Book: Practice of Human Resource Management in Canada

Last week, I finally got a paper copy of a new textbook I co-authored, entitled the Practice of Human Resource Management in Canada. This is an open educational resource (OER) in that students can download and use the pdf version for free. If you want a paper copy, it is $39.99 (about $120 less than commercial texts). The book also offers a more nuanced view of HRM because it tackles how workers’ interests can shape effective HR practices

I first tried to write an intro HR textbook about seven years ago. Despite having a contract with a publisher and a draft written, that effort failed because my then co-author and I had an unresolvable disagreement. That was the second co-authored book project that failed that year (for different reasons) and I swore off writing books.

But then commercial publishers began getting greedy. The price of textbooks went up, including the price of e-texts. One publisher discontinued access an etext in the middle of a course (ack!). Another publisher began discontinuing etexts a year or so after new (generally unnecessary) versions of textbooks came out, forcing unnecessary course revisions.

So Jason Foster and I decided writing an OER was a good option, both in terms of managing our workloads and student costs. We’d previous written Health and Safety in Canadian Workplaces together, so I knew we could get a book across the line, even though an intro HR book would be about twice as long.

It took us about eight months to write the book. We then located a publisher, went through peer review, and found funding. And then the publisher ghosted us. After four months of non response (and we still have no real idea what happened), we started again with another publisher (i.e., back through the proposal and peer review stages).

After more than three years of work, I’m pretty happy to see this out in the world and adopted into Athabasca University’s HRMT 386: Introduction to Human Resource Management starting for February (?) enrollments. It is interesting to see AU’s renewed institutional interest in OERs (largely seeking to reduce institutional costs) coupled with very little incentive or support for faculty to author them.

-- Bob Barnetson

Athabasca U staff engagement results are predictably terrible

This morning, Athabasca University released some of the results from its Autumn 2022 staff survey. The survey was about staff engagement, engagement means how willing staff are to put in discretionary effort to benefit the organization. AU framing its interest in workers as entirely instrumental was unexpected honest and went over poorly.

The basic talking points of the presenters were

• The data is four months old (i.e., things may not be as bad as the results suggest!).
• There is high trust among co-workers.
• All staff need to work hard and take responsibility for reversing these poor results.

This framing elides that staff fundamentally do not trust AU senior leaders (see below), who play a pretty important role in creating the circumstances in which staff might (or might not) be able to work effectively. Anyhow, onto the results (apologies for the poor resolution; you can click on them for larger images). There was a 70% response rate, which is higher than sector norms.



Overall, about half of staff appear engaged. The biggest thing to note are the ~20% drop in that numbers since 2020. There was no explanation offered for this change but key events during that time include COVID (massive workload increases), forced relocation to home offices, efforts to bust the faculty association and deprive people of pensions, terrible wage settlements after a near strike, and using staff as hostages in a fight with the government. Given this, it is not surprising that many staff are just throwing up their hands and checking out.

Scores were broken out by different dimensions of engagement. Basically, people have good feelings about their coworkers and immediate managers. They have bad feelings about the senior leadership and how well the organization lives its values, focuses on learners, and innovates. Again, the drops really tell the tale of the deterioration since 2020.



Only about half of staff believe the institution lives its i-CARE values. There have been 11- to 18-point drops since 2020. Honestly, I’m surprised the drops have not been larger.

These results show pretty clearly that the staff see the gaps between values and actions as occurring primarily at the leadership levels.

In terms of organizational culture, these are some worrying results about caring, safety, and consultation. Again, it’s the leadership of the organization that primarily controls these aspects of the organization. The idea that staff can change the culture through some sort of personal-responsibility magic is just gaslight.



The innovation results are also quite negative. Again, look at the drops over time. I would say this manifests itself organizational in a sense that people are just giving up trying to solve problems and improve processes because it is just hopeless. Instead, some people are giving up and others are working themselves sick trying to protect students from the impact (which is not a sustainable option).

This is probably the most important slide. The assessment of senior leadership is terrible. Naturally, these results got less than a minute of discussion. On almost every dimension, the ratings are net negative (positive < negative) and, where there is historical data, it again shows profound drops over time. In many cases, AU’s executive is scoring at close to half of the sector average.

This is pretty clear evidence that staff see profound leadership failure. Only 29% agree that senior leaders inspire employees, and only 32% think senior leaders effectively establish priorities, do what they say they will do, and are adequately visible. This is a clear call for a housecleaning in the executive suite.

Only 30% think senior leadership will act on the issues identified in this survey. This was almost immediately shown to be true when, after the results were presented, the president, the VPA and the acting chief human resources officer all leaned hard on the message that the issue was a communications problem and the staff need to pull up our socks and work harder to help stem the bleeding of enrollments. While there was some lip service to the results as “sobering”and "removing barriers" to staff increasing discretionary effort, there was no real plan to address the problems or any sense that the executive was owning the results.

This is pretty consistent with AU’s past engagement surveys (2020 and 2019). The time between surveys was increased to two years to allow for a meaningful consideration and response by the executive. There was, predictably, none. And today’s presentation suggests AU’s executive are going to continue just try to “talk away” bad news instead of changing their behaviours.

That doesn’t sound like a very effective strategy to me. The staff reactions I've heard so far include anger at the victim blaming, disappointment at the vapid sloganeering, and regret for the hour of time we all wasted listening to the results.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Darth Vader's Performance Assessment

It's summer and, honestly, I got nothing left this week so enjoy some Star Wars-related labour stuff. Especially the mission statement stuff.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Incentive Pay at the Office

This week's instalment of Labour & Pop Culture looks at incentive-pay systems as portrayed on the television show The Office. I'm currently revising AU's introductory human resource management course and incentive pay is one of the topics we touch on.

The basic idea, as noted by one of the workers in the sketch, is that the employer wants more production out of the workers without paying them more. So manager Andy sets up a points system whereby workers can win low-value prizes for achieving performance targets.

Incentive-based pay sounds like a good idea, but it is fraught with peril for employers because designing an effective system is tricky. Set rewards too low and they have no effect. Set rewards too high and they can drive all sorts of perverse behaviour, such as increasing quantity at the expense of quality.

The Office does a nice job of noting that the interests of workers and employers conflict in such systems and that workers can, if they work collectively, subvert these systems. This is a good lesson for wannbe managers.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Darth Vader's Performance Review

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is an audio-skit entitled “Darth Vader's Employee Evaluation. I’ve been incorporating pop-culture representations of human resource management functions into a revision of the intro to HR course that I coordinate because comedy often reveals unspoken truths about the workplace.



The key joke in the skit is the HR advisor asserting that Vader’s constant force-choking of his subordinates is harming the operational effectiveness of the Empire. The advisor’s suggestion of a more encouraging-management style (“maybe give them a pat on the back?”) is greeted with a very honest reply from Vader: “I don’t understand. How would that kill them?”

The workplace dynamic that this skit hits on (although perhaps not intentionally) is that performance management is essentially one arm of the employer trying to get employees to act in a way that is completely illogical to the worker given the broader structure of rewards and penalties in the workplace created by another arm of the employer.

Specifically, the advisor ignores that Vader’s behaviour is a reaction to the pressures of his job. Vader’s own boss does not tolerate failure by his subordinates. Consequently, Vader cannot tolerate failure among his subordinates and behaves accordingly.

Further, punishing space admirals shifts blame for failure (from Vader to them), there are always junior officers available to replace dead space admirals, and punishing employees is way easier in the short-term than working with them to improve their performance.

HR’s unwillingness to recognize the reasons for Vader’s behaviour means that Vader is unlikely to accept their suggestions. An interesting question is what happens to the HR advisor when he subsequently tries to discipline Vader for continuing to force-choke his subordinates?

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Working from home boosts productivity

There was an interesting study about the effectiveness of working from home out of Stanford. You can read a brief summary in this article.

The study examines a large Chinese firm and followed 500 workers, half of who worked from home and half in the office. The upshot was that home workers:

1. Worked longer (almost a full day longer each week—a work-time gain of 13%!).
2. Concentrated better (so were more productive while they were at work).
3. Were cheaper (no office space costs)
4. Had 50% lower attrition, less sick time, and took fewer breaks.
5. Had a smaller carbon footprint (less commuting, more intensive use of home space).

I’ve been working from home since 2007 and this is pretty consistent with my experience. The key drawback was half of the home workers felt lonely. And there were a few people humping the dog (which was more than offset by gains among other workers).

Letting workers chose whether to work from home (self-selection) resulted in an overall increase in productivity of 24%. If you can stand it, you can watch the author do a 14-minute talk about the study below. He’s reasonably funny and pretty smart but zzzzzzz….



The usual caveats apply to this research: single study, foreign country, YMMV. But it certainly has a lot of face validity for me.

-- Bob Barnetson

Harassment and HR: Whose side are you on?

The recent spate of sexual harassment allegations has triggered a couple of articles examining the role of human-resource departments. The crux of the analysis is that HR shops are intended to advance the employer’s interest. Not surprisingly, a key employer interest is mitigating liability.

When proactive measures (such as codes of conduct) haven’t been successful and a claim of harassment arises, HR shops work to contain the potential damage to the employer (often through complaint suppression). This line of analysis runs contrary to the usual picture presented of HR shops as neutral arbitrators or even a place that workers can go for help with problems.

The notion that the practice of HR is, in fact, an exercise of power over workers and in the interests of employers is generally absent from HR textbooks. This reflects that human resources is rooted in a unitarist view of the workplaces—that there are no inherent conflicts of interest in employment and that everyone is there to serve the employer’s interests. The employer’s interests are often couched as the organization’s goals, even though the goals have been developed by the employer with little consideration of the needs of other stakeholders.

One consequence of this dynamic is that HR staff often has to do things that would make most people uncomfortable. For example, they may be assigned to direct conflict into processes that delay resolution of conflict even though doing so exacerbates the impact of the harassment on the victim. Such a decision often makes sense of the employer since (absent any resolution) victims will often quit (or accept a small settlement in exchange for a gag order) and the problem goes away (for the employer, anyhow).

Some HR wonks can’t hack that kind of work and attrite out of profession (or into less conflictual HR functions—such a payroll or strategic planning). Those that stay tend to be (or become) hard cases, who are better able to manage the cognitive dissonance that goes with harming employees. This, in turn, reinforces the tendency of HR to act against the interests of a firm’s human resources.

Clearer discussion of this dynamic might help human-resource students make more knowledgable choices about the kind of career they want going forward.

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Trans workers and precarity

This summer, I ran across a very interesting article exploring how trans workers face greater precarity of employment. “Gender Transition and Job In/Security: Trans* Un/der/employment Experiences and Labour Anxieties in Post-Fordist Society” explores how the pressure on workers to “use their bodies and working personas to create pleasant interactions and good experiences for customers and clientele” can negatively affect those workers whose bodies fall outside of conventional norms of beauty or normality (p. 168).

In effect, gender normative expression acts as a key determinant of employment. The devaluing of non-gender-conforming workers negatively affects them economically, physically, and psychologically. This is a fascinating article that explores the treatment of trans workers—something that I don't think I have every encountered in any of the HR texts or research that I’ve examined.

This lacuna in HR pedagogy is itself fascinating because not talking about trans workers reinforces (perhaps unintentionally) the social exclusion of trans workers. It reminds me a bit of how HR texts dealt with sexual orientation prior to the Vriend decision (i.e., they ignored sexual orientation). Interestingly, since then, HR texts have largely continued to marginalize issues of sexual orientation by lumping them into a brief discussion of how to avoid complaints of discrimination on the basis of various protected statuses. 

Few books explicitly sexual orientation in the sections they have on diversity. In this context, diversity basically means female workers, workers with disabilities, and workers of colour (although largely exclusive of Indigenous workers). As this article reveals, the silence of HR around the employment experiences of trans workers comes at a great cost to the workers themselves.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Earn Enough for Us

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Earn Enough for Us” by XTC. It was issued in 1986 and reflects the economic anxiety many Britons felt as a result of Margaret Thatcher’s austerity policies.

The singer worries about making enough money to make ends meet, particularly given that his partner is pregnant. The solution he proposes is to get an additional job while continuing to put up with a bad boss at his current one.

The song has just a touch a despair:

Just because we're on the bottom of the ladder
We shouldn't be sadder
Than others like us
Who have goals for the betterment of life

Here we see the entrenched class system where a better life feels beyond reach. There is no video for this song but you can listen to it here. In its place, I give you Today in HR: Succession Planning:



I've been praying all the week through
At home, at work and on the bus
I've been praying I can keep you
And to earn enough for us

I can take humiliation
And hurtful comments from the boss
I'm just praying by the weekend
I can earn enough for us

Found a house that won't repair itself
With it's windows cracking
And a roof held together with holes

Just because we're on the bottom of the ladder
We shouldn't be sadder
Than others like us
Who have goals for the betterment of life

Glad that you want to be my wife, but honest

I've been praying all the week through
At home at work and on the bus
I've been praying I can keep you
And to earn enough for us

So you're saying that we're going to be three
Now, a father's what I'll be
Don't get me wrong, I'm so proud
But the belt's already tight

I'll get another job at night, but honest
I can take humiliation
And hurtful comments from the boss
I'm just praying by the weekend

I can earn enough for us
Just because we're at the bottom of the ladder
We shouldn't be sadder
Than others like us

Who have goals for the betterment of life
Glad that you want to be my wife, but honest

I can take humiliation
And hurtful comments from the boss

I'm just praying by the weekend
I can earn enough for us
I can earn enough for us

--Bob Barnetson

Job design and safety voice

A recurring question in OHS is why workers stay silent in the face of unsafe workplaces. Staying silent undermines the effectiveness of the internal responsibility system which relies upon workers identifying hazards for employers to remedy.

A recent article in Accident Analysis and Prevention entitled “Staying silent about safety issues: Conceptualizing and measuring safety silence motives” reports on three studies that identified various safety silence motives mostly in the health-care industry. The studies found:

… there were several reasons that employees refrained from speaking up about safety issues, such as the fear of altering relationships, perceiving management as unsupportive, assessing issues as nonthreatening, and having heavy time pressures or excessive workloads (p. 153).

The importance of the last factor (i.e., how job design can increase or retard safety behaviour) was particularly notable. This finding suggests that employer job design choices affect not only which hazards are present in the workplace but the likelihood of workers raising concerns about them.

-- Bob Barnetson

Authenticity (or, why I'm boycotting staff appreciation day)

I’ve just signed a contract with the University of Toronto Press to co-author an introduction to human resource management textbook. As we’ve been working through what topics the text will cover, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for examples of good and bad HR practice that might be interesting case studies.

Authenticity is a word that has had some traction in HR lately as companies grapple with the perennial issue of poor morale caused by economic instability. This Forbes article, for example, extolls the virtues of authenticity at work as a way to ensure worker high performance. But what is authenticity?

… Jay Canchola, an independent human resources consultant, says: “…From an employee point-of-view this turns out to mean that management is true to their word in all communications about the business, both good news and bad news. In other words there is no ‘double-talk.’”

I was thinking about this late last week when I got a series of reminders that Athabasca University was hosting its annual employee recognition event today. The purpose of the event is a bit unclear but it seems designed to celebrate achievements and recognize long-service and retirements—basically an employee appreciation luncheon.

After some thought, I’ve decided not to attend this event. My reason is that the notion that the university appreciates its staff sits uneasily with the university’s recent behaviour. For example, the university has tried to cut our wages by 5% at the bargaining table and has threatened (more) layoffs if we don’t comply. And the university has blamed its financial problems on staff greed, rather than the root causes of poor management and inadequate funding.

Less dramatic (but much more annoying) is that the university has failed to address very real complaints about the poor quality of its “improved” finance and HR systems. For example, it used to take 5 minutes to fill in an expense claim form and about two weeks to get paid. Now it can take up to 7 hours (yes, hours) over several days to fill in the form correctly and months to get reimbursed.

Basically the employer’s words (we appreciate you…) don’t jive with its behaviours (…but we’re gonna treat you poorly). The result is that the appreciation event looks like a sham exercise. Given that I have some discretion about whether or not to attend, I’ve decided to opt out.

While I doubt anyone will care (they may well even be happy I’m not there!), the underlying lack of authenticity can negatively affect morale and productivity. For example, a palpable sense of cynicism permeates most of the meetings I attend and discussions about fixing problems often end in disarray because most workers no longer believe that the employer is capable of taking (or even cares to take) effective action.

It will be interesting trying to explain the link between (in)authenticity, (il)legitimacy and (non)productivity in this new book. It will also be interesting to see if the research finds that the causality runs both ways. That is to say, inauthentic behaviour may degrade organizational performance but that does not necessarily mean that authentic behaviour can improve it (or reverse damage caused by earlier inauthenticity).

-- Bob Barnetson

No-zero grading policies and workplace safety

I usually try to keep these blog posts to employment issues, but I find myself compelled to comment on the “no zero” policy debate currently going on within (and around) the Edmonton Public School Board.

The gist is that a high-school teacher was suspended for failing to comply with a policy prohibiting him from giving a student a zero on an incomplete assignment, even after giving the student multiple opportunities to hand in the assignment.

Cue public outrage and a spirited debate.

An interesting dynamic I see is that there are really two discussions going on. One discusses the technical merits of the policy. This debate focuses on whether a zero is an accurate (rather than adequate) response to failing to complete an assignment. That is to say, experts are defending the policy as an effort to distinguish intellectual achievement from behaviour. 

Defenders also emphasize the are multiple reasons why students might not turn in an assignment. For example, in today’s Journal, a defender of the no-zero policy discusses a good student, driven by family poverty to work and thus consider dropping out because she could never complete all of the assignments.  This is a sympathetic story. Yet, I don’t think the solution to family poverty lies with child labour and a “no zero” grading policy… .

The other side of the debate is effectively a political discussion about public support for a policy that appears to not hold students accountable for failing to complete assigned work. The gist is that, in “the real world”, if you don’t do your work, you get canned (unless you're a CEO...).  Employers don’t bother to distinguish between achievement and behaviour and we should acculturate students to that reality.

There are merits to both sides of this argument (I give zeros, for what it is worth).

My sense is that this policy is going to go down in flames, in large part because the EPSB has ignored that policy making is both a technical act and a political one. Often technically optimal decisions are political disasters. In a small group of like-minded people, such political considerations can be overlooked (or dismissed, often with distain).

This happens all the time in employment situations. My own employer offers a good (or bad) example. We’re a distributed workplace (i.e. most of us work from home). This aids in recruitment, saves about $3500 per year per person in office space, and I can wear my bath… errr… “academic robe” to work.

The university recently announced all teleworkers would need to sign a new “home office checklist” that focuses on workplace safety. Those who don’t comply (presumably) will jeopardize their teleworking status (although where would the university put us all if we decided to come to work?).

The checklist is fascinating. On the surface, it appears quite reasonable (i.e., makes technical sense to an HR person who doesn’t work from home). But some thought immediately identifies a number of issues. In no particular order:

1. Workers are expected to post emergency numbers and an evacuation plan in their home offices. Do I really need to write down the number for 911? Do I really need to diagram an evacuation plan that is “go out the front door” (which I can see from my desk)?
2. Workers are expected to have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors as well as fire extinguishers in their offices. I have these things in my house, but the detectors are near the bedrooms (because smoke and the effects of CO are evident if you are awake) and the fire extinguisher is near the stove (the primary fire hazard in the house).  The policy requires me to either buy additional equipment (which the employer will not pay for) or move existing equipment (making my home less safe!).
3.  I am required to have a Type 1 first aid kit in my home. The key difference between a Personal and a Type 1 kit is a resuscitation mouth-piece with one-way valve. Teleworkers work alone and cannot resuscitate themselves (unless my understanding of anatomy is out of date).
4.  I must periodically contact my supervisor to tell her I’m not dead. For those home workers who live alone, there is some merit to this. The majority of home workers, though, live with someone. Having me phone my supervisor during each shift to say “I’m not dead yet” is a ridiculous requirement. If I don't call in, is she going to mount a rescue (from her home office)? If I'm truly dead, what will it matter? And the list goes on… .

Setting aside the practical issues I’ve raised, this policy makes good technical sense for the employer. We sign it and the employer limits its liability for injury.

Politically, though, this is new policy is a disaster. While the employer is telling us safety is important, the employer is also telling us that our safety is not important enough for the employer to pay for it (listen carefully for the sound of morale dropping--it's the screaming sound you hear). 

Coupled with the impractical requirements, the vast majority of my colleagues are simply ignoring this requirement. Issuing orders that people won’t follow is stupid because it weakens the employer’s authority--which is already pretty shaky.

In this way, my employer has made the same mistake as the EPSB—it has implemented a policy that almost anyone could have predicted would be rejected by those whom it affects. Such public bumbling damaged the organization’s credibility. This is an important lesson for HR and policy wonks everywhere.

-- Bob Barnetson

Is discipline warranted?

It would appear the dean of medicine at the University of Alberta has landed himself in the soup. According to press reports, he borrowed much of his speech to the graduating class from someone else’s work. He’s apologized and I think we’d all agree that he made a bad decision in mirroring the content of the earlier speech.

Yet some are calling for the dean’s resignation. The Edmonton Journal references the university’s Research and Scholarship Integrity policy, noting it precludes students from passing off someone else’s ideas as their own on pain of expulsion.

This case actually poses an interesting HR question. What would be an appropriate penalty?

Much of discussion is moralizing in tone and centres on whether this speech is plagiarism. I wonder if this is not something of a red herring. Yes, the fellow borrowed liberally from someone else’s speech. But a convocation speech (or Bar Mitzvah toast or a eulogy) is different from a piece of original research. There is no claim of ownership and there is no credit earned through deceit.

Don't get me wrong--this was bad judgment--but we need to see this in its context. If he’d hired someone to write his speech for him (a no-no in academic papers!), we would probably think that was quite alright. In fact, I've often wished academics would hire someone to write their dinner speeches... .

The short of this is, while it is awfully fun to catch a professor out, this isn’t really the same situation as a student who turns in a paper bought on or borrowed from the internet. Or a professor who passes off the work of another as his or her own in a journal article. And I’d venture the university policy mentioned by the Journal does not apply to a graduation dinner speech.

From the university’s perspective, this is obviously a PR gaff. But the fellow apologized. There was little harm done. And, given the media crucifixion that is unfolding, I’m guessing this won’t happen again any time soon!

So is there anything to be gained by disciplining the dean?

From an HR perspective, I’d say no.

But there is likely some risk in disciplining the dean. The dean might well grieve the discipline—which entails legal costs and the risk of an adverse result. Or he might quit—which also has large direct and indirect costs.

A wise HR approach might be to make disapproving noises and wait until this blows over. Which it will. Because this just isn’t that big of a deal.

-- Bob Barnetson

Dispute among Onoway firefighters

The Edmonton Journal had an interesting story this weekend about labour relations, occupational health and safety and emergency services in Lac Ste. Anne county.

The short version is some volunteer fire fighters in Onoway have resigned (and others have threatened job action) in protest of what they view as the county’s unwillingness to address safety concerns, including adequate training and safety deficiencies. An OHS investigation revealed some (unspecified) concerns, which have, according to the county, been remedied.

The county, by contrast, suggests firefighters are unwilling to accept the authority of the county. “It’s one district that’s realizing they can’t do whatever the hell they want to do and didn’t like it,” says Jim Thompson, Lac Ste. Anne County fire services manager. Thompson is new to the county and appears to be tasked with centralizing fire services (although it is a bit unclear if that is a new initiative or not).

This dispute has a number of interesting dimensions:

1. The “workers” are, for the most part, volunteers so they have very real exit options (which most employees do not). Consequently, the “employer” is at some risk of having a complete loss of fire fighters in a region. Other volunteer departments have become non-functional in the past few years because of workload demands. This gives the workers a fair bit of leverage.

2. Push back by workers in emergency services often competes with the paramilitary culture that permeates such services at one level or another and a common belief in the purpose of the organization. Here, we see some of the organizational loyalty fraying as the legitimately different interests of the workers and the employer rise to the fore.

3. It is relatively uncommon to view safety issues in emergency services as “workplace safety issues”. For example, the death of the four Mounties in Mayerthorpe is often discussed as a tragedy. Or as the act of a madman. It is less common (and, in my experience, fairly unpopular), to try to frame it in OHS terms. After all, “a certain amount of risk is expected in the job.” Yet in Onoway, the fire fighters called in OHS inspectors.

4. Small town politics is very immediate and “real”. Politicians in large cities and at the provincial level can often ignore problems because a few pissed off voters won’t have a huge effect on the outcome of an election. And, generally, they don’t live among their constituents on a daily basis. This is not so in small towns and rural areas.

It will be interesting to see what effect a public airing of these concerns has.

County politics are complicated but no counselor wants to be the one who caused a fire service to disband. Will the employer have the stones to back Thompson (the new guy and an “outsider”) if push comes to shove in the community?

It is unlikely that the concerns of the Onoway fire fighters are unique—will more volunteer departments begin to push back? Or will they take the opportunity to lever some improvements from the county for their departments?

-- Bob Barnetson

Just cause dismissals

There is an interesting debate going on in the Edmonton Journal over the concept of just cause dismissals. Loosely, the doctrine of just cause says that employers who terminate the employment of a worker must provide reasonable notice (or pay in lieu of reasonable notice) unless the worker has done something so terrible that it is irreconcilable or inconsistent with continued employment and thus warrants immediate termination.

So if your employer catches you stealing, the employer knows you can no longer be trusted and out the door you go. On the other hand, if you make a mistake that isn't fatal to a continuing employment relationship, the employer must discharge you with notice or work with you to correct the error (a progressive discipline approach). Repeated failures to address the issue might then lead to a just cause termination.

Employer-side lawyer Howard Levitt, in an article originally printed in the Financial Post, suggests that the requirement that employers have just cause for terminating an employee is troublesome:

"The just cause requirement is one way unions erode the employer's control over the workplace. In a non-unionized workplace, the employee could be fired without any doubt or appeal. If there wasn't just cause for his dismissal, he would only receive severance pay."

This is partly correct. In a non-unionized workplace, an employee who has done something objectionable (but which does not meet the just cause standard) might well get let go with notice (or pay in lieu). More likely, though, the employer would simply fire the worker. If the termination was without cause and if the worker sought assistance through a provincial employment standards processes, the employer might well be on the hook for a few weeks of pay.

A worker with more resources might sue for wrongful dismissal and may, after a lengthy court battle, get a more generous settlement. But most of that will go to their lawyer. In effect, most workers under a common law contract of employment have few realizable rights in the event that an employer wants to terminate them--no matter how arbitrary or unfair the termination was.

Because of this (and other) examples of the power imbalance in employment, many workers have chosen to join unions and bargaining collectively. A significant difference between union and non-unionized employment is that, with a union, the remedy for an unjust termination is reinstatement (with backpay) rather than pay in lieu of notice.

This does, certainly, limit the employer's control over the workplace--arbitrary and unfair behaviour by the employer which significantly damages the worker is remediated more fully. Indeed, the threat of a meaningful remedy can well compel employers to act more carefully. This is the crux of the Alberta Federation of Labour's response.

The strategies Levitt suggests for handling just cause dismissal (when maybe the case isn't entirely open and shut) in unionized workplaces provide fascinating insight into the political economy of employment. He encourages employers to attempt to trap employees into conflicting statements of responsibility so as to undermine their credibility. He suggests carefully recording common and minor errors to create a pattern of misconduct to present to the arbitrator. And he suggests suspending a worker without pay so the worker starts to feel the pinch (and may even have found another job) and is thus more likely to accept a termination package.

None of these tactics is illegal. And they are all a rational way for an employer to advance its economic interests. That they come at the expense of the employee elicits no comment or consideration. Perhaps this lack of regard for the interests of workers is why workers often seek protection of a union?

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Motivating Employees

Employee motivation is often an area of interest for HR and LR practitioners. While an interesting debate can be had about the political economy of employee motivation, most practitioners are more interested in practical advice.

Most HR texts do a poor job of handling motivation. One of our learning designers passed this video of Dan Pink discussing employee motivation. It summarizes the literature of motivation set out in his book Drive. It is also exceptionally entertaining to watch.

Another good book on motivation is Driven (by Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria) examines motivation from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.

-- Bob Barnetson