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Melinda Mah

What Makes a Healthy Work Environment? - Healthy Environments - 0 views

  • Physically inactive employees cost employers $488 more per year in more in sick time, benefits and lost productivity
    • Melinda Mah
       
      It's to the employer's and owner's advantage to encourage good health in the medium- and long-term.
  • Employees who smoke cost companies $3,396 more each year
    • Melinda Mah
       
      Yet another reason not to smoke - it makes sense considering all the ill effects of smoking that we now know about.
  • Mental and nervous disorders have replaced musculoskeletal conditions as the top conditions causing long-term disability.
    • Melinda Mah
       
      Now that it's become the more common thing, perhaps some of the stigma will go away, especially when it comes to fear of being fired or not promoted in a workplace.
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  • encourage workers to take responsibility for their own health, safety and wellness and contribute to creating a healthy work environment
    • Melinda Mah
       
      No one understands a person's health like that person.
  • create environments that make the healthy choice the easy choice
    • Melinda Mah
       
      This is important to do in many aspects of life. If fast food wasn't junk food, people would probably still choose it because it's easy.
  • promote work-life balance and make work a healthy life experience
    • Melinda Mah
       
      This shows employers care about their workers. It also means that there will be higher retention. For companies who are afraid that young people will leave after a year or two at their company and who refuse to train young people, it seems like this would be one of a bunch of ways to encourage employees to stay with that company. Treating employees well and caring about them makes tham more likely to stay.
  • jobs are challenging
    • Melinda Mah
       
      This is a good point that success only comes when jobs are challenging. Many people in low-paying jobs are unhappy because they do the same thing day-in, day-out, and it doesn't require much thought.
  • employees have adequate resources to do their job
    • Melinda Mah
       
      This reminds of jobs where employees have to bring in their own stuff to make their workplace happy, or even functional. Specifically, this reminds me of the elementary school teachers who are given a tiny budget that isn't even adequate for providing everyone with pencils for a year, let alone all the books, paper, markers, chalk and other teaching supplies.
  • Lower absenteeism
    • Melinda Mah
       
      Definitely true. If I had absolute independence in middle school, I would have skipped a lot of my classes and gone to do something else more interesting - like go to the library and read a bunch of books. As well, many people will show up but not actually do work. Because many people are paid either a) an hourly wage or b) to show up during certain hours, it encourages workers to be less effective with their time.
  • lexibility – allowing employees to have some capacity to adapt their workday to respond to family issues such as a child becoming ill or one who has special needs, school visits and parent-teacher interviews or special needs of elders. It typically includes family responsibility leave for employees. Supportive supervisors/managers whose management style values staff and is characterized by a desire to help employees achieve better balance between work and the rest of their lives. A culture that is family friendly - overall attitudes, beliefs, values and taken-for-granted ways of doing things that support work-family issues as legitimate workplace concerns, and as an opportunity to develop ‘new ways of working’.  Options include maternity, paternity, family and personal leave provisions. Alternative work arrangements – options are available to employees including daily or scheduled flex time arrangements, job-sharing, reduced hours, compressed work week, family leave options, part-time work, gradual retirement, telecommuting, other leaves and sabbatical options. Such alternative work arrangements are seen as ways of working, and employees using them are not sidelined, marginalized or belittled. Recognition of child and elder care issues including support for child care, providing access to a service regarding child or elder care, establishing on-site child care or, developing a consortium with other employers in order to provide emergency child care. This includes accommodating the needs of employees who are breastfeeding their children.
    • Melinda Mah
       
      In this list of reasons, all except one are family-oriented. I'm guessing only parents and children count as making a "family" for many people. Personally, I don't plan to have kids, and one of my parents passed away shortly after I finished high school. I hope this flexibility extends to family needs for couples who won't/can't have kids. Also, I wonder if this flexibility will extend to pet emergencies? What counts as a valid pet who is member of the family? For example, I can see a workplace sympathetic to a dog or cat, but maybe not to hermit crab.
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    A page of the BC Ministry of Health website that outlines what makes a healthy work environment. It's most important for the business itself to promote health because it makes it easier for all employees to be healthy and productive. Annotated Link: https://diigo.com/05nyj6
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    A page of the BC Ministry of Health website that outlines what makes a healthy work environment. It's most important for the business itself to promote health because it makes it easier for all employees to be healthy and productive. Annotated Link: https://diigo.com/05nyj6
shawnaderksen

Global warming at work: how climate change affects the economy and labour | Toronto Star - 0 views

  • Alberta’s oilsands crop up — the much-disparaged oilsands that also provide employment to tens of thousands of people.
  • f workers can be assured that by slowing the pace of development, technology can be improved to limit the effect on the environment, he says, “they will recognize that change needs to happen.” But, he adds, they are not prepared to see the industry shut down.
  • which said the planet was on course to becoming two degrees Celsius warmer. It also predicted heat waves will occur more frequently and will last longer; wet areas will get more rainfall, dry regions will get less; and sea levels could rise by almost one metre by 2100.
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  • A warmer planet directly affects postal workers, landscape workers, construction and sanitation workers, “and that means they need different kind of protection,” says Lipsig-Mummé. “These jobs will have to be done radically differently.”
    • shawnaderksen
       
      Climate change will dramatically affect the work habits of outdoor labourers. The rising temperatures will make less tolerable work days. 
  • All of that will affect work in different sectors, in more ways than we can imagine
  • In Bangladesh, considered ground zero for climate change, millions of farmers on the coast have left their villages and moved to the capital city of Dhaka because rising sea levels have devoured farmland and monsoon rains, on which farmers depend, are unpredictable.
    • shawnaderksen
       
      Climate change has green jobs to offer however people are refusing to leave their current positions to take a new one in a field that has the potential to help. 
  • At the other end, global warming can wipe out jobs completely, she says
  • Some jobs, on the other hand, will become more important as the earth grows warmer.
  • mergency workers such as firefighters, police officers and paramedics face genuine dangers in a warming climate.
  • “As I see it, there is potential to create thousands and thousands of well-paying green jobs … there is transportation, retrofitting of homes, energy efficiency,” he says.
    • shawnaderksen
       
      Climate change has green jobs to offer however people are refusing to leave their current positions to take a new one in a field that has the potential to help. 
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    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!
jscharrer

Working hard or hardly working? - Macleans.ca - 0 views

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    In writing my paper on Shift I reflected a lot how technology globalization and fragmentation are impact the stress felt at work. This in an interesting article burnout norms of Western work culture.
michwilson

24 Ways Working From Home Will Destroy Your Soul - 1 views

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    In the Shift it is outlined working from home and the impact on one's daily lifestyle and social functioning. The HuffPost article is a very light hearted "poke" at the challenges of working from home and highlights the impact of taking out the "social" from working in an office environment. Although light, it does bring forth some serious transitions from working in a traditional work environment.
alliemacdonald

Health Effects of Precarious Employment - 1 views

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    A very interesting article to read and reflect on prior to working as an employment counsellor, as many clients have worked, currently work, or will work in precarious employment relationships. The article defines precarious employment, gives a brief history, and provides great insight into why precarious employment is on the rise. It includes a study of about 400 workers in precarious employment in Ontario, and outlines the negative health benefits. Some of these include uncertainties in the following areas: uncertainty of future work, of level of income/ benefits, location of work, schedule, workload uncertainty, etc., which ultimately lead to negative effects in people's mental and physical health.
shan-v

Work-Life Balance Quiz - Canadian Mental Health Association - 0 views

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    Of course an online quiz is no substitute for proper counselling, but this resource can help people to start thinking about whether their work/life balance in working for them or whether they should consider changes so they can get the most from their career. I chose this resource not only because of this week's discussion post topic, but also because of Chapter 6 of The Shift, where a healthy work/life balance is shown to be an essential part of the Crafted Future narrative.
janellekoivula

How To Beat The Five Killers Of Virtual Working - 0 views

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    This article provides preventative strategies for negative outcomes within virtual working environments. As the trend is currently increasing the ability of individuals to collaborate via the internet, the "killers" must also be made public, to ensure virtual organizations and employee teams can become aware and prevent the potential implications of working over the internet rather than in traditional work spaces. This enables work to continue to be innovative, rewarding, and meaningful to each employee.
jscharrer

The Big Idea: The Age of Hyperspecialization - 1 views

shared by jscharrer on 17 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The term “hyperspecialization” is not synonymous with outsourcing work to other companies or distributing it to other places (as in offshoring), although it is facilitated by the same technologies. Rather, it means breaking work previously done by one person into more-specialized pieces done by several people.
  • separation often leads to improvements in quality, speed, and cost.
  • consider how much time you personally spend on tasks that don’t draw on your expertise and that you may not even be particularly adept at performing.
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  • Quality improves when more of the work that goes into a final product is done by people who are good at it.
  • The improvement is even greater when, as with TopCoder projects, people who are good at work compete with one another to get it.
  • power of the online “open innovation marketplace”
  • another major benefit of hyperspecialization: speed.
  • More generally, hyperspecialization can reduce clock time by assigning related tasks to different people who then accomplish them in parallel rather than serially.
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    The growth of hyperspecialization and new markets such as TopCoder, through which individuals can 'sell' their specialized talents, allow individuals to compete in an increasing "flat" world. Outsourcing if often thought of only in terms of wealthy developed world companies seeking cheaper labour from developing countries, however this article highlights that some outsourcing is done to increase the quality of work, not simply to decrease cost. In an increasing connected world, individuals can 'outsource' the parts of their job that they do not excel in, to other individuals who are specialized in it.
jscharrer

Bad Apple: Could the Era of Exploitation Outsourcing Be Near Its End? - 0 views

  • by farming out production to suppliers in China and other low-wage countries with few labor protections, they often have outsourced not just work but worker abuse.
  • U.S. consumers have been willing to turn a blind eye to Apple and others.
  • urvey of Americans late last year found that only 2 percent mentioned Apple's overseas labor practices as a concern.
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  • ollective apathy about working conditions behind iPods, iPhones and the like has allowed the company to prioritize speed and profit over decent treatment of people.
  • "You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards," a current Apple executive told the Times. "And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China."
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    Outsourcing as a form of exploitation - this article comments on the environment and working conditions in Apple's outsourced manufacturing facilities and that despite media coverage of this issue, the general pubic is more concerned with speed, innovation and price than the treatment of workers overseas.
colinsarkany

Half of Toronto-area workers have fallen into 'precarious employment': study - The Glob... - 0 views

  • The widely held belief that employment leads to economic security and social well-being has become out-of-step with an increasing number of people in today’s work force.
  • Everyone else is working in situations that are part-time, vulnerable or insecure in some way. This includes a growing number of temporary, contract and on-call positions. Jobs without benefits. Jobs with uncertain futures. This significant rise in precarious employment is a serious threat – not only to the collective prosperity of the region, but also to the social fabric of communities
  • precarious employment is hurting everyone
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  • many workers to piece together year-round, full-time hours by working multiple jobs. In addition, working conditions are more uncertain
  • being precariously employed is worst when you’re living in low income, our research confirms this increasingly is an issue that affects people at every income level
  • job insecurity is about more than just poverty. Its impacts are far-reaching, affecting all parts of our lives, redefining how we contribute to our economy, give back to our community and interact with our families. Precarious work can make it more difficult to make ongoing volunteer commitments and donate to charities
  • Trends that have caused nearly half of our work force to engage in insecure employment show no signs of slowing down
  • Training and education models with a life-long learning focus can help workers build the skills to continuously improve their employment prospects.
  • What we need today is a renewed public policy framework that will be supportive of those in precarious employment and responsive to the challenges associated with this shifting labour market
shawnaderksen

Gender Differences in Precarious Work Settings.: EBSCOhost - 3 views

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    In this week's course notes the idea of the precarious worker caught my attention. Many health issues as well as discriminatory issues are seen while doing precarious work as it is not long term and there is constant change. This article outlines and defines what the precarious worker is and the gender differences in the precarious work environment. To give one example, the article states that women represent more precarious workers than men being 33%:12%. This automatically gives way to questions regarding sex discrimination in full time work and brings in the idea of women trying to have a work/life balance for their family.
Melinda Mah

Planning your 'career curve' - Fortune - 1 views

  • Older adults have tended to think about one career curve
    • Melinda Mah
       
      Same as Gratton's thought.
  • Gen Y’s, however, should be thinking of multiple curves. Quite likely, you will have ups, downs, and do-overs. For you, the career curve framework might better be called career carillon, because the line of your career is likely to resemble a series of bell curves
    • Melinda Mah
       
      Interesting that it specifically addresses the Gen Y. Does this mean Baby Boomers are exempt? I'd say Baby Boomers will also experience the career carillon since they are living into their 90s and are good to work for another 10, 20 or more years. Then there's Gen X who are still fairly young and have half of their careers left still - they will probably experience career carillons. Also, what about Gen Z? Will Gen Z have these career curves, or will Gen Z be even more fluid in their careers?
  • What other priorities do you have for your life? How much time would you like to devote to work?
    • Melinda Mah
       
      This is a good point. I have many other priorities and interests in my life. I am able to handle 9-5, five days a week, but realistically I would prefer either fewer hours per week or to work one of the weekend days so that I would have a free day during regular work hours.
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  • Lots of people say they’d like more flexibility in their work arrangements, but what would that really mean for you? How much spontaneity or predictability do you need to accomplish the other priorities in your life?
    • Melinda Mah
       
      I like some routine, but I get bored if my analytical and creative sides are not engaged. If I have the time to take care of myself and keep my energies levels up, then I am more open to spontaneity. I like being able to roughly make my own schedule, but I like other people setting up a few times where I need to be doing X task. 
  • How much money do you need at this stage of your life? What standard of living will be comfortable for you?
    • Melinda Mah
       
      This is a good point. This is when tracking expenses comes in handy to figure out how much one is spending, and then adjusting from there. Personally, when I started tracking my expenses, I was a little shocked by how much I spend, and it made me spend less because I was more aware of my spending.
  • Challenge
  • Responsibility
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    A short article on how to think in terms of a career carillon instead of a single career curve.
sarahbunting

Punished by Rewards - 0 views

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    In Chapter 8 of Economics for Everyone, Jim Stanford brings up on multiple occasions the need for labour extraction, and the use of the carrot and stick (reward and punishment) model in all businesses. As soon as I was reading this it made me think of a book I read last year by Alfie Kohn on Punishment and Reward. Kohn believes that punishments are just as bad as rewards, and that using either reduces happiness, and productivity. The first section of the book focuses on the research showing that the use of both punishments and rewards is detrimental to people's ability to do good work. In the second section he looks specifically at punishments and rewards in 3 places, the workplace, the school, and the home. In the third section he suggests new methods of motivation for all three places. When I origionally read this I was focused on his his ideas about school, however he his theories are equally important to the world of work!
amycloutier

Forget Work Life Balance - Seven Paradigm Shifts for The New 24/7 Normal - 2 views

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    This site takes a different look at work life balance. Although it doesn't address working late hours on personal time, it does offer some interesting ideas.
arlaynacurtin

Welcome to Assessment.com, Home of MAPP Career Test - 1 views

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    If you go to work every week with the mantra "I hate my job!," this week's blog post is for you! This is the story of Amanda, one of 8 million people who have taken the MAPP career test. Amanda was working in a job she hated -- a retail job in an electronics store.
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    This website relates to this weeks readings about figuring out what you really want out of your career. Therefore, this career test will help people figure out what kind of trade-offs they can live with. For example, working with people as opposed to working with things.
arlaynacurtin

Ontario Immigration - Find A Job - 0 views

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    Ontario has a strong economy and many opportunities to offer newcomers. But finding a job takes hard work. It can also take time. It's a good idea to prepare for your job search before you leave for Ontario.
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    I saw that the Labour Market Information Service had already been previously commented on. So I decided to share this link on immigration in Ontario instead. It talks about finding work for new immigrants. This could be temporary or full time work.
jscharrer

Jason Fried: Why work doesn't happen at work | Talk Video | TED.com - 0 views

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    This is a really interesting talk on why so many people struggle to be productive at work and how it impacts our lives; this connects well with Gratton's comments on fragmentation in the workplace.
fawneferguson

Flexible Work Arrangements - 0 views

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    As we explored, many of the "traditional" workplace settings are being forgotten, and new ways of working are being introduced, as more people want more of a work-life balance, and as companies downsize their workforce. This article explores the benefits of flexible workplaces and the benefits they have for employees. However, it does not explore the negative impacts this kind of work can have on employees
meganrowe

Perceptions of a Triple Bottom Line Approach to Doing Business among Generation Y Cana... - 2 views

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    Lynda Gratton comments about the future work world of Generation Y- they are a generation that has respect for diversity and human differences, and have grown up educating themselves on climate change and sustainability. This article can build on Gratton's description of Gen Y, as it describes the results of a survey of the attitudes of 546 millenials towards work in their future. The survey results do indeed show that millenials are interested in a work life that supports sustainability and social responsibility, but it adds the differences between male and female Gen Y'ers. The studies find that females are significantly more interested in environmental protection and social responsibility than are most males (more typically interested in profit maximization). While I believe this article may be fairly controversial and polarizing, it's interesting to further study the attitudes of what is my own generation.
michellewain

Online Virtual Events and Career Fairs for Recruiting and Networking - 0 views

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    I came across this organization and thought it was worth sharing in relation to upcoming trends in recruiting and networking. Brazen powers online virtual events and career fairs for leading organizations around the world, improving recruiting, networking, and audience engagement. Their mission is to change the way people find professional opportunities and employers find talent. They also believe that everyone deserves a job they love, which is evident in their work setting (they don't work in cubicles, have access to snacks, lunches, and have comfy lounges to work in with a large screen TV). I don't know of many organizations myself that have these awesome perks at a workplace, but perhaps what this organization is starting is an emerging trend, as well as a new way of recruiting and expanded networking beyond LinkedIn.
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