When is it okay to be emotional at work? The short answer is never but the slightly longer answer has a few maybes. It is always okay to be kind and courteous but even this can go too far if it encroaches on another person’s physical or emotional space at work. It is also okay to be empathetic, if someone else shares something with you, if you are aware of a personal or difficult situation, and if the person wants that empathy. Otherwise, keep your emotions in your pocket and don’t wear them on your sleeve at work.
You can call me a curmudgeon if you want and you may even be right, but I think that there is a great case to be made for leaving your emotions at home when you head off to work. Yes we will all have challenging times in our lives outside of work that we cannot help but bring with us in our lunch bag. And everyone understands when there is a death in a family or a serous illness, or even the changes that a positive event like a new baby can bring. But you still have an obligation to come to work, do a decent job, and not bleed over everybody else.
In addition to the emotional toil that our personal lives take on us there is also the stress, anxiety, and sometimes anger that arises as a direct result of our work or workplace. Even then you have to find a way to manage the stress in a non-toxic way and deal with your anxiety in a manner that doesn’t cause problems or more anxiety for the people around you. What about anger? Doesn’t everybody get angry at work sometimes?
Yes, we all may get angry at work. The question is how does that anger manifest itself and who is that anger directed against? Anger is one of the most powerful emotions known to man or woman and it has the power to really hurt or damage individuals and the people around them. A short angry outburst on an occasional basis isn’t too much cause for concern but temper tantrums, yelling obscenities, or any form of threatening behaviour has no place in the workplace, ever. No can anger that is directed at co-workers, managers or clients be tolerated. Ever.
Anger is the dark side of emotions and it must be managed by individuals, and their supervisors if necessary. But the other emotions can be just as taxing in the long run. A workplace is an adult experience and all those who enter there should be prepared to act as adults, not just mentally and physically, but emotionally as well.
This post first appeared on my blog at www.jobs.ca
Mike Martin is a freelance writer and workplace wellness consulatnt
The Finance Minister of this country, Jim Flaherty, has just told all Canadians who happen to be out of work that they are lazy bums and that they should take any job that’s available. He said that every job is a good job and that he remembers driving a taxi and refereeing hockey games when he was going to Osgoode Law School so why can’t unemployed Canadians follow his lead?
His counterparts in Cabinet like Diane Finley, the Minister of Human Resource and Skills Development says that unemployed Canadians need a “nudge” aka a kick in the ass to get off the dole and back to work. His boss the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper who once accused all Atlantic Canadians, and not just the unemployed ones of being lazy and having a “culture of dependence stands smiling at his Minister’s handiwork.
All of this comes as commentary to parts of a 425 omnibus Budget Bill that’s currently before Parliament and as a backstory we know learn that the Conservatives have been studying ways to force Canadians to leave their homes and relocate to Alberta and Saskatchewan where there are lots of jobs in both construction and the lower paid retail sector. They even had focus groups in places like Rouyn-Noranda, Que., Corner Brook, Nfld., Miramichi, N.B., andYarmouth,N.S.to test out the idea.
What this is really about is what some have called a low wage strategy for Canada. Get people off EI and force them to take low paying jobs, part-time jobs or two or three shitty jobs to make ends meet. Bring in temporary foreign workers by the planeload, not just to work in the tar sands as highly skilled workers, but in the retail and hospitality sector. Make Canadians move to where the jobs are, whether or not there is housing or schools or social supports. Have the better off parts of the country blame the areas with high unemployment. Divide, blame and conquer. That’s the Conservative plan for Canada.
I was born in Newfoundlandand left at 18 to work inToronto. I was certainly not alone and this story repeats itself every day in Atlantic Canada. Go the airport in St.John’s and watch the planeloads of workers, young and old who are flying directly to Fort McMurray. Go to Charlottetown or Halifax or St. John,New Brunswick and see the same scene. Watch as the spouse and children of the workers cry as their partners leave for their next assignment. Then call them lazy bums.
There is a level of meanness amongst the Federal Conservatives in Canada that is stunning in its depth, breath and vindictiveness. I do not have the space to catalogue all of their sins in this regard but let me point out a few. One of the first was KAIROS, a churchy not for profit that was engaged in humanitarian work in some of the poorest regions of the world. Their crime was to have some internal discussions about the political direction of foreign aid. As a result their funding was cut.
This was followed by a parade of internal watchdogs and whistleblowers ranging from the head of the Nuclear Safety Commission to the Chief Statistician to diplomat Richard Colvin, who blew the whistle on Afghan prisoner abuse. All of them are gone. Now we hear that the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy was shut down because it didn’t like the advice it was getting on addressing climate change, including the idea of introducing carbon taxes.
First the Environment Minister said that the reason for the closure was because such research can now be easily accessed through the Internet, and through universities and other think tanks. But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird gave the real reason on Monday in the House of Commons. Here’s what CBC reported:
“Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something that the people ofCanadahave repeatedly rejected? That is a message the Liberal Party just will not accept,” Baird said in response to a question by Liberal Leader Bob Rae during question period.
“It should agree with Canadians. It should agree with the government. No discussion of a carbon tax that would kill and hurt Canadian families.”
There you have it. No discussion, no debate, no funding,
Mean, mean bastards!!
I read an article recently about how companies and organizations in Canada and around the world are trying to introduce manufacturing best practices into all aspects of their day to day lives, including their human resource functions like staffing and recruitment. It is an interesting concept but not one without its challenges in both implementation and effectiveness.
One thing that might work is the idea of eliminating steps in the staffing process and thereby reducing the time it takes to staff a vacant position. If done right this certainly has the potential to lower costs and improve service to customers. If done wrong it can be equally disastrous, especially if the faster staffing process misses a key quality control element like following up on references or checking education credentials. You could end up with not only the wrong hire, but even more serious problems later on.
But my biggest concern about “lean” approaches to human resource functions is that employees are not widgets on an assembly line and in our rush to the nirvana of efficiency we actually miss the point. That human resources and other people friendly services are often what separate man from machine. We have come a long ways from having a payroll office attached to finance and little else to support employees and managers to the modern concept of human resources and while we may save money I’m not sure it’s good business in the long run.
We have to continue to find ways to be more efficient and cost-effective in all our human resource functions. I don’t happen to believe that we’re ready for “just in time” HR. To me that takes away the value added of having skilled human resource advisers available to mentor managers, deal proactively with employee issues and help executives communicate their messages throughout the organization. And if lean means less, which it usually does I absolutely disagree with taking resources out of existing human resource operations.
These are trying financial times but human resources are absolutely the wrong place to cut staff or reduce expenditures. That’s because in good times they help the organization grow and in bad times they help you survive. Can we do things better? Absolutely. Can we be leaner in human resources? Yes. We can all stand to lose a few pounds. But let’s not pretend that putting you on a diet is going to help reduce my weight. There are no quick fixes in losing weight or cutting costs whether in manufacturing or human resources.
This post originally appeared on my blog at www.jobs.ca
Mike Martin is a freelance writer and workplace wellnsess consultant
It’s Time to Focus on Workplace Wellness
Times are tough in the federal public service. They are especially tough on employees, supervisors and managers who are being asked to do more with less. Sometimes this causes tensions in the workplace that lead to conflicts. It can also lead to serious health problems like higher blood pressure and stress related ailments like heart problems, strokes or depression and anxiety. If you have some of these problems already or want to prevent them from happening in your workplace we can help.
For the last thirty years I have been working with other professionals to improve the workplace. This work has included building better workplace relationships, dealing with workplace conflict, and developing workplace wellness strategies. We have worked with managers and unions, with federal government departments and crown corporations.
Our Services
Together with a team of professionals that include former senior public service managers and union leaders, coaches and mentors, trainers and facilitators we offer specific services in a number of areas including:
Building Better Workplace Relationships
This range of services focuses on improving labour management relations, increasing manager’s and supervisor’s capacity to communicate with employees, and training all staff to better respect and trust each other.
Managing and Reducing Conflict
In this area we focus on dealing with specific interpersonal or group conflicts, helping supervisors and managers deal with conflict as it arises, and training all staff to identify and resolve conflict early.
Workplace Assessment Services
We can help you and your team pinpoint areas of employee/supervisor concern, identify potential sources of conflict, and make recommendations for specific workplace wellness initiatives based on your needs.
About Mike Martin
I have a wide range of experience including workplace interventions and conflict management, strategic planning, teambuilding, and Human Resources. I have been a senior policy adviser and manager with the Public Service Alliance of Canada, a self-employed consultant and freelance writer, and a senior manager with several not for profit organizations. I am the former President of Springwinds Training Inc, a full service training company and the author of the book “Change the Things You Can: Dealing with Difficult People.”
There are many styles of leadership and many ways that people try to describe them. One of the least effective descriptions is the so-called three main leadership styles of autocratic, democratic or free reign leadership. When applied to the modern workplace about the only value these descriptors have is to show which style is currently in vogue in management today.
That’s easy because unless you are running a paramilitary organization or a kindergarten it would have be the democratic or participatory style of management. That’s mostly because of the disasters that companies and organizations have put themselves through when the managerial powers are given to dictatorial managers or to the children in the classic laissez faire model.
But there’s a better way to describe a leader and to me when it comes to the modern workplace I do want results but I also want someone who can get people to follow them. I want someone who is not just good at the x’s and o’s but who also has a vision of where they and the organization can be in the future. In other words I just don’t want a good manager. I want a leader. And there are a lot of differences between a manager and a leader.
One of the best lists that I’ve seen on the difference between a manager and a leader was prepared by Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal and a well-respected author on management issues. He said:
- The manager administers; the leader innovates.
- The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.
- The manager maintains; the leader develops.
- The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
- The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
- The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
- The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
- The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader’s eye is on the horizon.
- The manager imitates; the leader originates.
- The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
- The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.
- The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.
Given those choices who would you rather follow? A manager or a leader?
This post originally appeared on my blog at www.jobs.ca
Mike Martin is a freelance writer and workplace wellness consultant.
Whatever you feel about the federal government’s recent cuts to federal public service jobs there is no doubt that their handling of the people side, the Human Resource, portion of this exercise has been a disaster. How bad has it been? If you have been on the inside it’s pretty effin bad.
First of all you have to picture yourself as a federal public service employee. You have been conscientiously going about your work while storm clouds have been gathering above your head. You have an employer, the Conservative Government, which actively makes a point of not telling you, ever, that you are doing a good job or that they appreciate your efforts. In fact they go out of their way to blame, denigrate and generally stereotype you and your colleagues as being a drain on the public purse.
Secondly you have learned to keep your mouth shut. You realized long ago that they did not want your ideas, your suggestions, or any information that you possessed that could help them make a decision. They especially hated the information piece. You saw what happened to anyone who stuck their head up out of the foxhole from senior foreign affairs advisers to the Chief Statistician of Canada to the head of Nuclear Safety, for Gawd’s sake!! They were soon no longer there.
Thirdly you have been watching all of the debate and discussion by the political parties and the media about how deep the cuts would, should or will be. Everyone in your section and department watched for any signal you could be next. This went on for an agonizing year and then the cuts started coming in waves like capelin on the beach in Newfoundland. You survived each round of cuts and were still swimming. Battered and emotionally bruised but still swimming. Until you heard the news that you have survived. For now.
But this is the just the beginning salvo and you can expect these types of cuts again next year as the program review kicks into gear. And maybe again in the year after. You, and tens of thousands of others are left dazed, confused, sad, and angry.
Now imagine that you are a manager in the federal public service. You have a section to look after in a large department. You do not make widgets or manufacture stuff. Your natural resources are your people. You have just witnessed what has been described above happen over and over and over again to your staff. Yes, you still have a team. But it is much smaller with the same amount of work and now the team members are totally devastated and demoralized.
What can you say to them? Things will get better? I don’t think so. We’ll be okay? You can’t say that for sure.
You know what you say to your people. I am sorry that these bastards treated you and our team this way. Let’s find a way to work together and stay tight. That’s our only defense.
So where does that leave the federal public service? In disarray, in desperation and absolutely demoralized. Good luck in getting them re-motivated to serve Canadians.
But maybe that’s the point. The Conservatives Human Resource policy is to demoralize people so that they will quit before they fire them. As a political strategy it is cruel, mean and inhumane. As a Human Resource policy it is a disaster.
Mike Martin is a freelance writer and workplace wellness consultant.
A manager friend of mine wants to make some changes in her section but she has opposition. A small but vocal group of dissenters are holding her back. What she doesn’t realize fully is that she has a lot more resources to pull her change forward. This situation is the most common and certainly most frustrating reason why many positive changes don’t get done. And it’s more than a shame, it’s preventable.
Going back to my friend she has about forty employees in her section and of these seven or eight staff are the holdouts. She has tried everything to bring them along from bribery to coercion, from flattery to threats. She has tried to bring them “into the circle” and done everything but make them home-made cookies, which she would do if she thought it would work, and nothing budges them from their oppositional point of view.
At the point of giving up she finally took some sage advice (not just from me) and decided to move ahead with her changes. She had the support of her superiors and the power to make it happen so she set a date and went about implementing the change. So what happened? Things went great, the positive changes infused the workplace with new and creative energy and both profit and productivity rose.
Once she made the decision to move forward then the majority of the staff who were with her jumped in and made it a success.
And the naysayers? Well, two of them are still there. They are still unhappy but are not blocking the flow of changes. They have become isolated and apart from the main group and my manager friend thinks they will leave soon. The others have either quit or been let go already. They maintained their opposition to the change process and paid the price. It’s too bad but life does go on.
My friend has once again learned one of the most important lessons in change management. You don’t need everybody rowing all the same way at the same time to make effective change happen; you just need a critical mass and some momentum. The manager provided the momentum by making her decision and the rest of the staff just rowed along to her direction.
So the lesson for today is: Don’t let the background noise drown out the applause.
This post first appeared on my blog at www.jobs.ca
Mike Martin is a freelance writer and workplace wellness consultant.
Modern workplace wellness programs are a success by any standard you wish to measure. And now we have the data to prove it. First of all a little history lesson. The evolution of workplace wellness came about as a result of a number of factors. First of all research began to confirm that poor lifestyle choices like physical inactivity, poor diet, and tobacco smoking were direct factors in most chronic illnesses and diseases.
Secondly as the level of stress increased in society and the workplace, the costs of providing employee benefits like prescription drugs to treat mental illness and depression were skyrocketing. Thirdly employers began to realize that they were losing valuable time and productivity that was directly related to their employee’s health. It just made good business and economic sense to invest in their employee’s health and so the workplace wellness boom began.
Now that we are about twenty years into the modern version of workplace wellness there is no doubt that they work. Research shows that workplace wellness programs are having a real and tangible impact on not only the health of the workers involved but on the companies who made the investments bottom line. Workplace wellness programs have been proven to deliver returns to employers of anywhere from $2.00 to $10.00 for every dollar spent.
These returns have come in the form of increased productivity, reduced sick time and absenteeism, lower costs to provide employee health benefits, and reduced Workers Compensation claims.
There are lots of examples to prove the point including:
- Canada Life Insurance which reported a return of $3.43 on their fitness program, and an overall return on investment of $6.85 on each corporate dollar invested in productivity gains, reduced turnover and decreased medical claims.
- In Toronto civic employees who participated in the “Metro Fit” fitness programs missed 3.35 fewer days in the first six months of the program than employees not enrolled in the program.
- And in British Columbia B.C Hydro employees who participated in their workplace fitness program had a turnover rate of just 3.5% compared with a company average of 10.3%. Workplace wellness programs deliver results for both the employer and the employee.
Employers benefit from workplace wellness programs by reducing the costs of disability claims, prescription drugs, and absenteeism. They also benefit by improving morale which leads to happier and more productive employees. In addition these programs help reduce the stress in the workplace and make it easier for employers to attract and retain their employees. Employees who participate in wellness activities in the workplace attain some improvement in their overall health and many report greater job satisfaction and improved morale. They are also less likely to be injured at work and are able to reduce their personal health costs.
Workplace wellness programs are alive and thriving because they work for both employees and the employer. They are an undeniable success!!
Mike Martin is a freelance writer and workplace wellness consultant.
There are many mistakes being made by the Conservatives in the recent Federal Budget including using a bazooka when it could have better utilized a laser to pin point savings and reduce the deficit. But they also are making a number of other strategic mistakes that appear to be ideologically driven and will end up costing all Canadians much, much more in the long run.
One of their worst mistakes is the de-funding of Aboriginal organizations who are engaged in the research, policy development and gathering of information on Aboriginal health. They say that they will continue to fund direct front-line services at the same level (because they have to) but as we have seen from Attawapistat, the status quo is not a place that many of us would like to live.
This is a strategic mistake because it ignores both the reality on the ground and the future at the same time. Right now it costs a lot of money to provide basic health care services to Aboriginals in their communities. It costs more than other Canadians and not just because they live in isolated, remote or Northern communities, although that is a big factor. It costs more also because First Nation, Métis, and Inuit people have a number of more acute health care problems than the rest of us.
Here are some of the stats about Aboriginal Health from Statistics Canada. First of all compared with the general population, the percentage of Aboriginal peoples living in overcrowded housing is five to six times higher on reserves and in the North. Poor housing conditions allow diseases such as tuberculosis to spread. In 2005, the tuberculosis rate was 27 active cases per 100,000 in Aboriginal peoples compared with 5 active cases per 100,000 in the Canadian population.
HIV/AIDS rates among Aboriginal peoples is an ongoing concern, especially for Aboriginal women and youths. From 1998 to 2005, women made up 47% of all new HIV diagnoses among Aboriginal people, compared with 21% among non-Aboriginal people. Moreover, Aboriginal people receive a diagnosis of HIV at a younger age than non-Aboriginal people—one out of three Aboriginal persons newly diagnosed with HIV is under 30 years of age. By contrast, one out of five non-Aboriginal persons newly diagnosed is under 30.
Higher rates for diabetes mellitus among Aboriginal peoples is also of great concern. In 2001, 11% of Aboriginal adults on reserves had been diagnosed with diabetes, compared with 8% of First Nations adults off reserves, 6% of Métis, 2% of Inuit and 3% of the general population. High rates of diabetes are linked to key health determinants such as income, employment levels, education, social conditions and access to health care.
By almost every standard Aboriginal communities are worse off than the rest of the Canadian population. This applies to suicide rates, binge drinking, alcohol-related deaths, drug use and abuse, domestic violence, sexual assaults, and a woefully inadequate child welfare system that does not meet the needs of aboriginal children, families or communities. First Nations and Inuit are also the most likely in Canada to be undiagnosed or under diagnosed for mental illness.
The cuts in this budget means not only will the dire status quo continue but all of the work that these organizations have been doing on prevention, health promotion, suicide prevention will be lost. So too will the work helping their people regain their pride and their culture as they heal from residential schools, all forms of abuse at the hands of church and government officials, forced relocation and the denial of their language and culture.
What will also be lost is the hope of individuals and communities who are slowly recovering from intergenerational trauma. They are making progress in developing and regaining perseverance, resiliency, and healthy coping skills as well as reclaiming and strengthening their language and culture. They are combining traditional knowledge and medicine with new approaches and getting people out onto the land to reconnect with nature. They have been trying and making progress but now their funding has been decimated.
We need to not only stop the problems in Aboriginal communities from getting worse we need to make the situation better. And we need to do that not just because it is the right thing to do but also because it will save us money in the long term. From 1996 to 2006 the Aboriginal population has increased by 47% compared to 8% for non-Aboriginals. And 48% of Aboriginal people are less than 25 years old. Aboriginal youth is the fastest growing demographic in the country. They also have the highest suicide rates, the highest prison rates and the highest rates of involvement in gang activity inCanada.
Unless we take active steps to restore the health care funding to aboriginal organizations we run the risk of more Inuit youth suicides. In Iqaluit lat year there were 11 suicides. If that rate was repeated in a city like Ottawa it would mean over 1,500 suicides. We run the risk of more Aboriginal people in jail. That would raise their 20% of the prison population even higher. And we run the risk of more young Aboriginal women ending up on drugs and on the street, most of whom will be abused, some of whom will die.
I am not a health care expert, a statistician, a scientist or Aboriginal. But I have seen the television pictures of Attawapistat and the all too often posters of missing Aboriginal girls and women. I also know that we have not treated our First Nation, Métis, and Inuit people well in the past and that there is little we can do about that other than to say we are sorry. We can however make changes in that relationship in the present that can positively influence the future. And the time to do that is right now.
I guess the really sad part about the decision to take these monies away from Aboriginal organizations is that it sends a clear message that the Conservative government doesn’t care about Aboriginal people. How else could you justify treating them in this way?
