Group items tagged

This article relates to the TED Talks video by James Hansen that we watched this week. The article describes the way in which environmentally unfriendly jobs such as work in the Alberta Oil Sands needs to be slowed down however so many people are employed there, they are unwilling to give it up. The article also states that climate change will dramatically affect outdoor employment such as construction jobs, postal jobs and landscaping. These workers will be forced to adapt to hotter working conditions which can in turn affect one's health. It is also important to note in the article that they give alternatives to work with the changing climates. Green jobs are readily available for people who are willing to make the career change. This is an interesting article and definitely worth the read!

Friedman describes three convergences that have changed the playing field. The second one describes new technologies combined with new ways of doing business and how it creates a bigger impact. Friedman uses SouthWest Airlines as an example and this article is about five businesses that have changed because of technology - travel being one of them.

I've included this discussion paper with an international flavour that shows the impact of climate change on various sectors across the globe. As stated in unit one, climate change will affect every part of our lives and have an impact on employment in many sectors. The aim of the paper is actually to create employment standards; the most important part is the first ten pages when it describes the potential impact on work. It will help provide a better understanding of the far reaching impact of climate change in the upcoming years and how we can best adapt ourselves.

The Workforce Planning Board of Waterloo Region has created this document to point out population changes, including changes in the working age population, migration changes, and employment changes for each sector in the last year. According to the document, Real Estate, Crop Production and Animal Production are the top 3 growing industries in the Waterloo Region, while Specialty Trade Contractors, Professional, Scientific and Technical Services, and Management of Companies and Enterprises are the 3 most declining sectors. The 2014 report has not yet been released.

The forces of the Shift that surrounded the changing face of poverty really interested me. I saw these as being important to my future because of my keen interest in social justice. I can see my future work having to do with helping underprivileged people. This article provides an interest perspective on why the face of the poor is changing, even though between 2005 and 2010 nearly half a billion people escaped $1.25-a-day poverty.

Theodre Lewis shows his relevant concern with the impacts of technology on work and jobs which Gratton and Fiedman have elaborated in their books The Shift and The World is Flat respectively. Lewis's imperative voice is that the vocational institutions have to incorporate the technological trends to the traditional concepts of education system in order to make students adaptable to current job market. He pinpoints that those whose who are engaged in career designing or teaching now require to focus "on changing skill needs, changing work, changing jobs, and the role that technology plays in such change, there is need for an ongoing related discourse." This information is relevant to the course contents we dealt with.

This article related to chapter 6 of the The Shift, where Gratton outlines how Gen Y-ers like John and Susan seek social engagement over personal financial success. It also discusses a recent rise in 'social entrepreneurship', where young graduates are creating their own social change start-ups as a way to fulfill both their need for employment and sense of social responsibility.

Times have immeasurably changed since the '50s and '60s, but is it for better or for worse? One of the major reasons for all the change in the world is the advances in technology. It is actually quite amazing how far technology has come since 1950, with technology nowadays we have the world at our fingertips. This opinion letter talks about how technology has changed the workplace, the way we learn and our lives in general. Have we become too dependent on technology?

For this weeks last posting I decided to put up something on how how technology is changing people's work lives. This article talks about changing work rules, such as working from home or virtually. It also talks about how in the future computer science and information technology will rapidly grow.

This bookmark shows through a animated graphic the change in employment rate since 1980. It's interesting to see how the different countries are affected by employment trends, such as the 1980s recession, 2008 recession, stock market drops and other further world events. According to the graphic and the accompanying article, it shows that the US was hit harder than Canada during the 2008 recession but recovered sooner.

I'm not sure how this works, but here is the annotated link, it is easier to read if you can look at the acutal annotated website...perhaps I did something wrong. https://diigo.com/030tpr The Seed & Plant Sanctuary for Canada is a charitable organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of heritage seeds, and maintaining, evaluating and keeping records for all the edible, medicinal and useful crops that can be grown in Canada.

This article from the National Post talks about five cultural shifts that are changing the corporate workplace. These include the level of trust between employers and employees, the ways in which companies hire and fire employees, the end of the "40 hours work week" and importance of task related work as opposed to time constraints in new young workers, reputation and the need for young workers to find satisfaction and meaning in their work, and demand for corporations to donate a portion of profits to charitable causes. An interesting article that relates to trends in upcoming generations of young workers.

Richard Paul's article is about the increasing need, in this intertwined, globalized world for us to foster critical thinking in our children. As we have already learned from both 'The World is Flat' and 'The Shift', in this flattened world, simply obtaining basic skills or knowing the answers to certain questions will not be enough. Paul argues that our current K-12 school system is not breeding creative students, and is not giving students a chance in the ever-changing work landscape. He maintains that in order to keep up with globalization, we need to be fostering in our children the ability to problem solve creatively, to anticipate patterns and meanings, to think abstractly, to ask 'why', and to be able to communicate, collaborate, and negotiate with others.

This article echos Friedman in touching on how smartphones have converged so many platforms/task/activities that they have changed the way we live and work.

This article takes an interesting look at how Nordic countries are reshaping their economies after the economic lows in 2007-08. Interestingly enough, much has been changing since Economics for Everyone was published in 2008. Very interesting read!

This article from the Economist published in 2012 discusses recent changes to the Swedish economy and the lessons that Anglo-Saxon economies such as the US can learn from their example.

What to learn how to establish a career in this new economy? Look no further than the current generation of young people - that is, those age 20 and younger. To uncover some interesting revelations about the newest generation, Gen Z, I partnered with the third-largest staffing organization in the United States, Randstad US, on a global study analyzing how Gen Z's views of the workplace compared to Gen Y's.

This short article from a marketing school resource outlines key themes for self-marketing and the need for skill mastery in the changing workplace. While also providing more general advice to job-seekers everywhere in the form of how to put yourself out there. 

With my keen interest in social justice, I thought this was a great article to end the year on. This article summarizes much of what I feel about poverty and social justice. Career counselling is very client focused, and poverty is a socially constructed issue, and often the barriers our clients face are external to themselves. At the end the author sites how we must work with the community to make meaningful change for our clients. This is of utmost importance to me.