Examining the role research plays in driving the economy, creating systemic change and transforming lives and communities both in Canada and worldwide.
Category: Works, Skills, Industry
With nearly 42% of Canadian jobs likely to be affected in some way by automation over the next two decades, and with the disruptive nature of social media, unprecedented access to big data, and analytic advances, all aspects of the workforce and management will need to adapt.
Safety and functional features are essential for polymer products used in medical, construction, transportation and plastic consumer products. Unfortunately, most chemical additives currently used to achieve these features pose serious threats to environmental sustainability and human health.
In partnership with SimPol Technologies, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) MASc student Hayden Mcgreal and professor Ehsan Behzadfar are developing a solution that enhances polymer’s quality without the aid of harmful and persistent chemicals for advanced barrier and anti-dripping properties. Through systematic formulation, rheological and physicochemical testing of the polymer’s composition, their research will implement technological advancements to optimize their sustainable solution for industrial settings.
The project’s initial findings, showcased at the 2023 Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference in Calgary, Alberta, highlighted the potential of this approach and opened doors for further research collaborations. Building on this momentum, Mcgreal and professor Behzadfar will delve deeper into the practical applications and scalability of their work, marking an important step forward in the advancement of sustainable polymers across different markets and applications.
With plastic usage likely to increase in the coming decade, Ontario’s polymer manufacturing industry stands to benefit from new and innovative applications of sustainable polymers. This project is part of a broader national effort to reduce reliance on “forever chemicals” and establish a healthier environment.
Funding for this project by Mitacs. To learn more about how Mitacs supports groundbreaking research and innovation, visit the Mitacs website.
Written by Omar H. Fares, Toronto Metropolitan University. Originally published in The Conversation.
Several news outlets recently ran stories suggesting Wendy’s would raise prices during busy periods, prompting widespread backlash and criticism online. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Many interpreted this to mean Wendy’s would be introducing surge pricing — a term often associated with the dynamic pricing models used by companies like Uber, where prices increase during periods of high demand.
The issue likely stemmed from confusion over terminology. Although surge pricing and dynamic pricing are often used interchangeably, they have slightly different definitions. Dynamic pricing refers to any pricing model that allows prices to fluctuate, while surge pricing refers to prices that are adjusted upward.
Although Wendy’s won’t be exploring dynamic pricing until 2025 at the earliest, this type of pricing strategy is nothing new for many industries.
Dynamic pricing is nothing new
One aspect of the Wendy’s dynamic pricing controversy that warrants further examination is the nature of the product being sold. Traditionally, dynamic pricing has been associated with high-value goods and services, such as airline and concert tickets and ridesharing services, where consumers are accustomed to fluctuating prices.
In contrast, fast food is generally perceived as a low-cost, everyday convenience with an expectation of stable pricing. Introducing dynamic pricing into the fast food industry represents a significant departure from these established norms.
Of the industries that already use dynamic pricing, ride-sharing apps are perhaps one of the most well-known. Uber, for example, uses surge pricing during peak times, meaning prices increase during periods of high demand when there aren’t enough drivers available for every customers.
The travel and hospitality industries have long used dynamic pricing models as well. Airlines adjust ticket prices based on a variety of factors, including time until departure, the day of the week and demand for specific routes. The hospitality industry similarly adjusts room rates based on demand, seasonality and local events.
Ticket prices for concerts, sporting events and other live performances often vary based on factors like demand, seat location and timing as well. In this context, dynamic pricing allows event organizers to match prices to perceived market value.
Benefits of dynamic pricing
When implemented effectively, dynamic pricing can offer a number of benefits to both businesses and consumers. One advantage it offers is an enhanced customer experience. Dynamic pricing can provide value to consumers by offering lower prices during off-peak times or for less popular products and services.
This can make certain goods and services more accessible to budget-conscious customers and encourage them to make purchases they might otherwise forgo. Additionally, dynamic pricing can help businesses respond to market changes and customer preferences more quickly, leading to a more personalized and satisfying shopping experience.
By adjusting prices based on demand, businesses can encourage sales when inventory is high or demand is low, reducing the risk of unsold inventory. This can be particularly beneficial for events or services with fixed capacities, like concerts or flights, where unsold seats represent lost revenue.
While dynamic pricing offers a number of benefits, it also comes with its own set of challenges. One of the biggest risks associated with dynamic pricing is the potential negative impact on customer perception and trust. If customers feel that prices are unfair or unpredictable, they may lose trust in the brand.
This was evident in the Wendy’s situation, where the misunderstanding around surge pricing led to a backlash. Transparency and clear communication are crucial to maintaining customer trust when implementing dynamic pricing strategies.
Another concern is the way dynamic pricing can be perceived as a form of price discrimination, where different customers are charged different prices for the same product or service based on factors like demand, time of purchase or even personal data. Businesses need to ensure their dynamic pricing models are fair and do not inadvertently discriminate against any customers.
Implementing a dynamic pricing strategy can be complex and requires sophisticated technology and data analysis capabilities. Businesses need to invest in the right tools and systems to effectively manage and analyze large volumes of data in real-time.
As technology continues to advance, dynamic pricing models are expected to become more common across sectors like retail, energy and transportation. While these pricing models offer the potential for increased profitability, businesses need to approach them with an honest and genuine consumer-first approach.
The recent pricing controversy at Wendy’s underscores the importance of precise language and transparent communication for companies looking to adopt dynamic pricing. It serves as a reminder that businesses need to avoid misunderstandings and negative reactions from customers.
As dynamic pricing gains popularity, companies must carefully choose their words and clearly articulate their pricing strategies to prevent misunderstandings and maintain customer trust. Failure to do so could result in losing control over how consumers and the public interpret their pricing strategies, which could significantly impact their reputation and overall success.
Written by Lucas Dufour, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Meena Andiappan, McMaster University. Originally published in The Conversation.
Organizations are often the perfect breeding grounds for jealousy or fearing the loss of a valued relationship. (Shutterstock)
Instances of negative emotions, such as jealousy, are frequent in the workplace. Perhaps your boss just complimented your co-worker on a job well done while ignoring your contributions to a project. Or maybe your new mentee asked to transfer to another supervisor.
Although employees are often expected to ignore or, at minimum, leave such feelings unrecognized, they arise in any social setting.
In fact, organizations are often the perfect breeding grounds for jealousy (i.e., fearing the loss of a valued relationship). Resources are scarce, competition is fierce and maintaining favour with the right people is often critical in moving up in your career.
However, employees are often unsure about what to do with such negative social emotions. Simply ignoring negative emotions or letting them fester has been shown to lead to detrimental outcomes, from anxiety to burnout.
On the other hand, addressing these emotions with actions such as sabotage and revenge and social undermining is also unproductive — at least in the long term.
Our research suggests a different approach may be warranted, and even fruitful: embrace the emotion. When employees are able to reconceptualize jealousy as a motivating force, this opens up new (and more positive) venues to address, overcome, and even capitalize on the feeling. How jealousy develops at work
How jealousy develops at work
Our theoretical research set out to lay the groundwork for understanding how jealousy develops in the workplace. Our work suggests employees are more likely to feel threatened when they feel insecure about their skillset, are highly dependent on their supervisors for validation and support, and have experienced mistrust in the past.
When employees lack confidence in their abilities, they may see colleagues as threats, leading to feelings of inadequacy. This can be exacerbated when employees fear losing favour or recognition from their supervisors, which can create a competitive and hostile atmosphere at work.
In a workplace where there are few good supervisors, centralized power dynamics, and an employee suspects their co-worker has more in common with their supervisor than they do, the environment has all the pieces needed to create a minefield of jealousy.
When not managed properly, jealousy can have detrimental effects on both individual well-being and overall team dynamics in the workplace. Understanding the roots of this emotion is crucial for developing strategies to mitigate its impact and foster a healthier work environment.
Leveraging jealousy at work
Emotions researchers have long noted the difference between high- and low-activation emotions. For instance, when faced with jealousy, an intense emotion like anger (considered high-activation) is more likely to lead to action than a less intense emotion like sadness (considered low-activation).
Employees who are able to tap into activation responses can leverage seemingly negative situations to spur their own positive reactions. This means figuring out how they can maintain valued relationships by ensuring their contributions to the workplace are valued, recognized and rewarded.
Consider the scenario of your boss recognizing the work of your colleague over yours. You have two choices: you can either see this recognition as a sign that your boss doesn’t care for you or doesn’t value your work, in which case you might feel disappointed and discouraged, and assume there is little you can do to change your boss’ mind.
On the other hand, you might see this as a sign that your boss needs to be reminded of the great work you’re doing and assume there is quite a bit you can do to change your situation.
If jealousy is conceptualized as a call to action, you can make strides in advancing your status yourself. Perhaps you need to better communicate your group contributions to your boss, or maybe you need to step up and take on the role of a project lead.
Workplace relationships
Another critical point to consider is why you’re feeling jealousy. What does this relationship signify to your standing in your organization? How dependent are you upon that relationship (whether with your boss or your colleague) and are there ways to mitigate this dependence?
One valuable insight jealousy can bring us is pushing us to consider our workplace relationships: are there other relationships that we can cultivate, in case the present one doesn’t pan out?
This is where networking and relationship-building comes into play — making it a surprising, but effective, buffer to workplace jealousy.
Experiencing negative emotions like jealousy and envy at work is common. Instead of trying to hide or ignore such emotions, which may seem expected in a professional setting, consider reframing them. Viewing such emotions as a means to motivate yourself and expand your thinking will ultimately lead to better outcomes for all parties involved.
Written by Stein Monteiro, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Bradley Bernard, Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo credit: Shuttershock. Originally published in The Conversation.
The Start-Up Visa program is designed to help foreign entrepreneurs gain permanent residence in Canada.
The Start-Up Visa program is designed to help foreign entrepreneurs gain permanent residence in Canada. Initially introduced as a five-year pilot project in 2013, it was created to replace the longstanding Federal Entrepreneur Program that had been in operation since the 1970s.
However, the Start-Up Visa program has not proven to be a suitable replacement. Although the program has grown over the years, our analysis found that it’s still only half the size the Federal Entrepreneur Program was in 2010.
The Start-Up Visa program is falling short in a number of key areas, including job creation, global trade opportunities and the long-term viability of businesses.
Job creation
The primary concern with the Start-Up Visa program is its ability to create jobs. Unlike the Federal Entrepreneur Program, which required those coming to Canada to create at least one new job, the Start-Up Visa program doesn’t have job creation requirements in its admission criteria.
Job creation is an important reason why Canada has expanded its pathways to permanent residency. Immigrants with a variety of professional experiences can contribute to Canada’s growing economy, and business immigration plays an important role in that growth.
Aside from job creation, the Start-Up Visa program has additional objectives to boost innovation and internationalization. However, the ability of the Start-Up Visa program to attract businesses that are innovative is still unclear.
A study by Statistics Canada using data from 2011, 2014 and 2017 revealed that immigrant-led businesses operating in Canada for over 20 years were more likely to implement innovations in processes, products or marketing, and use patents compared to similar Canadian-owned firms. This suggests that businesses from the Federal Entrepreneur Program were not necessarily underperforming.
While it’s anticipated that businesses entering through the Start-Up Visa program will exceed these results, the lack of data makes it difficult to determine whether this is actually the case. Only a few applicants were endorsed by investors, and most were supported by incubators, meaning applicants consist primarily of early-stage startups. While they might be innovative, they will likely face challenges in terms of survival and longevity.
In the face of these criticisms, how necessary is the Start-Up Visa program exactly? Aside from instances of fraudulent applications to the Start-Up Visa, there are fundamental issues with the program.
One issue is whether the Start-Up Visa program is diverting potential applicants away from other programs. Another is whether it genuinely offers a route to permanent residency for those who are unlikely to succeed in other pathways.
In terms of the individual quality of applicants, the Start-Up Visa does not contribute significantly to the skill composition of immigration to Canada. However, it does present an opportunity to invest in foreign startups — all these entrepreneurs need is an ecosystem that will help them thrive. But their prosperity largely depends on Canada’s startup ecosystem, which essentially makes the Start-Up Visa an instrument for investing in risky foreign startups.
So what next?
Whether a policy works depends on its evaluation. The Federal Entrepreneur Program was shut down because many foreign entrepreneurs started small, unscalable businesses, which were deemed unsuitable for Canada’s future economic landscape. However few, these businesses brought in foreign direct investment and created jobs.
Our policy recommendation is that IRCC should conduct a thorough evaluation of the Start-Up Visa program to measure its performance regarding its stated objectives of job creation, innovation and internationalization, as well as provide achievable targets for these objectives.
When IRCC closes a pathway to permanent residency and opens up a new one, Canadians should ask not just whether it aligns with our objectives, but also whether those objectives are clear, measurable goals that can be evaluated over time.
Written by Hari KC, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Anna Triandafyllidou, Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo credit: Shutterstock. Originally published in The Conversation.
Digital nomad programs have proliferated in recent years. Now, Canada is seeking to use the idea to attract highly skilled tech workers.
Over the summer, the Canadian government unveiled its Tech Talent Strategy, which aims to attract global tech workers to come to Canada. Promoting Canada as a destination for digital nomads is one of the four key pillars of the strategy.
Though full details are yet to be revealed, only a well-calibrated policy — attuned to the changing conceptions of work and employment — can help Canada develop a high-skilled workforce and prevent unintended consequences.
Digital nomads are location-independent workers who use technology to do their jobs remotely, travelling to different countries for brief periods. Several countries have introduced new programs to attract digital workers over the past few years.
Canada’s new digital nomad program is part of the government’s broader vision to fulfil in-demand jobs and attract the talent necessary to sustain future economic growth.
The government expects that the digital nomads coming to Canada will seek employment with Canadian companies while here, leading to them eventually seeking permanent residency and help Canada retain tech talent. But Canada has work to do to clarify how tax and social benefits programs would apply to digital nomads.
Canada’s approach at odds with digital nomadism
The government’s assumption that the digital nomads will find jobs in Canada and become permanent residents contradicts the notion of digital nomadism. It is naïve of the government to take it for granted that while here they would choose to permanently settle down.
The government also expects digital nomads to seek employment with the local Canadian employers. However, digital nomads by definition are either paid employees working for companies based in other countries, or they are simply independent contractors or entrepreneurs. On the contrary, digital nomads are usually not allowed to work for any local employers in their destination countries. The country of residence and the country of work are principally different.
Yet, the decision to migrate — where to go and how long to stay — is often a complex process. And, some digital nomads may eventually decide to settle in Canada. Again though, Canada may not be the endpoint of their journeys.
If Canada seriously aims to attract digital nomads, it has leeway. A 2022 report published in the United Kingdom ranked Canada the No. 1 destination for digital nomads among 85 countries.
Digital nomadism exists in a sort of “nebulous space” between work-focused migration and lifestyle-related mobility. It goes against the traditional notions of place-based work, migration, taxation and citizenship. Governments must make policies in ways that align with those changing realities.
Canada could set an example for others to follow by co-ordinating its digital nomad program with policies in taxation and social protection.
In Canada, the government should clarify how tax and social benefits programs would apply to digital nomads. For example, the Canadian government taxes any foreigners staying here for more than 183 days. The government would need to clarify whether digital nomads would be taxed or given tax breaks in an effort to incentivize them to stay. If digital nomads are taxed, would they be allowed to access Canada’s social welfare system in the same way as any other resident?
Caution and clarity
Not all digital nomads are high-income earning transnational workers in pursuits of the freedoms and privileges that come with remote work. The realities of day-to-day life are complex even for digital nomads who are from the western world, but especially more so for those who are women or from the Global South. A new digital nomad program would need to address such intersectional challenges.
Rhetoric around attracting and retaining tech talent is one thing, but implementing it demands that the government clarify and adjust its policies in many other areas such as taxation, social protection and health care.
The government’s vision for retaining the tech talent in Canada is not straightforward either. Compared to Canada, the tech industry in the United States can offer high salaries. Digital nomads would potentially consider financial factors before deciding to seek employment with the Canadian tech companies.
If a large number of digital nomads are locally employed as expected, the Canadian tech industry would naturally become more competitive. Inviting international high-tech workers to the Canadian tech industry could inadvertently sideline local talent.
Research shows that digital nomads tend toward peripheral “exotic” locations with high-speed internet and a lower cost of living than their home country. As seen in places like Mexico City, the surge of digital nomads can price out local communities.
At a time when Canada is facing a housing crisis, such a program might make the situation even worse if not done with due diligence.
The government appears to be conflating a digital nomad with a high-tech remote worker. The focus on attracting tech workers could embed inequalities into the program. Canada’s preference is only for the high-tech sector where women constitute only 26.7 per cent of the global workforce.
Digital nomads are not all high-tech workers. They also work in a range of digital-intensive sectors, such as marketing, media, writing, tutoring and accounting.
Canada can play a leading role in developing digital nomad policies. In the global competition for talent, an evidence-based digital nomad program could meet Canada’s immigration priorities while showcasing Canada as a destination for global talent.
Gathering geoscientific data for mining and energy industries through ground-level surveys can be time-consuming, costly and physically dangerous. Drones can replace traditional surveying methods, reducing labour and equipment costs and completing surveys more quickly, but they have their own limitations.
To improve the versatility and quality of typical remote-system surveying data, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) engineering alumni Robel Efrem (mechanical) and Alexandre Coutu (electrical) teamed up with Sajad Saeedi from TMU’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. In partnership with the alumni’s company, Rosor Corp., they develop near-surface, remotely piloted aircraft systems that support multi-datatype output surveying, such as geophysical and topographic, in a single pass.
These long-range survey drones will improve geophysical data collection using custom-designed sensor suites, improved low-altitude accuracy, longer stamina and untethered, long-range communication systems. Enhanced geophysical survey data can provide mining investors greater insights into national and global mining resources, help solve demand shortages through mineral discoveries, and support environmental monitoring and developing technologies like electric vehicles.
Funding for this project by Mitacs. To learn more about how Mitacs supports groundbreaking research and innovation, visit the Mitacs website.
Written by Nicole Land, Toronto Metropolitan University & Kathleen Kummen, Capilano University. Photo credit: CC BY-NC. Originally published in The Conversation.
Investing in non-profit programs that provide culturally-relevant education is important to children and families.
As people across Canada begin to understand the implications of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program, public conversations often centre on the economic benefits of getting children back into quality child care, and their parents or guardians back into a robust Canadian economy.
This nurtures a belief that children and their learning should be conceptualized as a primarily economic issue: We need child care, the logic goes, so that women can work or children can learn the skills they need to contribute to the future market economy.
We are part of a collective of educators and scholars, the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory, invested in thinking about early childhood education otherwise. We ask: What narratives or stories are going unnoticed in the face of the universal child care plan in Canada?
Our proposal: Canada creates an education system that focuses on the work of living well with children.
Operating like a business?
We are concerned with the current marketization of the early childhood education profession — how childhood education is increasingly forced to adapt itself to the needs of the market economy, where what becomes important is how well the field operates like a business.
For us, education is not about market-based economics. The buying and selling of children’s education and the labour of educators concerns us. What is urgently needed is to pay more attention to the education of young children — their relations to learning, which we call “pedagogy.” We define this pedagogy as the work of living well with children.
Pedagogy takes education as an event and an experience. It is more than simply caring for children’s basic needs. Instead, it’s about collaborating with children and families to craft curriculum that truly matters to the messy worlds that children inhabit and inherit.
Amid the new federal funding, there is the creation of a market economy around childhood.
Such initiatives would see early childhood education as a numbers game, easily and inexpensively creating educators who can quickly fill positions. This would be at the detriment of longer, slower education required to think carefully about how to live well with children.
The risks to children, families and educators of rapidly expanding “spaces” under corporate business models are also apparent: The Globe and Mail reports that after the North Toronto Early Years Centre was acquired by a “rapidly expanding daycare chain,” existing staff were presented with new contracts that paid less and said they could be moved to another location at any time.
Turn the narrative around
Our society needs to turn the narrative around: children are not in early childhood education to provide employment opportunities for educators and guardians.
Instead, educators are involved in co-creating locally meaningful and responsive educational and social spaces. This means being co-investigators with children into the inquiries that arise out of their complex and diverse lives.
Together as a society, educators, community members, parents and caregivers need to ask what roles we all need to take on in order to build a truly universal system that can meet the unknowns of children’s lives now and into the future.
We want to share two actions the community and early childhood education field can act upon.
1. Understand ethical responsibility and shift our language.
We, as a Canadian society, need to recognize the complexity of early childhood educators creating spaces for young children instead of simply warehousing children to advance the economy.
Shifting our language means educational and training institutions, policymakers and society must change our expectations of early childhood education, as we ask it to become an educational undertaking, not just about “supervision.”
We have an ethical obligation to our youngest citizens to re-frame the educator and the early childhood education system as ethically responsible for meeting children and families in all the richness of their diverse life stories.
We instead raise the possibility that early childhood education involves more than merely meeting children’s basic needs.
Changing the expectations, stories and knowledge our society brings to concepts about educators, children and families is a good first step to changing the narrative around early childhood education.
2. Invest in non-profit programs which provide education that centres living well with children.
We need opportunities to understand education as a learning space, not strictly one for supervision, so guardians can join the workforce.
This requires that we, as government, advocates, families and communities, understand educators as capable and competent professionals, and education as a vibrant space full of life.
Public investment needs to be tied to non-profit programs where the primary concern is the meaningful and culturally relevant education of young children.
Thinking beyond economics
The two actions we propose are not a recipe but an invitation to disrupt problematic narratives that position educators and children as resources toward a market economy.
We are not proposing a “solution”; we propose we need an ongoing discussion about the purposes of early childhood education.
Shifting the narratives our society brings to understanding early childhood education in Canada matters to children’s and families’ lives. We can think beyond economics with children and families and educators.
Authored in conversation with Early Childhood Collaboratory members: Alexandra Berry (Capilano University); Alicja Frankowski, Courtney Amber, Cristina Delgado Vintimilla (York University); B. Denise Hodgins (British Columbia Early Childhood Pedagogy Network); Cory Jobb (Thompson Rivers University); Iris Berger (University of British Columbia); Kelly-Ann MacAlpine, Narda Nelson, Randa Khattar, Tatiana Zakharova-Goodman and Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw (Western University); Sylvia Kind (Capilano University).
Written by Sam Andrey, Cory Searcy and Patrick Neumann, Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo credit Shutterstock. Originally published in The Conversation.
Employees and supervisors are more likely to rate their job satisfaction high while working remotely compared to when working in-person.
A new survey by Toronto Metropolitan University with the support of the Future Skills Centre provides new insights into the ongoing transition to hybrid workplaces. The study, conducted in October 2022 with 1,500 employees and 500 supervisors who regularly work remotely, aimed to shed light on how Canadian workers are feeling and being supported.
Remote workers like remote work
The study’s first major finding will come as no surprise: remote workers like remote work. Both employees and supervisors were more likely to rate their job satisfaction as somewhat high while working remotely (78 per cent) than when working in person (41 per cent).
Compared to before the pandemic, 60 per cent of remote workers said their work-life balance has improved. More than half of employees (54 per cent) said the amount of work they got done increased as a result of remote work. A similar proportion of supervisors agreed (52 per cent), while just 15 per cent said their employees’ output decreased because of remote work.
It’s understandable that many organizations are trying to set expectations for on-site work at least some of the time.
Flexible in-person expectations
The survey found nearly half of remote workers either had no fixed in-person work requirements or worked entirely remotely. Another 37 per cent were expected to work in person once or twice a week and only 17 per cent were expected to work in person three or more days a week.
However, expectations did not always match reality. When remote workers were asked how often they actually worked on site in the week prior to the survey (the first week of October), about 67 per cent went worked the required amount of days, 17 per cent went in less often and 16 per cent went in more often.
Remote workers without fixed in-person expectations, or who were fully remote, tended to report lower stress levels, higher levels of trust in their employers and better job performance. However, these same workers also reported lower levels of connection to their colleagues. To balance the costs and benefits of working remotely, one approach seems to hit a sweet spot: working one day per week in person.
Flexibility increases satisfaction
Job satisfaction with remote work didn’t fall significantly when people worked one day a week in person. Eighty-four per cent of workers (employees and supervisors) had high satisfaction working fully remotely and 83 per cent had high satisfaction working in person one day a week. For workers that worked two or more days in person, that number dropped to 70 per cent.
Similarly, the perceived level of trust workers said their employers had in them didn’t change significantly when people worked one day a week on site.
Eighty per cent of fully remote workers, and 76 per cent who worked one day a week in person, felt their employers had high trust in them. This number decreased to 62 per cent once workers started working two or more days in person.
Hybrid work also impacted how management viewed the productivity of their employees.
Sixty-seven per cent of supervisors who worked in person one day a week believed their employees were more productive, while only 47 per cent of supervisors who worked two or more days a week did. Of supervisors who were fully remote, 53 per cent believed their employees were more productive.
But did working one day a week in person solve the challenge of connectedness with colleagues? Not quite — those working one day a week in person still reported an overall loss of connectedness to colleagues. But that reversed when employees worked three or more days in person, which correlated with significant drops in perceived job satisfaction and performance.
The future of remote work
Most Canadians who work remotely are still very satisfied and able to get more work done with less stress. This latest survey suggests about half of employers are letting their employees choose when to work in-person. And of those with specific expectations, many employees work less or more in-person than they are expected to.
The biggest issue for employers is how to maintain flexibility while keeping teams connected and productive. Employers across the country are grappling with the right approach to mandating back-to-work requirements, while also balancing concerns about team performance and culture.
In this new world of hybrid work, managers need to support their teams with high-quality working conditions that build and maintain interpersonal connections while allowing for both high productivity and superior job satisfaction.
For employers requiring on-site attendance, this new survey indicates that working one day a week in person might be a sweet spot for maintaining job satisfaction and performance, while still providing opportunities for building in-person connections.
Written by Laura Lam, University of Toronto and Anna Triandafyllidou, Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo credit Shutterstock. Originally published in The Conversation.
Will precarious alternative forms of work, like gig platform jobs, become the norm for immigrant care workers?
For internationally trained health-care professionals faced with unemployment and underemployment in the Canadian labour market, digital platforms offer the possibility of finding jobs in the industry they are trained in.
Take, for example, a newly arrived nurse from the Phillipines who is awaiting her registered nurse license. Without her license, she is unable to work as a registered nurse, so in the meantime she might pick up a gig from a digital care platform like care.com to care for a client with dementia twice a week.
Personal support workers, nurse aides and orderlies are needed to support the dearth of care workers in Canada. But many are facing barriers to obtaining quality occupations in the care industry.
Despite Canada’s merit-based point system, which is meant to select immigrants to contribute to the skilled labour market, immigrants often run up against regulatory, employment and policy barriers.
For immigrant care professionals facing employment barriers, care platforms seemingly offer an opportunity for them to work in their field. But while digital platform work can be a stepping-stone for new immigrants in Canada, for some it only offers them a temporary reprieve while they figure out how to find permanent jobs in the health-care industry.
A different type of platform work
Our forthcoming research in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies about platform workers finds that there are two different types of platform work: relational and non-relational.
Digital care platforms are different than casual, one-off gig platforms like ride-hailing or food delivery. These latter forms of work are non-relational, since there is neither a need nor a possibility of relationships forming between customers and service providers.
The immigrants we interviewed found that engagement on digital platform work, like Uber and SkipTheDishes, offered them opportunities to practice their language abilities or expand their networks, but didn’t provide opportunity for deeper relationships. But care or domestic platform work is different.
This is because the work of care is innately relational and demands a connection between care workers and receivers. This creates both opportunities and motivation for care workers to engage more deeply with their care recipients, in hopes of cultivating a lasting relationship with regular clients.
Immigrant care workers felt more fulfilled when they were able to find work on platforms that offered relational forms of work. These temporary jobs allowed their professional identity to be formally recognized by performing caring-related tasks. Even if the tasks were below the expertise of the workers, their ability to fulfil them was affirming to their professional identity.
But while digital care platforms might allow immigrants to find work that aligns with their field of expertise, it comes with consequences. Workers on care platforms are incentivized to put themselves at risk for their employers, creating a power imbalance between them and the platforms they work for, and between them and care receivers.
Quality care work is needed
Policy and regulatory changes are needed to help immigrant care workers find jobs within their field of expertise. In Ontario, for example, international nurses are allowed to start practising while they wait for their full registration. Yet, the journey to full credentialing is a long and expensive process.
Alternative working arrangements like gig platforms might be a temporary solution, but many care professionals are still unable to put their skills and experience to use in permanent jobs. Canada needs to work with these new immigrants to understand how regulatory barriers can be assuaged. We have to ask: are immigrant care workers able to thrive, or will precarious alternative forms of work, like gig platform jobs, become the norm?
Written by Lucas Dufour, Toronto Metropolitan University, Meena Andiappan, University of Toronto. Photo credit: Shutterstock. Originally published in The Conversation.
There are fewer women working on the French harbours today than there were 70 years ago.
Despite this progress in certain male-dominated fields, other professions still remain difficult for women to break into. The fact that many of the jobs in these fields are dirty, dangerous and physically difficult is frequently used to justify women’s lack of access, and women’s workforce participation often remains concentrated in less physically tasking jobs.
But what about professions that have become cleaner and less physically taxing over the years? While you might expect these jobs to be more open to women, such as was the case with police work in the UK, our upcoming study in Research in the Sociology of Organizations proves this isn’t the case.
The longshore profession
For our study, we looked at the longshore profession (people who manage the transfer of shipped goods at docks) in France over seven decades. What we found was surprising: As jobs became cleaner, safer, and less physically arduous, fewer women were seen on the docks.
To understand why, we must go back 50 years. In France, before 1968, women were accepted into the longshore profession but were relegated to performing “women’s work,” like sowing and repairing sacks that held transported goods or cleaning warehouses.
In contrast, men transferred heavy cargo, which was considered a higher prestige job since it involved direct contact with goods and boats. Lower-status tasks were given to women who remained inside the warehouse with little direct contact with shipped goods. A clear division of labour was implemented, resulting in lower salaries for women.
Justifying discrimination
Longshoremen tended to view women either as too delicate and fragile to work on the docks, or as too distracting to labour alongside men. They justified their exclusion of women based on classic gender essentialist arguments: Women were not as strong as men and would be put off by the gruelling nature of working in the ship holds.
Cargo containers were introduced onto French harbours starting in 1970 and the work that the women used to do disappeared as most goods became transported and stored in containers.
In response, men decided to support those who most closely resembled members of their existing group by recruiting their sons and male family members. By only hiring men, longshore workers kept women out of the profession, even though the work became less physically taxing over time.
Gender inequality persists
How did these men justify their exclusion of women? We found that longshoremen used three tactics. First, men claimed that their jobs were more stressful than before and that although physical strength was no longer a barrier, another type of strength — psychological strength — was necessary.
Second, the stereotype of women being distracting was used to suggest that the presence of women on the docks would disturb men’s ability to stand strong and united in the face of employers wanting to cut salaries and jobs.
Third, although there was now less physical labour involved in their jobs, men decided that each longshore worker needed to be able to perform all tasks, physical and non-physical. This meant that men could, once again, excuse their discrimination by claiming women wouldn’t be able to perform the few strenuous physical tasks that remained.
The longshore profession is, according to our knowledge, the only profession in France that still has no women in it. However, we did see hope in the attitudes of younger longshoremen we interviewed — some of whom were strongly in support of the arrival of women, though even they noted “it might take one generation of longshoremen or two.”
Gender discrimination has existed since the beginning of the labour markets and continues to be prominent in many countries and professions across the globe. Our study suggests that, although justifications for discrimination may easily evolve, getting discrimination to budge is arduous work indeed.
This deal is being touted by Uber and Leafly as a great leap forward for the industry. The companies claim the arrangement will provide several benefits, including more business for the retailers, increased choice and flexibility for consumers while reducing the illicit market, and cutting down on impaired driving. However, these arguments hold little water.
How it will work
Consumers are able to use the Uber Eats platform to order cannabis products from any of three Toronto-based retailers — Hidden Leaf Cannabis, Minerva Cannabis and Shivaa’s Rose — provided they are within the retailer’s delivery footprint.
The ordering experience is similar to ordering food delivery on the app: customers navigate to the “recreational cannabis” category, then to their chosen retailer’s menu where they select their desired products, then state whether they will pick up the order or prefer delivery. Uber then transmits the order to the applicable store. Once filled, the order is delivered to the customer by the retailer’s own delivery staff, as prescribed by law.
All three of the initial stores currently offer online ordering for either in-store pickup or free same-day delivery to a designated area within the Greater Toronto Area (with a minimum purchase amount).
Consumers can also order these same products from the Ontario Cannabis Store run by the Ontario government where they can opt for same-day delivery within Toronto for a fee of eight dollars. Any gain on the part of consumers is minimal.
There’s also little in this for retailers. They will likely see a marginal increase in orders, but at what price to them? Neither the retailers nor Uber have been willing to disclose the commercial terms of this deal so we’re left to guess. Cannabis, as of this moment, doesn’t enjoy the kind of margins that can sustain the fees that Uber is charging.
It’s not hard to imagine that most cannabis retailers will also want to join Uber Eats down the road, when the industry has consolidated more. When this happens, it will mean overwhelming choices for consumers, something that has been proven to reduce sales in other categories.
La Société québécoise du cannabis is, by any measure, a healthy cannabis retailer. In their most recent quarterly report, they reported a net income of $20.5 million on sales of $139 million, which translates to a net profit margin of just under 15 per cent.
Uber charges food retailers 15 per cent of their total revenue to those that provide their own delivery service and use the platform solely to take orders (30 per cent if Uber’s drivers are used). Assuming Uber takes a similar bite out of cannabis retailers’ profits, there isn’t margin enough for this to make sense to retailers. The math just doesn’t work.
There are already plenty of delivery options for people who would rather stay on the right side of the law and avoid driving to the nearest store. Similarly, consumers who are interested in purchasing legal weed, not black market weed, already have the means to do so.
There is no reason why an Uber Eats-specific delivery service will have any more of an impact than current delivery services do. It also remains to be seen if people will want to use Uber to buy their weed in the first place, considering the options already available.
It’s clear that retailers and consumers will not be the winners in this new partnership — that honour goes to the middlemen, Uber and Leafly. At the moment, that seems to be the state of the Canadian cannabis industry — business is booming for provincial wholesalers, while private retailers and cannabis producers are left in the lurch.
Written by Frederic Dimanche and Wayne Smith , Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo credit (JeShoots/Unsplash). Originally published in The Conversation.
The key to a successful trip is to properly plan for it.
We all realized the importance of the COVID-19 pandemic when we were asked by the government to stay home in Winter 2020.
And while some are still preferring to stay at home or avoiding international air travel, many are eager to fly, but are confronted with difficult travel conditions: Flights are delayed or cancelled, people are waiting in line for hours at airports and missing their flights, luggage is being lost and emotions are high.
So, is it worth travelling right now?
Revenge travel and a labour crisis
On one hand, the good news is many people have overcome their fear of travelling amid the pandemic. They long for a time when they could visit other places, or see friends and family they’ve missed these past 30 months.
Revenge travel — a term coined to define people’s need to travel after being deprived of it — and nostalgia for travelling are fuelling people’s return to travel. And Europe is a top destination.
Compared to 2021, Europe welcomed almost four times as many international travellers during the first three months of the year, while the U.S. welcomed more than twice as many.
On the other hand, the travel rebound has met a labour crisis: Employers are struggling to hire qualified people after many left due to pandemic unemployment. The result? Travel chaos.
From lost luggage to missed connections and cancelled flights, airports are struggling. In particular, Toronto Pearson airport has received poor publicity the past several weeks and been ranked “worst in the world” for the number of delayed flights (over 50 per cent of all flights) from the end of May until July 19.
Is it going to be fixed anytime soon? Probably not. But airports like Pearson say they are seeing improvements. In the meantime, it’s a safe bet for travellers to get accustomed to paying more for lower quality services.
Plenty of health benefits
But it is still worth travelling. We know how important travel is: We travel to reconnect with friends and family, to escape our normal lifestyles, to discover other landscapes and cultures. And taking vacations is actually good for your health and wellness, even when it’s a short trip!
Travelling has health benefits, like recovering from mental and physical fatigue, improving household relationships and making people happier. Researchers have shown that satisfaction with leisure travel is positively connected to quality of life. And several studies have even shown that international travel restrictions led to unintended negative health and social consequences.
While travel for vacation is recommended, beware: According to air travel specialists, more disruptions are in the cards and more air travel chaos is on its way. The labour issues that are the main reason for the disruptions are unlikely to disappear anytime soon and will continue to affect all tourism sectors, from transportation to hospitality and attractions.
While travellers should not feel discouraged as the benefits outweigh the costs, it may be time to consider alternative, less environmentally damaging forms of travel: closer to home, without flying and favouring domestic tourism as a substitute to international tourism.
The key to a successful trip is to properly plan for it, consider any alternatives that may be needed and be diligent about checking and double checking travel regulations and restrictions — even while on your trip, as they may change.
Make sure you have digital copies of all relevant documents (like your passport, prescriptions and vaccination records) and pack at least a couple of days of clothes in your carry-on (or don’t check a bag at all). Also remember to be respectful of the people and countries you visit (wearing a mask, for example, may be encouraged or required in some countries or public places).
Finally, bring some patience, flexibility and a willingness for adventure.