Soft Skills in The Age of Remote Working Reflection Essay

Soft Skills in The Age of Remote Working Reflection Essay

Work and Occupations Reflection essay guidelines Summer 2020 Due: August 12 at 1 p.m. Value: 20% of final grade Aim and Substance Reflection essays are opportunities to demonstrate critical thinking and your understanding of course materials as they apply to real life situations. Read and analyze one (1) of the news items below about work and employment. Using concepts we have discussed in class, explain the situation sociologically and make an argument in response to the provided prompt. This assignment supports the following learning objectives (from the syllabus): • • • Identify and explain major processes (ie: technology change, globalization, demographic and social changes) that have transformed work and employment in Canada. Apply key concepts and theories of work to analyze contemporary issues in work from a sociological perspective. Write a persuasive essay which presents an argument and defends it with evidence. Deadline and Submission Your essay is due by 1:00 pm on August 12. You are to submit an electronic copy on Quercus. Assignments submitted after the deadline will be subject to a 3% penalty per day. Late assignments will not be accepted more than 7 days after the deadline. In most cases, I can be flexible with extensions but they must be arranged in advance. Contact me with an explanation of why the deadline can’t be met and a proposed timetable for submitting the assignment. Please note that assignments or tests for other classes are not acceptable reasons for an extension. Documentation of reasons for late submission is still required; we will discuss on a case-by-case basis what that might entail. Assessment Your essay will be graded primarily on your accuracy and insight in applying course materials to understanding the situation described in the article, and your ability to draw on assigned materials as evidence to support your argument. Organization, structure and writing mechanics (including proper citation), as well as the overall creativity and demonstrated effort also matter. Please see the rubric on Quercus for detailed breakdowns of criteria and point values. Length and Format Reflection essays should be between 2 and 3 double-spaced pages in length. They should follow the structure of an essay. You do not need a title page or a list of references (unless you are referencing materials not part of this class). Provide a concise introduction which summarizes your argument by providing in one sentence (each) your answer to each part of the prompt. The last sentence of your introduction should takes a position on the prompt question and provide an explicit reason to support your position. ie: “I argue… because X, Y and Z” The body of your essay should support your argument using course materials and the article as evidence. Expand on the points of your introduction, providing evidence to support your answers from course materials and the article you are analyzing. All references to outside materials should be cited with clear in-text citations, even if you aren’t quoting their direct words. For example, to cite the textbook use this or a similar format: (Pupo, Duffy and Glenday 2017: [page number]) Sum up your argument and explain its importance in a concluding paragraph. Use Times New Roman size 12 font with 1 inch margins on all sides. Please submit your essay as a Word or PDF file and be sure to insert page numbers into your document. *** If you submit a file that is NOT .doc, .docx, or .pdf, you will receive a 0. Lecture 6: Workers experience: the emotional gamut of work This article from the “careers” section of the Globe and Mail discusses how “soft skills”— accelerated by the pandemic—are increasingly in demand in the job market. In your own words briefly describe the sociological concept of emotional labour. How does this article reflect or contradict what you have learned from emotional labour/emotion work scholars? Use 1-2 examples from the article to support your argument. Do you think emotional skills will increase in value on the job market? If not, why not? Support your argument with evidence from the article, the textbook and lecture materials. “It’s time to brush up on your soft skills in the age of remote working” Jared Lindzon Special to the Globe and Mail Published July 3, 2020 Updated July 9, 2020 Any remaining doubts about the value of soft skills were likely abandoned in recent months as the pandemic forced the country to dramatically change its work practices overnight. As companies began adjusting to the new normal, their staff were often challenged to demonstrate soft skills like resilience, empathy and agility while completely overhauling their communication, collaboration and other standard work habits. In recent years, many Canadian employers have increased their emphasis on these soft skills, often citing the potential for disruption and uncertainty. Those efforts have been largely validated by the recent coronavirus outbreak. According to a 2018 survey of business leaders by the Business Council of Canada, industryspecific knowledge and experience weren’t among the top five most important attributes of an entry-level hire. Instead, employers listed collaboration, communication, problem solving, analytical capabilities and resiliency as their top priorities. Furthermore, industry-specific knowledge and experience only ranked fourth among the attributes employers were most interested in among mid-level hires. Employees and candidates alike ranked having a “purpose-driven and caring mindset” as the No. 1 trait they wanted to see in their leaders, followed by an embrace of technology and agility, according to a recent study by LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s Canada Country Manager, Jonathan Lister, believes the data reflect how a new generation of employees is demanding a new type of leader, and the value of those traits has been validated by the pandemic. “Employees expect leaders to be inspiring, to be emotionally intelligent, to have good listening and communication skills,” he says. “I think they’ve become more important because the workplace has changed reasonably significantly and continues to change.” According to Mr. Lister, demand for skills training through the LinkedIn Learning platform has increased five-fold over the past year. Today, the most in-demand LinkedIn Learning programs offer training on less traditional workplace skills, such as mindfulness and stress management, how to give and receive feedback, and change management. “With coronavirus, we’re getting a mix of personal and professional topics in the workplace in ways we haven’t before, and I think that’s putting more emphasis on the requirement for soft skills,” Mr. Lister adds. “The ones who have invested early in both hard-skills and soft-skills training have probably benefited the most.” The need for soft skills is especially acute among Canada’s small-business owners, 81 per cent of whom have been negatively affected by the pandemic, and 32 per cent of whom are concerned about the viability of their business, according to a recent study by CIBC. “Companies change and they pivot and they have to adapt quickly to changing market conditions, and the pandemic is a really good example of that; we’ve all had to change and shift and be flexible with how we work,” explains Cissy Pau, the principal consultant at Vancouverbased small-business consulting agency Clear HR Consulting. “That’s the beauty of a small business; you can change relatively quickly if the people you have working there can adapt relatively quickly.” While the pandemic has further emphasized the value of being adaptable and flexible, there remains a gap between the skills that employers are demanding and the skills recent graduates can offer, according to a study conducted by the Conference Board of Canada. The report explores how educational institutions are struggling to equip graduates with the most in-demand soft skills in the job market and concludes that we’ve only just begun to understand how much of an impact those attributes can have. According to the report’s authors, the pandemic will only further emphasize the value of those attributes in the workplace moving forward. “As time has gone on, we become more specific about what those skills actually are that make for a good employee or a good manager,” explains Stephen Higham, a research associate for the Conference Board of Canada. “The pandemic re-emphasizes the importance of these skills, and not just for employees, but the social and emotional skills of leaders as well,” adds senior research associate Maria Giammarco. According to its authors, the study was originally inspired by the rise of automation, artificial intelligence and the potential threat of further technological disruption, but has taken on a different and perhaps greater significance since the pandemic began. “There has not been a conversation in light of the pandemic around automation and AI and what robots are doing for us; it’s about the important people, the service providers and frontline workers, and how well they’re providing and caring for people,” explains Matthew McKean, the Conference Board’s director of education and skills. “It’s an interesting confluence of events that has led to a real underlying of the need for human skills.” Dr. McKean, Dr. Giammarco and Mr. Higham suggest that these social and emotional skills are only going to increase in value as the workplace continues to evolve as a result of the pandemic, automation and the expectation of more disruptions in the future. “No matter what happens, we’re going to continue to place value on those skills that help people navigate crises like problem solving, critical thinking, creativity and empathy,” Mr. Higham says. “I can’t imagine that trend slowing down any time soon.” Lecture 7: Work-Family and Work-Life Conflict This article describes a job dispute between a working mother and her employer over establishing boundaries between work time and family time. Drawing on what you have learned in class, briefly describe the reproductive work gap and its relationship to work-life conflict. What are some of the strategies parents use to manage their work-family conflict? Using examples from Wang’s article, identify how some of these strategies have had to change in response to the current pandemic. Has the shift to remote work and telecommuting during Covid-19 improved or worsened workfamily conflict for working mothers? Justify your argument using examples from the article, and explain these examples using material from the textbook and lecture. Working Moms Are Being Fired For Being Working Moms By Esther Wang (Jezebel.com) on July 8, 2020 at 10:52am On top of managing childcare and the demands of work during a pandemic, working moms now have additional stress to cope with—the increased risk of being fired for having kids. In a lawsuit filed recently, San Diego resident Drisana Rios alleges that her former employer, Hub International, fired her because her kids were being kids and making noise while she was on work calls. Huh, strange that dads get to go viral when that happens! Rios had been working for Hub International, an insurance brokerage company, as an account executive since 2019. After her company went remote due to the covid-19 pandemic, she had to balance taking care of a one-year-old and a four-year-old at home while simultaneously working. She told the New York Times that she “worked harder than I ever had in my entire career” during the pandemic. “I’m meeting the deadlines, I’m working so hard,” Rios told Good Morning America, adding, “There’s times when I’m working at night too, to make up for anything that needs to be done for the next day.” But that didn’t seem to matter to Rios’s boss, who according to Rios, told her that her kids “could be heard on business calls with clients” and that it was “unprofessional.” In her complaint, Rios also notes instances where her supervisor ignored her requests for accommodations. From the New York Times: In the complaint, Ms. Rios said her supervisor assigned her several tasks with short turnaround times, even though the tasks were not urgent. She said she told her supervisor that afternoon calls worked best for her because that was when her youngest child napped. The complaint says her supervisor “continued scheduling calls during lunch times, when Plaintiff was feeding her children, nursing or putting her child down for a nap.” Ms. Rios also endured “sexist statements” from her supervisor, who was “motivated by a clear bias against mothers,” the complaint says. She was eventually told to address her “time-management issues” with another supervisor. According to the complaint, the supervisor accused her of being “defensive” and said he was “tired of accommodating” her. After detailing her treatment multiple times to Human Resources, Ms. Rios said she was let go on June 2, with the company citing the pandemic’s negative effect on its revenue as the reason. Rios isn’t the only working mother who has been fired because her employers believed her childcare responsibilities during the pandemic were interfering with her work. In April, Oakland resident Michelle Burnett, a single mom to two daughters, was fired from her job at a retirement home after she requested a mere two hours off to pick up a laptop for one of her children, a task she had to do as schools had shifted to remote learning. That same month, another single mom, Stephanie Jones, was fired by Eastern Airlines after she asked to work from home and for a few hours each day to care for her son, reasonable accommodations she believed she was entitled to under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. Jones was reportedly told by the company’s head of human resources that the FFCRA wasn’t meant to be “a hammer to force management into making decisions which may not be in the interest of the company or yourself.” A few days later, Jones was fired, and she subsequently sued the company. “YOU HAVE A RECIPE FOR DISCRIMINATION.” According to Joan Williams, a law professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law and the founder of the Center of WorkLife Law, we can expect to see more cases of employers discriminating against working parents, and particularly working mothers. Because of the pandemic, Williams told Bloomberg Law, “We are at risk for a whole new round and increased interest in family responsibilities discrimination. She added, “You have a recipe for discrimination. Inevitably, there will be assumptions about who is valuable and who is performing up to snuff. That’s where the lawsuits start.” America, we love kids and moms, except when we don’t! Lecture 8: Unemployment or opportunities for youth? This article describes the phenomenon of degree inflation (ie: the credentialism paradox) both in the United Kingdom and Canada. In your own words, briefly describe the credentialism paradox. Between the textbook and lecture, we have examined several theories for youth underemployment (ie: social generation, the proletarianization of youth, labour market segmentation). Describe the theory which best matches Hopper’s explanation, drawing on examples from the article. Based on what you’ve learned in class, do you agree with Hopper’s analysis? Either defend Hopper’s analysis against one critique from the textbook or provide one reason why a different theory better explains the credentialism paradox. Critics complain of qualification inflation as more Canadians hold university degrees – and low-paying jobs Tristin Hopper National Post January 3, 2014 As more people attend university, the effect has been to erode the employment potential of a degree, a document once seen as a surefire ticket to the middle class Just before New Year’s Day, Prince Andrew, the third child of Queen Elizabeth, ushered in 2014 by giving an interview to The Telegraph on one of his favourite subjects: the economy-crippling surplus of Britons in university. “Coming out of university there’s a tendency to believe that you’re trained as well as educated, which is not actually true,” he said. Unlike his studious heir-apparent brother, the 53-year-old prince never attended university, and has recently emerged as a British champion of post-secondary alternatives, urging young U.K. citizens to take up apprenticeships and earn their “spurs in the business world before going to university.” That way, he said, “you’re going into university as a trained person, you’re not coming out as an untrained person.” The prince’s remarks are well-timed. After two decades of rapidly rising enrolment, half of British university leavers are unemployed or in low-skilled jobs. According to the country’s business secretary, thousands more are still in school sweating out a degree that is “superfluous” to their chosen careers. “The idea that in order to be a police officer or a nurse you have to have a degree, I mean, that is just qualification inflation,” Business Secretary Vince Cable told a London conference in November. The situation is similarly grim in Canada. Fifty-one per cent of Canadian adults achieved “tertiary qualification” — the highest among OECD countries. At the same time, in this everexpanding pool of degree-holders, Canada also tops OECD rankings for the largest share of these graduates making less than the national median income. “We are number one when it comes to university and college enrolments, but we are also number one in the number of people with university degrees that live in poverty,” said Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist with CIBC World Markets. We are number one in the number of people with university degrees that live in poverty Canadians often complain that a university education is too expensive, too unattainable and too scarce. But in a country plagued by bloated universities, rising degree-holder unemployment and a credentialism arms race that shows no signs of stopping, Canada’s real problem may be too much — not too little — university. In January of 1980, Alberta’s Allalta Credit Union published a Help Wanted ad in the Edmonton Journal looking for a branch manager. The candidate would oversee assets of $16-million at the institution’s “largest branch,” and would be paid the modern-day equivalent of $60,000 a year. “Formal secondary education,” read the ad, “would be of great assistance.” Thirty-four years later, Allalta’s suggestion is downright quaint. A recent wanted ad seeking a manager for Chase, B.C.’s Interior Savings Credit Union, for instance, demands not only a university degree, but two additional certificates. Even before the economic downturn, the 2006 census showed that as many as one-quarter of young people with bachelor’s degrees were holding down jobs that did not require one. Faced with these swelling ranks of overeducated baristas and telemarketers, employers apparently started getting picky. Two years ago, the job site CareerBuilder.ca surveyed 415 private-sector hiring managers and discovered that 36% of them had begun hiring university graduates for jobs that once required merely a high school degree. The overall effect has been to erode the employment and earning potential of a university degree, a document once seen as a surefire ticket to the middle class. CIBC crunched the numbers in an August report and discovered that the historical advantage degree-holders have held over high school graduates is beginning to narrow, and that “on average, Canada is experiencing an excess supply of post-secondary graduates.” Getting a master’s degree, oddly, only seems to make things worse. According …