and reskilling. That can be done a lot of ways, but one that is really gaining traction is by doing sel-paced online learning courses which are already a huge force ...

Australia is held up as an example to those of us in North America and elsewhere in the world. They did not completely escape the pandemic, but they came pretty close and for the most part, they are back at work in offices, if they want to be. Still, things are not exactly the same as they were before the world had heard of Covid-19. What lessons does Australia have for us about post-pandemic office life? Our guest today is Robbie Robertson, Managing Partner, Virtual Office for Deloitte Australi...

We are getting good news on the economy and the labor market but are the statistics telling us the whole story? Even with a surge in hiring and a fall in the unemployment, there is a core of people who have been out of the labor market for a while and who are not being absorbed back in with the upswing in the economy. It is a problem that existed before the pandemic and which cannot be vaccinated away. To talk about what is going on and whether there are any policy fixes that might work, we are ...

Whatever else is going on in the economy or the world, one thing that never seems to change is our battle to have enough time to do everything we feel we need to get done in our work (and in our personal) life. We all have these lofty goals of what we are going to accomplish, but at the end of the day we often find that we are disappointed in what we had intended to do? So how do you get control of your time and how do we set realistic goals as to what we are going to do and how we can accomplis...

Is getting an MBA super important and the key to success, or is it an expensive waste of time that will not necessarily get you where you want to be? The market seems to go back and forth on it:some years it seems that there is a ton of demand for MBAs and other years they are not nearly as coveted. It is particularly compelling question right now, since coming out of the pandemic many people are thinking about what they want to do next, To discuss the issues around getting an MBA we are joined ...

The pandemic may be ending, but that does mean that workers are headed back to where they were in the spring of 2020. In some cases, their positions have been eliminated and they are going to be forced to reinvent themselves. In others, their jobs may be the same but they themselves have changed in some way and now want to reinvent their career. Reinvention may be the labor market topic of the post-pandemic period, but how do you make that happen? Our guest today is Dorie Clark and she is an exp...

How important will reskilling be to our economic future and what role should business play in making it happen? And what about continuous training? Business has always been reticent about training because there is always the risk that you could lose those trained at your expense to the competition In the tech sector though, there has been a mindset shift and the focus now seems to be on training a workforce, one that is available to help the industry as a whole. To talk about the issues around t...