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Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc. | |
HEALTH & WELLNESS
What’s a boss to do?
World Cup fever: the workplace illness nobody can avoid
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SOMETHING WE KNOW for certain is that on Friday, Canada will start its World Cup tournament when it kicks off against Bosnia in Toronto. Something we think we almost know for certain is that also on Friday, many people will coincidentally report feeling a little cough or a chill coming on. “Nothing serious, boss, just need a day in bed! Better safe than sorry! Soccer game? Oh, there’s a soccer game? First I’m hearing of it…”
Major international sporting events like the World Cup almost invariably produce elevated absenteeism at work. A survey by UKG in 2023, right before the Women’s World Cup, found that around a third of workers said they would take a day off, and a quarter would take part of a day. Twenty-five per cent said they will “push the limits” of what their managers will tolerate vis-a-vis flexibility; 37 per cent said they would be adjusting their schedule to make sure they can catch part of a game. And that was for the Women’s World Cup, which hasn’t historically drawn the same interest at the Men’s World Cup. Plus, this time, it’s on home soil, with round-robin games regularly scheduled in the middle of the workday.
It’s already becoming a bit of a tension point for public sector workers who are otherwise caught in the throes of an RTO battle. In Ontario, the Ontario Public Service initially received blanked rejections from the Treasury Board for remote work requests, before allowing managers to approve “ad-hoc, occasional, or temporary remote work requests” during the World Cup. (The union had made a reasonable point: traffic and public transit are expected to be a bit of a nightmare in Toronto on game days.)
Some companies are thinking creatively about it. According to Business Insider, Heineken launched a “fan volunteers” campaign around this World Cup, basically telling workers they can use volunteer time off (PTO for the purpose of volunteering) for games they would like to watch, provided they do a bit of volunteering at the same time. (Business Insider said they ran one such event where Heineken employees helped bag prepared meals while the Champions League semi-finals were broadcast on TV.)
But that won’t likely be enough to stop all the suspicious sick days. Many jurisdictions have rules in place that prevent employers from asking for doctors’ notes until the absence reaches a certain length, so companies’ hands are often tied. Because of that, many HR experts suggest companies should probably just accept it.
“Employers really are going to probably be struggling a little bit with the calling out issue,” said employment lawyer Marissa Mastroianni. “To the extent you can allow people to work from home on those days, that would be great.”
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CAREERS
Looking for a job? Get off LinkedIn
In this competitive market, people are increasingly turning to social platforms to stand out
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INSTAGRAM, FOR YOURS truly, is home to three things: recipe videos, meme posts sent to you by your spouse and a tremendous number of AI-generated cat videos (you know the type.) LinkedIn, of course, is the job site, the networking platform and all of that. Oil and water, vibe- and purpose-wise, right?
Maybe not anymore. Faced with a nasty youth unemployment crisis and a tepid job market, more young people are shifting to different social media platforms in pursuit of a gig, while trying to do more to cut through the noise/slop on LinkedIn. In effect, they’re treating LinkedIn like Instagram, and Instagram like LinkedIn.
The Guardian recently interviewed one 22-year-old who, after graduating with an Ivy League degree, struggled to land a job — until she turned her résumé into a slide deck and posted a video to the ‘gram. “It’s getting bad out there,” she reasoned. And, after 300 traditional applications and no luck, that 94-second Instagram post landed her a job. “Instagram truly is the new LinkedIn,” she said.
It isn’t that Instagram is embracing a new job board functionality, or even that it’s structurally very good at connecting employers with candidates at all. And yet that’s where career content seems to be thriving. For Gen Z, a survey from Zety found that 76 per cent are heading to Instagram to consume career content and career advice, compared to only 34 per cent who go to LinkedIn.
The stats also show that many are finding success — 64 per cent said they had found a job or internship on Instagram. “Gen Z’s shift toward social media for career resources reflects a redefinition of professional networking,” the survey concluded, “where authenticity and accessibility take precedence over traditional platforms.”
It may be as simple as the idea that Instagram makes you look like a real person in a way that LinkedIn does not. “You shouldn’t have to become an influencer to get a job,” said gen Z career coach Danielle Nicholson. “But having some kind of professional presence online helps demonstrate that you’re a real person with real skills.”
And (with apologies to LinkedIn), it seems more people are starting to realize that utilizing social media platforms people actually like may yield better recruiting results. Last year, one tech founder posted (on LinkedIn) that going to Instagram to recruit surfaced dozens of qualified leads, compared to five that trickled in via LinkedIn. “If LinkedIn is your only channel for recruiting, you’re missing out,” wrote Brian York.
Experts in recruiting say this is becoming more common. “Organizations are no longer waiting around for candidates to apply to jobs,” said Finnish researcher Matti Laukkarinen, speaking to the Harvard Business Review. “Instead, they’re proactively recruiting and headhunting talent online using social media platforms and predictive analytics.”
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Terry Talk: From wonder to slop — surviving the AI information flood
| AI is here to help… but are we accepting too much at face value? In this week’s Terry Talk, Ahria Consulting president & CEO Terry Gillis explores the explosion of information, the rise of AI “slop” and what happens when we lose our sense of wonder and stop questioning what we consume. From odd AI decisions to everyday impacts on hiring, taxes and beyond, this conversation is a reminder that context, curiosity and critical thinking matter more than ever. It’s time to rediscover the why and not just the output. | | | |
TECHNOLOGY
Why the AI job apocalypse (probably) won’t happen
Maybe AI isn’t going to replace you at work after all
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IT’S BEEN A good couple weeks if you’re someone who’s worried about AI replacing all workers and leaving you with nothing much to do: Top AI and tech executives have started singing a different tune lately when it came to the job-replacing prospects of frontier AI models.
“I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level, white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened,” said OpenAI’s Sam Altman at a conference in Australia last week. “I don’t think we’re going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about.”
Altman went on to say he had doubts that work could be fully automated, because “we really do care about our interactions with people,” and as a result, “the jobs picture is likely to be very different than we thought.”
While that might not seem congruent with what we’ve seen in the job market — a lot of unspecific references to AI as justification for layoff announcements — experts in AI echoed this sentiment, saying the technology hasn’t progressed to a point where it is able to mass replace white-collar workers.
“There haven’t been any dire consequences for jobs over the last year, despite AI models getting to levels that their CEOs thought might actually have an impact,” said Joshua Gans, a professor at the University of Toronto, speaking to the National Post. “I think when they were making these pronouncements a year ago, they were talking about the stuff that we now have in our hands.”
Don’t get too excited thinking this is some form of benevolence. In actuality, the reason likely comes down to money. You need look no further than tech giant Uber for a case study: the company, which has invested heavily in AI tools for software engineering, recently came out and said the amount of money it is spending on AI is “harder to justify,” and added that, like many other companies, it is struggling to see a productivity ROI from AI spending. “I think over the coming quarters and years, maybe that will become clearer, but I think today it’s hard,” said COO Andrew Macdonald.
But it might also be the case that the AI folks are simply trying to manage public perception.
“Public opinion research has made pretty clear that [people] feel quite negative about AI,” said Peter Wildeford, head of policy at the AI Policy Network, speaking to Time magazine. “The AI industry, and particularly Sam Altman, has responded with an about-face: it’s not going to replace most white-collar workers, it’s actually going to create tons of jobs and any pain along the way is temporary. It’s hard to say whether they’ve actually changed their forecasts for AI’s economic impact, or whether they’re just trying to change the narrative.”
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WORKFORCE
Not enough workers ahead
For anyone struggling to find a gig, it’s probably hard to believe, but a labour crunch is looming
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IF THE JOB market seems unimaginably bleak and immovable at the moment, you might simply need some patience. A new report from RBC says that while things are very slack in the labour market right now, looming on the horizon is a swing back to the days where labour is scarce, it’s harder (and pricier) to hire good talent and employees are back in the driver’s seat.
“The unemployment rate remains high following the Bank of Canada’s 2023-24 tightening cycle and disruptions from U.S. tariffs,” the report said. “But under the surface, longer-run structure headwinds against labour supply are building.”
The report isn’t really identifying anything all that new. Demographics are one key factor: more people are retiring, fewer immigrants are coming to the country and the population overall is shrinking. But the population of younger workers is declining too, related to net emigration and lower birth rates; Canada is set to see a decline of around 15,000 young workers per month for the next five years.
This, RBC suggests, will help ease the high level of youth unemployment Canada is currently experiencing. “That’s a good thing for workers. It means pockets of labour market weakness — particularly challenges for younger workers finding first jobs — will ease,” the report stated. “But, for businesses it also means that labour shortages will, eventually, return once the unusually high level of unemployment is absorbed.”
For younger Canadians, the technical analysis comes down to one question: when will it get easier to find a job? Much harder to say. Economists seem to think that while the job market is showing signs of life — see the 88,000 jobs added in May — that a low-hire, low-fire environment remains.
“Some businesses are looking to hang on to seasoned and more qualified employees for as long as possible — even when business activity is slowing,” said Bank of Canada deputy governor Nicolas Vincent. But there are rumblings that might remind jobseekers of the halcyon days of 2021, when labour shortage was the dominant condition. “Businesses keep telling us it has become harder to find workers with the right skills and experience.”
So, if you’re experiencing the sharp end of 2025’s labour market, the answer might be just to try to hold on a little longer. “The experience of rising unemployment in recent years was somewhat anomalous — labour shortages were a growing persistent issue for businesses over most of the prior decade,” RBC’s Nathan Janzen wrote. “An older population means those labour shortages could return more quickly than otherwise would be the case.”
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