Thanks to my local public library, I recently had the opportunity to read Morra Aarons-Mele’s new book Hiding in the Bathroom: An Introvert’s Roadmap to Getting Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home). As I’ve discussed on this blog previously, I’m not a fan of most popular-press career and business books, but the title of this one drew me in. It suggested vulnerability and something less than overwhelming self-confidence, and that’s far more representative of many people’s workplace reality than (more…)
Month: March 2018
I Think This Is An Important Topic
And, um, I’d like to suggest that we should pay more attention to it?
A recent discussion on Twitter raised some provocative points about communication norms in workplaces, especially those norms associated with gender. The research of linguists and sociologists such as Deborah Tannen has shown that men and women communicate differently, especially in the context of work. Men tend to present their views and opinions directly, while women tend to frame their statements with qualifiers such as “I think” or “in my opinion”.
In any workplace, the dominant group’s norms – both linguistic and behavioural – usually become (more…)
All About Work’s 6th Anniversary
All About Work turns six today – an anniversary which I’m celebrating with a graphic from one of my all-time favourite TV shows, The Prisoner.
Writing this blog has given me the opportunity to explore a lot of ideas and also to interact with some fascinating people. The most popular All About Work blog posts to date are: (more…)
Post-Secondary Institutions and Precarious Work
In February, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a study of precarious employment in Ontario colleges and universities. Last week, some of the challenges identified in this study became very real when contract workers at York University in Toronto went on strike. The bargaining issues that the union and the university haven’t agreed on include job security for contract workers and guaranteed funding for teaching assistants.
The CCPA report is extremely valuable – not only because its analysis has suddenly become even more relevant, but also because (more…)
Engineering Change
In January I made an unexpected trip to Edmonton, where I lived in the early ‘90s while I attended the University of Alberta. Some things have changed, some are the same – like -30C weather that time of year – and some have adapted, like the student newspaper the Gateway. When I was a U of A student the Gateway was a once-weekly newspaper, but it now posts most of its stories online, and the print version is a monthly magazine.
An article in the January issue of the Gateway caught my attention because it reminded me of a terrible event (more…)
All About Work 