Why forcing workers back to the office is a mistake. Plus, how to connect with disengaged team members

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“Why do we feel the need to mandate people to return to the office or to attend meetings when they don’t need to?” says Naomi Titleman Colla, founder of Collaborativity Inc., a Toronto-based consultancy focused on driving progressive talent strategy in this new world of work.

“As we continue to hear of organizations, like Amazon recently did, mandating employees back to the office, the divide becomes even greater between ‘us’ and ‘them’ – the people versus leadership – a power struggle more than a debate regarding work location and productivity.

“This divide, compounded by an already weary work force, plagued by layoffs and burnout, has inspired trends like quiet quitting, career cushioning and the latest, resenteeism (not a typo with a missing ‘p’ – it is the trend of staying in a job, resentfully, because of the fear of economic uncertainty).

“Instead, consider inviting your team members to the office. Invite contributors to participate in the meeting. Think about your organization as a community. As Liane Davey, author of The Good Fight, cautions in a recent article, we are missing the value of community in creating our remote working routines: strong ties are weakening and weak ties (such as casual acquaintances) are missing.”

Read more about why inviting employees back to the office trumps hard-and-fast mandates.

As layoffs disproportionately affect women and racialized talent, is there a way to make them equitable?

Marginalized employees are being overly impacted by recent layoffs in the tech industry, according to new data.

Revelio Labs, a startup that analyzed U.S. data from tech layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi and talent database Parachute List by Rocket, shows that cuts in the tech industry have disproportionately affected women and racialized talent.

Women and Latino workers, who make up 39.09 per cent and 9.96 per cent of the industry, made up 46.64 per cent and 11.49 per cent of those laid off between September and December, according to Reuters’s report of the Revelio Labs data.

There are a few reasons why this might be.

Dr. Sarah Saska, chief executive of Toronto-based diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firm Feminuity, said one reason is that many companies are using a “last in, first out” approach, which means they lay off newer employees.

“If an organization has been working – as many have been in the last few years – to be far more intentional about recruiting a diversity of people to their organization, then that could likely mean that they’re firing someone who’s racialized or a gender minority,” she said.

Read more about how companies can embed DEI into the layoff process.

Canada’s Best Diversity Employers 2023 are unlocking the power of a diverse work force

How do you unlock the power that diversity brings? It starts with a commitment to building a culture where everyone feels like they belong.

The winners of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers 2023 by Mediacorp have already committed to making diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) a top priority. These organizations are driving change with progressive policies and programs that translate into real action, and are backing it up with transparency and accountability at every level.

Find out which companies were selected as Canada’s Best Diversity Employers 2023.

In case you missed it

Is it time for you to quit your job?

In a time of economic uncertainty, it can be hard to quit a well-paying job.

But with Canadian women reporting high levels of burnout and stress and women’s representation in leadership roles declining, could the answer to career advancement be leaping into the unknown?

As vice-president of marketing for Procore Technologies, Aleya Chattopadhyay navigated her team through the tripling of its work force, global expansion and the construction management software company’s IPO. She was also named interim chief marketing officer for nine months in 2021, at the height of the pandemic.

By mid 2022, the realization hit that she was all work and no play. “I had lost my joie de vivre,” says Ms. Chattopadhyay. “I wasn’t socializing with family or friends and I wasn’t feeling healthy.”

Having worked in a number of industries in the past three decades, Ms. Chattopadhyay had a broad knowledge base to leverage in a new role. Although she would miss her team, the possibilities of a new opportunity were a strong lure.

“Employees have more choice now when searching for a job,” she says. “Borders are no longer a barrier.”

Read the full article.

What young women need to know about salary negotiations

Young women taking on a new job may assume that their future earning potential will be based on their performance at work. Excel at your job and the sky’s the limit when it comes to salary increases – right? Not necessarily, says Beatrix Dart.

Dr. Dart, a professor of strategy and executive director of the Initiative for Women in Business at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business, says that what happens in the initial salary negotiation stage of a new role can be pivotal.

“If you don’t start off getting to a level of comparable salary with, let’s say, your male counterparts, a lot of salary increases down the road are percentage increases,” she says.

According to 2019 research published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, women are offered lower starting salaries compared to men in the same or similar roles, particularly in higher-paying jobs.

Read the full article.

Ask Women and Work

Question: I’m a manager at a major manufacturing company. I am fairly new to this role and have been encountering some challenges with my staff. I’m having a hard time keeping them motivated and engaged and I feel like this deficit is beginning to show in our output. They don’t seem to respect my leadership (which may have something to do with my gender). How can I get them on board?

We asked Hilda Gan, president and chief people officer at People Bright Consulting Inc., to tackle this one:

As a manager in a new role, you need to build a trusting relationship with your team. You want them to know that you’re honest, that you have integrity and that what they say will be kept confidential when it needs to be confidential. It doesn’t happen overnight, but that should be the goal.

To build that trusting relationship, you need to get to know the people on your team. Spend some time with each staff member, saying, ‘Tell me about yourself. What excites you about working here? What do you think could make our relationship better? I want to understand what motivates you and how I can help you have satisfaction in this job.’ By doing this, you create a ‘we’ mentality. Our role as managers isn’t to supervise, our role is to lead people. That’s the true essence of motivation.

At my company, we have a program called REVUP based on the success of an engineering firm I co-founded with my husband that was twice recognized as one of the Best Workplaces in Canada. It’s a belief system I have that I think managers should adopt. REVUP stands for respect, equality, valued, uniqueness and potential. The last two pieces, uniqueness and potential, are the differentiators. It’s about looking at each person individually and building a relationship that’s focused on helping nurture their strengths so they can shine at work. That way, they feel you have a vested interest in them. It’s motivating when they feel that you’re interested in their careers.

For example, it might be that Tony is great at relationships and calming people down when emotions run high. So, let’s put him on this committee where things get a little bit tense and say, ‘You can help us.’ Or maybe Mary is really good at details and thinking about contingency plans, so make sure Mary is on an important project you’re going to roll out. Then, when they excel and you tell them, ‘Mary, you’re doing such a great job, thanks for that,’ it will cultivate a sense of belonging and trust, a sense that you care.

When you recognize your team members’ unique strengths, they will believe that you understand what they are good at and that you might think of them when a promotion or other opportunity comes up. That will help to create the motivation and engagement you are looking for.

Submit your own questions to Ask Women and Work by e-mailing us at GWC@globeandmail.com.

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