The Nexus

Last week, it was announced the unemployment rate in the US was 3.6%, the lowest since February 2020, and below market projections for this year. In Canada, the rate stands at 5.3% - the lowest unemployment rate since 1976! To put this in context…a country with a rate of 5% is considered to have "full employment". To some this may read like a sign of a healthy economy, but according to our guest on this week's episode not everyone is dancing in the streets over the news. His name is Pedro Antunes, he's the chief economist for the Conference Board of Canada, and he's going to explain why a lot of employers may be weeping at the moment.

2022 has been a year of employee backlash from trucker convoys to vaccine mandates to protesting anti-union tactics, all playing out against a backdrop of shifting supply chains and tight talent markets. But has the law changed because of this recent history? We sit down with Erin Porter, the Partner and Vice-Chair of Labour and Employment and Human Rights at Fasken. She's going to explain to us how these issues are a minefield for employers, but a minefield with clear, unambiguous boundaries.

Here at the Nexus, we love it when our guests give us (intentionally or otherwise) the subject of our next episode. That is exactly what Future Forum's Helen Kupp did for us recently. In our discussion around the future of hybrid work, she raised the idea of a "remote second class" – people working away from the office who are prey to systemic disadvantages. Considering that many employers are using the promise of flexibility to attract talent, you'd think this might be something they'd wish to avoid, and yet some major organizations who have gone hybrid have already signaled their intention to treat remote workers differently from office workers (looking at you, Facebook). To find out what kind of challenges a remote second class might present, we spoke with Anita Wooley, Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business.

Employees in the talent pool love it, a lot of managers hate it, and the uncertainty around it is making a number of people nervous. In our last episode, we brought you two case studies: a company that was operating completely remote all over the world and an organization in a New York office with everyone back at their desks. On this episode, we're going to shift to the world in-between. Helen Kupp, from Product Strategy & Partnerships at Future Forum, Slack's think tank on the future of work, joins us to discuss life at Slack, their hybrid office model, trends in talent attraction and the labour market, and what the future holds for new ways of working.

With all vaccine mandates, labour shortages, supply chain disruptions (and now, Omicron) it's probably hard to know what the best approach to working your people may require. So we thought to ourselves – maybe the best way for listeners to discover their own path is just to hear from people who've already chosen theirs? In Part 1 of this two-part episode, we'll hear from two people from two real companies living on opposite ends of the spectrum to find out why they chose to return to the office (or not!), how it's working and what effects that choice is having on their teams and their organizations. Stephanie Harper, a Growth Partner at Moniker and Jonathan Bensamoun, CEO & Founder of Fi both join us at The Nexus.

By now, many of you have probably heard about NHL player Kyle Beach, who was sexually abused by a coach while playing with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2010. His story is proof of how pernicious the issue of workplace harassment continues to be – and how much harder it is to change a work culture like professional sports, which is not only male-dominated but also "hypermasculine" (and yes, there is a difference). Paul Melia, President and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport joins us to discuss what's needed to change the discussion around harassment in legacy cultures like pro sports.

A survey of North American workers recently revealed that a vast majority of Black employees prefer remote work. The reason? They feel more accepted by co-workers when they work from home than when they work in an office.

This is striking data point, especially now that we're talking about how we're going work together coming out of the pandemic. To understand it better, we spoke with Adjoa Osei, a clinical psychologist and diversity consultant.

Lately, the teams at Nexus have been supporting clients with their mental wellness programs. A lot of that work involves helping people talk openly about their struggles with mental health. You'd be amazed at how many people have told us that having a colleague who's willing to listen has made those struggles easier, just as having a person who's judgmental or unprepared to listen has made them worse.

Which begs the question…while it's important to help people share their stories, isn't it just as important to help people listen? If having a colleague in your corner can mean the difference between life and death when dealing with mental health, shouldn't we be doing more to give those "listeners" the skills and the permission to support their co-workers?

Those are just two of the questions we put to Mark Henick, best-selling author, speaker, and prominent mental health advocate.

Nearly all of us have that one person in a workplace who behaves like…well, like a jerk. But have we ever taken the time to ask ourselves "why is that person behaving like a jerk?"

Well, David Zweig has…in fact, it's how he makes his living. David is organizational psychologist at the Rotman School of Business who studies "workplace deviance" or the ways in which people veer outside the boundaries of appropriate behaviour while at work. He says the problem of deviance may not be because people can be jerks, but because we have a fundamentally flawed way of looking at performance.

If you had to pick two important revelations for organizations coming out of the pandemic, they might be as follows:

1. We don't have to work in offices to be productive.
2. We may struggle to get everyone back into the office, even if that's what we want.

That's probably why a lot of employers are considering the concept of "hybrid work", which allows people the chance to decide how and where they'd like to collaborate with their co-workers. Sonia Kang is an organizational psychologist, a professor at Rotman School of Business as well as host of her own podcast "For the Love of Work" and she joins us to talk about the pleasures and perils of hybrid work.