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COMPENSATION

Show us the money

Just as the pandemic has rewritten outdated rules around remote work, theres a sea change on the horizon when it comes to pay transparency

WITH MAJOR PAY transparency laws coming into effect in American states like New York, Colorado and California, a new poll shows that Canadians are heavily in favour of similar laws being passed in Canada.

 

A poll conducted by Leger and Talent.com found that a whopping 84 per cent supported laws requiring companies to post the salary on a job posting, with a majority believing that such a low would help women and minorities, who often get shortchanged on salary negotiations.

 

“I think we’ll see more momentum behind these types of laws coming into place, said Talent.com’s Robert Boersma. “It’s becoming less of a taboo topic with the younger generation because of their style of work and the way they that they look at their work and their life.”

 

Overall, many see such laws as a positive, risk-free way to streamline the hiring process for both employer and jobseeker. “It helps applicants to save time and avoid applying to a job that wouldn’t fit within the pay band that they need,” says Jeramy Karman, partner at LHH Knightsbridge in Toronto. “That is also helpful to the employer, because they’re not having to vet candidates that can’t fit within that pay band as well.”

 

Companies struggling to attract workers may want to skip waiting for legislation and start engaging in this practice on their own, too — as it turns out, it’s a major attraction for workers.

 

“More than half of employees would consider switching jobs for more pay transparency, and for Gen-Z the number jumps to 70 per cent,” says Tanya Jenson, whose company Beqom studied this issue last year. “As the workplace continues to evolve, it’s crucial for employers to create an open and transparent relationship with their employees to improve engagement and understand how to better meet employee needs.” Kieran Delamont

MANAGING

Shining with the stars?

Managers want to hire them, and the rest of us probably hope to be seen as one. But sometimes, superstar employees do more harm than good

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FANS OF A certain blue-and-white, salary-heavy Toronto hockey team will know that one (or, say, four) superstars does not a winning formula make — that no matter how many superstars you have, teamwork is still the name of the game. Same goes for managing a business, research shows.


“Hiring a star can bring just as many negative results as positives,” write researchers Matthew Call and Elizabeth Campbell in the Wall Street Journal. Their research looked at how star employees inspire their colleagues as well as how star employee discourage them, often without noticing.

 

One study of Chinese firms showed that teammates of stars did less of the exploratory work required to come up with their own novel ideas — in effect, becoming dependent on the star to do the creative lifting.”

 

So how do you do it? “The central implication of our research is that HR leaders and managers should seek to optimize the proportion of stars in work groups,” Call and Campbell’s paper concludes.

 

In plain English, they suggest a few ideas. You can pair superstar employees with younger workers or new hires, as research shows a positive effect on performance in that scenario. You also should be careful about who you pair a superstar with, they say: “People who are predisposed to make comparisons with others and are fixated on proving themselves are likely to feel more threatened when working with stars. On the other hand, peers with more confidence in their work abilities…are inclined to view stars as role models.”

 

Other tips include spreading out your superstar employees across different teams ― “teams benefit from having more stars on a team, up to a point” ― as well as finding them roles where they can shine, but not overshadow.

 

While the precise impact of a particular star employee is impossible to predict, the overall conclusion is one that is easy for managers to internalize: stars are a resource, like any other — one that you need to be judicious with, but not afraid to lean on when you need to. Kieran Delamont

Terry Talks: Gearing up for 2023

The last year has created waves of disruptions to the workplace landscape. Some organizations were left in the wake and may still be trying to remain above water while others hopped on their jet skis and rode safely to shore. Others were somewhere in the middle surfing the waves. With the end of the year drawing near, now is the ideal time to reflect on your team ― where you are and where you want to be. 

LEARN MORE HERE

SOCIAL MEDIA

Flying the coop

With Twitter on deathwatch, migrants are flocking to new alternatives

IT’S FAIR TO say that Elon Musk’s recent $44-billion purchase of Twitter has not gone well. As of Friday morning, a mass exodus of technical staff following a bizarre job ultimatum had raised fears that, one way or another, Twitter was on its way to being beached.

 

Heck, even Trump didn’t bother to make a return.

 

Users are heading for other pastures, too — and many of them are now exploring ad-free social media networks that some believe will be the next generation of online platform.

 

If you’re a younger user, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of and/or signed up for BeReal — a new, ad-free social media platform kind of like Snapchat. On the other hand, if you were a power Twitter user, you might’ve moved over to Mastodon — a platform that’s sort of like Twitter, sort of like blogging and sort of like an old internet forum, all wrapped into one.

 

“For BeReal and other budding social media apps, the lack of ad opportunities may be by design and represent a new era of what it means to build and grow a new social media platform — without advertiser support,” write Kimeko McCoy and Krystal Scanlon at Digiday.

 

As the social media sector sees massive layoffs amidst a major downturn, ad-free social media is posed to grow, particularly as users re-evaluate what experience they are looking for. “The new generation, despite knowing nothing better, are starting to get sick and tired of the fake glitz and glamour of commercialized social media, their ad-cluttered feeds and the fake influencer cult endorsed by the algorithm,” writes a post by Ekaterina Kachalova at AdGuard.

 

BeReal has raised nearly $100 million in the past year, and for a brief time last year, Clubhouse — also ad-free — was all the rage. Mastodon has been the biggest winner in the Twitter exodus. Ad-free social media is clearly offering some kind of appeal.

 

“The rise of BeReal and Mastodon is the direct consequence of the disdain that more and more people have for traditional social media and their advertising-based revenue models,” Kachalova writes. “It remains to be seen whether these new sites fall back into obscurity, [but] the growing popularity of these apps has again revealed a trend towards more authenticity, more privacy, more control over personal data and less advertising.” Kieran Delamont

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WORKFORCE

Quietly returning

Older workers are coming off the sidelines but even with soaring inflation, dont expect to see a rush of un-retirees

ONE OF THE interesting employer responses to the Great Resignation/ongoing labour shortage in the workforce had been a move to welcome previously retired workers back into the workforce.

 

Now that we’re a year-ish into this new trend, how is it playing out?

 

“Anecdotally, there are lots of people considering coming back,” said Stuart Lewis, CEO of Rest Less, an advocacy group for senior workers. Older workers are coming back for many reasons — money is a big one, obviously, but there are other benefits. One previously retired worker quoted by the Financial Times said, “I mostly miss the social aspect of work. I used to work for a happy team of people with a lot of banter,” he said. “It’s very much an outdated view that people will retire and sit at home and do nothing.”

 

A study of un-retiring workers backs this idea up. Sixty per cent, according to a Joblist study, are “looking for something to do,” while only 27 per cent were doing it strictly for the money.


Compared to younger workers, older employees are more willing to come into the office for in-person work, too. All of this “could be good news for employees,” said Joblist’s Kevin Harrington. “Retirees are an overlooked talent pool that companies can and should engage in order to combat labour shortages.”

 

How durable this trend is remains to be seen, however. Some are looking at the data and seeing that the pool of un-retirees is drying up.

 

“We are getting closer to the bottom of that talent pool,” said Nick Bunker, Indeed’s North American economic research director. Retirees heading back to the labour force peaked at 3.3 per cent in the spring and levelled out over the summer. Now, with the labour market still tight, Bunker added, “it’s unlikely employers strapped for help will see another new rush of older workers coming off the sidelines.”

 

In other words, stay tuned— by next year, we might be talking about re-retirements. Kieran Delamont

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