It is a complicated time in the work world right now as organizations grapple with policies around the return to the office or remote or hybrid work. As well, the unemployment rate is rising, managers are dealing with stress around the economy and workers are...
So happy to have been part of the recent 'Transformation' Professional Development Day at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. I spoke about the future of work and then enjoyed the Q & A from the very engaged audience....
On this 100th episode of the podcast, Linda Nazareth is joined by Carolyn Byer, Human Resources Lead at Microsoft Canada who was one of the guests early in the pandemic lockdowns. More than two years later, Linda and Carolyn reflect on how organizations had to...
A different episode this week as Work and the Future Host Linda Nazareth is interviewed about her just-released book Working it Out: Getting Ready for the Redesigned World of Work. Special guest Bridgett Anderson, President and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, talks...
Working and making decisions go hand in hand. Every day we make dozens of decisions some thoughtful and good but others perhaps clouded by emotions or by haste. They are not all wise decisions – but maybe they could be, or maybe more of them...
So great to be in Banff (gorgeous in winter) to speak at the Western Connect event organized by BUKSA / Conferences + Associations . Thanks to National Speakers Bureau for booking!...
If no one is in the office, how can you create a culture? On this episode Linda Nazareth talks to Ken Babcock, CEO and co-founder of Tango, a browser and desktop application that automatically generates how-to guides. Ken leads a fully remote team of 30...
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...
Amazing to be part of a panel for ACCA this morning and to be discussing the future of work and the accounting profession with a global audience. ...
Was awesome to speak to the Ontario Municipal Financial Officers in lovely Blue Mountain, Ontario. Yes, the discussion was about the economy but it was also about resilience and why it is more important than ever to develop it both from an individual and an...
I now do a regular column with CBC Metro Morning discussing the economy and the future of work. This week I covered the new report from the World Economic Forum on the gender gap as measured by several metrics including health and labour force participation....
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...
The price of everything is spiralling which means all of the calculations that people made about retirement may need to be re-calculated. That might mean staying in the workforce longer or maybe returning after you have exited it. Whatever decisions people make will have wide...
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...
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...
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...
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....
Remote work is not going anywhere so was great to be part of a panel hosted by the Globe and Mail to discuss the implications of it, You can see more here ...
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...
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...
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...
Frito-Lays workers have recently settled a strike (over appalling work conditions) but that is not the end of the discussion on the best way to get snacks into bowls. Right now the answer is apparently to grind out shifts from human beings, but the next...
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...
Schools, colleges, universities - are they the right providers to educate workers for the future of work? Or are their models the wrong ones for the education we will need in future? I tackled some of these issues in my latest column for the Globe...
Working virtually is awesome for a lot of people, although it might be slightly less awesome for younger workers. If your home office is actually a laptop propped up on your bed, and if you haven't got anyone to socialize with beyond your cat -well,...
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...
Remote work used to be looked at with suspicion, but after nearly a year of trial by fire, everyone knows it is great - right? Actually, not right. Despite having tried it out for months, many managers still view remote work as very much second...
Was privileged to moderate a great roundtable on 'New Approaches to Reskilling and Upskilling Displacd Workers' for th Business Council of Canada and the Public Policy Forum last week. Moderating by teleconference is a bit different than doing it in person, but takes me back...
Coming September 2021, my new book Where We Left Off: Ten Trends Changing the Post-Pandemic Economy. Looking forward to speaking on the topic in person then and virtually anytime! Contact speaking@relentlesseconomics.com to book. ...
Can an organization actively build a a resilient workforce? Are there ways to create resilient workers? It would seem to be to our advantage to do that: according to a study published by PwC, programs that foster a resilient and mentally healthy workplace returned $2.30...
This is episode 2 of a special 4-part special series of Work and the Future called Coming Back Stronger sponsored by Microsoft. In Episode 1 we talked about what organizations should do to come back ready for the post-pandemic world, but what about individuals? Their...
This is episode 1 of a special 4-part special series of Work and the Future called Coming Back Stronger sponsored by Microsoft. We are still fighting this pandemic but we are also seeing light at the end of the tunnel. But how are we going to...
In a world where civility is in short supply, is there a way to keep our workplaces civil? These days, politics often divides us, with feelings running deep, and the extra stress of the pandemic can bring tensions to the fore. Still, there are ways...
The gig economy gets a lot of negative press, but is it actually a bad thing? Although some think it is synonymous with income insecurity and bad management practices, in fact for many it is the way they choose to work. For professional workers who...
I am so excited to share that I will be speaking at Microsoft's Future Now event, to take place virtually October 27th and 28th, I will be one of more than 100 speakers talking about digital transformation, the future of work, and being primed to...
We are getting close to a vaccine for Covid-19 and a return to something approaching normal in the workforce. But will normal look like for companies? And how should companies plan for the post-pandemic future of work? Our guest today is Cathryn Barnard a Partner...
Are you afraid of unemployment or are you sure you are forever employable? As the economic outlook becomes increasingly uncertain, many people would put themselves in the first category but would certainly like to be in the second. Our guest today is Jeff Gothelf, author...
It is something you hear about a lot - the need to be innovative. We hear that innovation is the key to economic growth, or the companies need to encourage innovation – but what does that really mean? Our guest on today's episode is Anders...
Climate change it was an issue before the pandemic, and it will be an issue when the pandemic is over.More than that, the issue of climate change will be a long term issue that impacts the future of work. Between the ways that we operate...
When we think about the words that go with 'leadership', 'heart' is rarely among them but perhaps it should be. The pandemic has shown us that business as usual is no longer going to get the job done, and as well we are all acutely...
Why choose one career when you can do more than one at the same time? In these days of gig jobs and the need to pivot as the economy change, maybe we should thinking hard about 'portfolio careers' or doing several things at the same...
The pandemic has forced a giant-scale experiment in online education, and by many accounts it is going very poorly. From first graders to college students, everyone seems to be frustrated at having to take the classroom experience to a crowded space in the kitchen, and...
Remote work is having a minute, or rather a series of them. Some companies have used it for years, some have been adamantly against it, but both kinds are being forced into it at the moment. As the pandemic forces millions to figure out some...
A big misunderstanding? Uber and Lyft drivers are protesting across ten U.S. cities this week, as well as in the U.K., South America and Australia, saying that the companies are treating them unfairly. The companies say that they are a great deal for the drivers,...
No one is saying central bankers ever had an easy job, but at least in days gone by it used to be a bit more straightforward. If labor was in short supply wages went up and people had more money to spend and prices went...
Whenever I speak before an audience I inevitably bring up the subject of demographics, because to me it is the aging-elephant in the room. Whether I am engaged to talk about the economic outlook or about interest rates or about the future of work, it...
Jobs come and jobs go, but are the ones that are coming as good as the ones that we are losing? I was taken by some new research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which looked at the job titles being added and found a...
Okay, we have to talk about a recession. It might not happen, but enough indicators are suggesting that it is a possibility that we do have to go there. At the moment, we have these incredibly low unemployment rates in Canada and the U.S. but...
This is my latest article for the Globe and Mail..this time on 'Perennials' as older workers are sometimes called. Those over 55 now comprise about 23 per cent of the U.S. workforce and 21 per cent of the Canadian one, which should not surprise anyone....
I recently had the chance to do a great interview with Anne Gaviola of VICE on 'How Not to be Replaced by a Robot at Work'. For those of you who are not aware, VICE is a site that primarily attracts those under the age...
In my latest column for the Globe and Mail I write about the controversial subject of a robot tax. In one sense it is fair enough: if you hire workers you have to pay a payroll tax, so if you go with robots (or cobots,...
Money is cool but workers need more than that: after all, there are droves of well-paid workers who right-this-minute are sprucing up their resumes because they feel like they cannot stand a single more day at their jobs. If you asked them why they are...
We have kind of been moving to a winner-take-all world for a while, but a decade after the recession the trend only seems to be intensifying. The McKinsey Global Institute did a pretty thorough job of looking at the phenomenon in a recent paper, making...
The Bank of England seems to be asking the hard questions about future of work...
Automation is cool in so many ways and it is going to do great things for business. It is even going to create amazing new jobs that we cannot even get our minds around yet. But here's the thing: they may not be jobs for...
My latest column for the Globe and Mail sparked a bit of a reaction – I got a lot more comments than usual. The subject? ‘Class’, and whether originally coming from a lower socioeconomic class hurt people’s careers right from the time they sent out...
Seems like a ridiculous concept (at least in North America) but some British researchers say you should. I see it more as a sweetly retro concept, a last ditch effort to separate work and leisure. See my Globe and Mail column on the subject here ...
We have a labor crunch now, and for the most in-demand talent it is only going to get worse. That’s why I have to applaud Disney’s new ‘Disney Aspire’ tuition reimbursement program. See my piece for the Globe and Mail here....
If you want to pick a restaurant you might check out a Yelp review, and if you want to pick a hotel you might check out TripAdvisor. What happens though when someone is deciding whether to hire YOU and you are at the mercy of...
Here is my latest Globe and Mail column an d it is kind of radical. Given that lives are getting longer, should we think about starting careers later, maybe as late as 40? Crazy right? Maybe, but maybe we need to at least open our minds...
Well maybe most people do still work ‘normal’ hours but they want to shake things up as well. See the column I wrote about the topic for the Globe and Mail here....
I kind of love the way that Vermont is dealing with its old-and-getting-older labor force problem. They want millennials (or anyone) who usually just shows up to ski to think about setting up show and telecommuting from the state with the lovey autumns – and...
Changing technology is turning into tragedy for some of those whose lives and likelihoods are…but I don’t think we can legislate change away. See my latest piece for the Globe and Mail and here....