PRODUCTIVITY
Take naps at work. Apologize to no one
Research suggests napping at work can make you better at your job
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FEW BOSSES AND managers, you might imagine, would likely be all that thrilled to find an employee with their head on their desk, fast asleep, in the middle of the day. But some new data ― and a growing chorus of pro-nap experts ― suggest rethinking the aversion to the workday nap, something that evidence increasingly shows to be good for the employee and the workplace.
New research published recently in the journal Sleep Health found that “regular napping slowed the pace the brain shrinks as we age.” One of the lead researchers said that their findings “suggest that, for some people, short daytime naps may be a part of the puzzle that could help preserve the health of the brain as we get older.”
A lot of people would like to see that taken even further ― embrace the power nap as part of the workday, they say.
“If you go for a nap with an unsolved problem ― an email you haven’t been able to phrase quite right or a conversation that’s weighing on your mind, you often wake up and know what to do or say,” stated Cara Moore, an executive coach and founder of the UK-based ProNappers business consultancy.
By Statistics Canada’s estimates, between one-in-three and one-in-four Canadian workers are coming to work without getting enough sleep, and that has knock-on effects for productivity and employee wellbeing. Embracing short, 15- to 30-minute nap breaks at work may “help businesses maintain a healthy bottom line, so it should be seen as an investment in productivity,” said rehabilitation medicine professor Cary Brown at the University of Alberta.
It’s probably a long shot that your office will suddenly install nap pods and institute sleepy time in the workday. But if you’re a remote worker who can find time in the middle of the day, you might consider bagging off for half an hour or so.
“Do I think having a nap in the middle of the day is fantastic? Absolutely,” one corporate trainer in Toronto told The Globe and Mail. “If you are looking at naps from a healthy lifestyle perspective, then I think it should be included with a whole bunch of other things like time management, healthy eating, going to the gym, getting up and going for a walk or limiting [off hours] e-mails.” Kieran Delamont
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WORKFORCE
Make way for the digital nomads
Canada aims to attract remote workers with new digital nomad visa
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IN LATE JUNE, Canadian immigration minister Sean Fraser announced that Canada was going to be making changes to its immigration policy, aimed at attracting high-skilled STEM workers from abroad with simplified visas as well as launching a new “digital nomad” strategy aimed at luring some of the highly mobile workforce to Canada.
The strategy, Fraser said, will “allow people who have a foreign employer to come and work in Canada for up to six months, live in communities in this country, and spend money in communities in this country. And should they receive a job offer while they’re here, we’re going to allow them to continue to stay and work in Canada.”
“When software engineers, data scientists, technology product managers and other key professionals are able to come to Canada, they will be snapped up by companies that are desperate for skilled workers,” said Nick Schiavo of the Canadian Council of Innovators. “Easing the pathway to Canada for highly skilled technology professionals will allow Canadian companies to hire more swiftly, capitalize on market opportunities and move at the pace of business.”
Canada’s immigration changes also look to be trying to take advantage of some of the volatility in the U.S. labour market, by clearing a pathway for American H-1B visa holders in the United States. With a lot of tech layoffs in the past year south of the border ― and a lot of people on H-1B visas scrambling to find new jobs ― Canada wants to bring some of them here. To do so, the government is creating an open work-permit stream that allows up to 10,000 H-1B visa holders to come and work in Canada.
What might be interesting to watch is whether this creates increased competition with the United States, now that we’re openly looking to poach some of their tech talent. The move has prompted some concern, stateside, about losing some of their top talent.
“This is a smart immigration move for Canada, but very bad news for the United States,” writes Daniel Di Martino, a graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “For years, we have been severely limiting the number of high-skilled immigrants we let in legally and delaying the typical legal immigration process by years through burdensome red tape. Now, other countries are actively recruiting our few high-skilled legal immigrants.” Kieran Delamont
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Terry Talks: The impact of outplacement on mental health
| For many employers, outplacement services can seem like an afterthought, summoning thoughts of resumé-writing workshops and interview skills drills. But a good outplacement service goes well beyond those basics and incorporates support for a critical element of any termination: The employee’s mental health. | | | |
C-SUITE
Say hello to leadership-as-a-service
Falling somewhere between advisor and interim CEO, fractional executives are having a moment
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GIGIFICATION HAS FED its way up the food chain and is knocking on the door of the C-suite in the form of the “fractional executive.” The latest executive career trend sees mid- to late-career executives moving into a couple of part-time roles, rather than lashing themselves to one company.
“Fractional executives fill an executive position in a part-time or short-term capacity,” explains one fractional executive writing in Entrepreneur Magazine. “They are typically former executives or consultants and can be a great option for small businesses and startups.”
For companies looking to employ a fractional executive, the concept can hold plenty of appeal. Small- and mid-sized companies have begun hiring fractional executives for a variety of advantages, including cost effectiveness, access to specialized expertise and reduced risk of hiring the wrong executive. Many who hire fractional executives are doing it for a time-limited project, like an operations transformation or implementation. Others are hiring them as interim execs as they conduct a more thorough process.
For fractional execs themselves, the appeal of the role often revolves around lifestyle. It can require a bit of overhead in terms of incorporating your work as its own business (and other bureaucratic matters), but has its payoffs. One former full-time CFO told the Wall Street Journal that it made it easier to balance a career and a family. “I was working 60 to 70 hours a week and traveling internationally,” said Shauna Giddings Schmitz, “and I just thought, ‘What’s more important right now is being with my daughter.”
Because many of the people who gravitate towards this role are looking to improve work-life balance, it tends to skew towards those in the back half of their career (rather than early-career execs, who still tend to be sourced from within company ranks). For some, it’s given their career a timely boost, and given them a feeling of control over their job. Kieran Delamont
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SOCIAL MEDIA
Should your brand be on Threads?
Threads is breaking the Internet. But does it have staying power?
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THINGS HAVE NOT been going especially well at Twitter over the last few months, and in response, Facebook’s parent company Meta recently unveiled Threads ― and at least by the numbers, it was a hit. Threads signed up 100 million new users in less than a week, making it the fastest-growing app of all time.
So, should you ― or do you have to ― be on Threads? Businesses getting a bit fatigued with social media strategies would be forgiven if they weren’t rushing to add another app into the mix. But stemming from Instagram’s success as a commerce platform, Threads has looked like an especially big hit with brands and marketers.
“Threads feels a little more playful and off-the-cuff," one company founder told Inc.com. Another said that “rather than inspiring more passive engagement ― such as a like or view on Instagram ― users [on Threads] seem to be encouraged to articulate their thoughts more deliberately and thus engage in conversation.”
Surely there’s a little bit of recency bias at work here ― everyone loves the new thing ― but the early reviews, at least, have Threads as a brand-friendly middle-ground between Instagram and Twitter.
That said, the launch of another app may push some other brands to drop social media completely. “Instead of scrambling to claim digital real estate across all these newly emerging platforms, some companies are choosing to be more judicious about which platforms they choose to join,” writes Chris Stokel-Walker. One of the first to jump ship was Lush Cosmetics, which stopped posting on all social media about two years ago ― a strategy they say has worked well for them.
The other group that might be eyeing Threads are jobseekers, who might be looking for an alternative to LinkedIn on which to conduct digital networking. On that front, Threads doesn’t seem to be offering much appeal: one Amazon marketing exec, Jennifer Davis, said, “in the C-suite, it’s all about thought leadership. I find that happens more on LinkedIn.”
But a small business might find good value in trying to stake out some space for their brand now, when everything is fresh. In a scramble for virtual turf, there’s a high upside in being an early adopter. “We’re pulling some of the more out-of-pocket concepts we’ve brainstormed for Twitter, but which didn't feel totally right for the app,” one company commented. “Now, we're letting them loose.” Kieran Delamont
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