REMOTE WORK
Blurring the line between work and play
Say hello to the “hush trip”, the latest addition to the growing lexicon at the intersection of job and travel
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AS WE HAVE talked about in this newsletter in the past, remote work has fundamentally changed the way people travel, with business trips now evolving into “bleisure” trips, and with more people able to keep tabs on work while they are traveling.
For the most part, all of these things happen out in the open. But what about when they don’t? Enter the “hush trip”.
A hush trip, writes Cloey Callahan, “refers to when remote workers don’t inform their boss that they are going to a new destination ― even if it’s a tropical island or a known tourist spot.”
Early in the pandemic, taking a hush trip was a risky venture — it even cost Ontario finance minister Rod Phillips his cabinet post after he took a Caribbean vacation in late 2020.
But as remote work has stabilized, the hush trip has become so normalized that one survey by RVShare found that 56 per cent of workers who took a trip in the last two years are likely to take a hush trip this year.
“As I’ve gotten more comfortable with remote work and working wherever I have strong Wi-Fi, I would just work there,” said RVShare’s communications director Maddie Bourgerie. “It makes travelling a bit easier.”
It naturally has bosses and HR professionals a bit on edge, with concerns that employees are slacking off. But that’s not necessarily the case. “It’s not necessarily that employees are fibbing, it’s more appropriate to say employees are taking advantage of a remote work environment,” said Jessica Kriegel, an executive at Culture Partners. “But if they are fibbing, it is because they don’t have the psychological safety with their boss to be straightforward.”
It may confer some advantages, too, Kriegel added. A hush trip might give you some of the psychological benefits of a vacation without leaving your team short ― and might allow you to save your PTO for a vacation when you really need to unplug.
Like so many new features of remote work, experts suggest that the answer is not to clamp down on it, but to build policies that accommodate it to determine when a worker does need to fill their boss in, and when they don’t. Make clear what is okay, and what might cause issues, suggested Kayla Glanville, CEO of Upaway. “[Hush trips can work], until it doesn’t, until you get to a point where you weren’t clear on expectations on both ends,” she said. “Clear is kind.” Kieran Delamont
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RECRUITMENT
The cruel temptation of the job offer scam
Targeting everyone from new immigrants to the newly unemployed, job scams are getting surprisingly smart
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MORE AND MORE of the jobseeking process now takes place remotely, with less face-to-face interaction than ever before — and over the course of the pandemic and into the post-pandemic economy, that has meant booming business for LinkedIn job scams.
Canadians have lost more than $20 million to job scams since 2020, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, and experts say that these scams have only grown more prevalent ― and sophisticated ― over the course of the pandemic.
“Scammers post as hiring managers or recruiters, often scraping the details of real recruiters for a given company to create authentic-looking profiles,” explained Kelsey Rolfe in Canadian Business. “Lured into a false sense of safety, jobseekers go through a virtual interview process and quickly receive job offer…and are asked to provide personal information such as their social insurance number and driver’s license.”
Some are even lured into sending money to a third party, often for “training” that they’ll never get back.
Job platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed say these scams have gotten harder to spot. “There’s certainly an increase in the sophistication of the attacks and the cleverness,” said LinkedIn VP Oscar Rodriguez. The platforms themselves are struggling to keep up ― LinkedIn said that in six months last year, it blocked 16.4 million accounts suspected of being scammers.
Experts say those most at risk are early-career professionals (who are unlikely to spot risky recruitment practices, especially given the speed at which that has changed) and new Canadians. And now, with the rapid spread of AI tools, the scams are scaling up.
“ChatGPT-style solutions make it much harder to detect scams,” said Etay Maor, cybersecurity professor. “IT accelerates the process and it lowers the bar for newcomers.”
Concerned about potential job scams? Check out LinkedIn’s tools and tips to spot them before they get you. Kieran Delamont
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Terry Talks: Why ‘wokeness’ did not cause SVB’s collapse
| Following Silicon Valley Bank’s downfall, the pitchforks are out for diversity goals. Once held in high regard as a symbol of innovation and success, SVB’s downfall can be attributed to a series of ill-fated decisions. Despite this, there are commentators who are nonsensically blaming the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts for the bank’s collapse. | | | |
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Everybody’s working on the weekend
Be it increased flexibility or productivity paranoia, more of us are working on the weekend
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THE NEAR-CONSTANT FORECASTS of a recession, regular headlines about layoffs in the tech sector and the general evolution of remote work have all started to cut into that most sacred of weekly treasures: the weekend. According to productivity software company ActivTrak, at least, which clocked a five per cent increase in the number of hours worked on the weekend.
That may be small, but under the hood the data tells a more interesting story. Industries like tech and media, which have been hit hardest by layoffs in recent months, saw spikes of 30 per cent and 53 per cent more hours worked on the weekend in 2022, respectively.
“The reasons are twofold,” writes Bloomberg’s Matthew Boyle. “Job cuts that have heaped more work on fewer staffers, along with a need to escape the constant interruptions from the likes of Zoom calls and Slack chats that are part of today’s increasingly hybrid workforce.”
The first factor makes some intuitive sense. “Unlike the Great Resignation, finding a white-collar job is more challenging now,” writes Forbes’ Jack Kelly. “You don’t want to be the person that is let go. To avoid this fate, people are working harder and longer hours.”
The second is more interesting. Remote work acolytes often talked up remote work precisely because of the lack of office distractions. Your home office was supposed to be a sanctuary. But, possibly due to the rising number of notifications, digital check-ins, Slack messages and bings and bobs coming from your laptop, remote workers have been pushed to find ways to make remote work more remote, somehow. And in the end, isn’t this what a newfound sense of flexibility was meant for?
“As people become more comfortable with flexibility,” says ActivTrak’s VP Gabriela Mauch, “it’s acceptable to log off at 3 p.m. on a Friday and deal with the work on the weekend.” Kieran Delamont
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CAREERS
Trading up
Badly needed and well-paid, new programs and changing perceptions are helping the skilled trades return to fashion
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WITH DEMAND FOR new tradespeople increasing across Canada ― particularly as the country tries to scale up its housing stock to address housing affordability ― Ontario made an announcement last week that starting next fall, all high school students will be required to take at least one tech course to graduate, something that the province hopes will “open up doors and create new pathways to good jobs in STEM and the skilled trades.”
This follows an announcement earlier this month of an “accelerated pathway” for Ontario high schools to draw apprentices into the skilled trades pipeline, allow students to transition to full-time, skilled trades apprenticeship programs in grade 11.
The hope is that if more students are exposed to tech courses at least once, that more will look into trade school or technical college after high school.
Industry leaders in the construction trades are applauding the move, with Jason Burggraaf of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association saying it helps address the lack of interest in trades “after two or more generations of parents [who] didn’t encourage their children to get into the skilled trades.”
Experts in the industry say that more can be done, though, to bridge the gap between high school grads and the trades, especially when it comes to apprenticeships. Matt Bradley, coordinator of the Specialized Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program at the Toronto District School Board, told CBC that employers have grown increasingly hesitant to take on new apprentices, usually because of the financial demands. He wants to see industry and government come together to promote pathways into apprenticeships straight out of high school, as well as expanding the co-op internship stream.
“From B.C. to Alberta, Ontario and the Maritimes, everyone is screaming for more skilled tradespeople,” he said. “We need employers, we need parents, we need guidance counsellors, we need teachers and students to all understand the value of the apprenticeship pathway.”
That’s a message echoed by Shaun Barr, head of apprenticeship training at Algonquin College, who says that the time is right to take advantage of rising interest among high school students in a trades career, which are increasingly looking more stable and lucrative than professional work.
“The high schools are beginning to realize that these aren’t low-end jobs,” he said. “The needle has moved on that.” Kieran Delamont
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