The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Are you Thinking of Quitting Your Job?

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

The pandemic has apparently made many Americans consider quitting their jobs.  How about Canadians?  There has been a research study on exactly that question going on for the last two years and our guest today has been the person doing the researching.  All that plus an update on Scotland, The Bridge and Off The Record. 

And lo there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday. Today's topic, your job. Do you still want it or are you ready to quit? Our podcast is brought to you by Questrade, Canada's fastest growing and award-winning online broker. Tired of getting dinged with fees every time you buy or sell U.S. stocks? Well, good news. With Questrade, you don't have to you buy or sell U.S. stocks? Well, good news. With Questrade, you don't have to. You can hold U.S. dollars in your trading account and avoid expensive, forced conversion fees every time you trade U.S. stocks. Switch today and get up to $50 worth of free trades.

Visit Questrade.com to open an account and use promo code QUEST. Conditions apply. promo code quest conditions apply hello there peter vansbridge here was that provocative enough for you about your job well i've been thinking over the last little while, well, for the most a family life, a work life, lack of friends at work, much closer to family at home. It's all been an interesting, to say the least, 20-month period. But we knew, you know, we seem to be about to be crawling out of this. And a lot of people have been thinking, you know, was that even the right job for me? Is that the job I want to keep doing? Or should I be moving on to something else? Or should I just quit working?

Now, it's an interesting topic because, well, there's a recent report in the United States from the McKinsey Group that suggests that a lot of Americans, millions of Americans, have already quit work or are thinking about it. So, looking at those numbers makes you wonder, well, okay, we're not exactly the same as our American neighbors on a lot of fronts. But what about this one? Is it a similar feeling that's running through the workforce in Canada? So that's what we're going to deal with for a little bit today. And we've got the perfect person to do it, who's been studying Canadians, their work habits, and their thoughts about their work and their job, and what the pandemic has taught them.

So we're going to talk about that in a minute. But first, I want to update you on things about this week. Because as many of you know, I've been talking for the last 20 months about going to Scotland. I've been going to Scotland for the last 20 years, mainly to golf with friends, including Bruce. But clearly through the pandemic, there have been no trips to Scotland for golf or any other reason to go to

Scotland, but I'm about to try it. Going later today, heading over to Scotland and for a few weeks, because I've got a number of things to do there, both, you know, obviously a little golf, but I've also got some personal things to deal with there, and I've got some job things to deal with there. And so I'm going to be gone for three weeks.

So what happens to the bridge? Well, I didn't want to leave it. So I'm going to take the bridge with me. We're building a bridge to Scotland so we can keep doing the podcast, which really isn't that challenging as it may sound, but it will take a day or two to set up. So in terms of this week, on Tuesday, tomorrow, there won't be a bridge. And on Wednesday, Tuesday is basically the travel day.

Wednesday is the setup day. So there won't be a bridge on Wednesday. So no smoke mirrors and the truth this week. Back on, the plan is to have back with the bridge on Thursday and good talk on Friday. So that's basically a quick heads up. No podcast, no broadcast on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

on either Tuesday or Wednesday. But back on a regular routine on Thursday, Friday, and for the weeks ahead. And I'll probably come back to Canada on a weekend, so it won't disrupt anything on the other end. So that's a bit of information about the next couple of days or the next couple of weeks. The other thing that I didn't mention last week,

the first week, the debut week for Off the Record, my new book. It was a great first week. We ended up the number one national bestseller on both the Toronto Star ratings and over this weekend, it's just gone by, the number one bestseller, national bestseller, Canadian nonfiction in the Globe and Mail. So, you know, as my co-author of Extraordinary Canadians used to say, they can never take that away from you. You're always the number one bestseller. And that was the case for Extraordinary Canadians,

and it's now the case for Off the Record as well. But it's been great to hear so many people already. Many of you have written in to the Manspridge podcast at gmail.com to talk about the book, that you've managed to pick up a copy already. It's selling right across the country in your local bookseller, the seller in the main Indigo chain. I did an Indigo Instagram live the other night.

It was a lot of fun. I did one last year as well with Mark. We both did it. And this year it was a solo effort on my part and it was great fun. Really enjoyed it. So anyway, Indigo, you can get it either inside the stores or online. And of course at Amazon, online, Costco. Let me just say, wherever you can find a book, you'll find a copy of Off the Record. The suppliers, the bookstores have been scrambling to get copies, and they've got them, and it's available right across the country.

So you should have no trouble finding one if you're so inclined. It's, you know, I think you'll find it an entertaining book. It's a collection of anecdotes and stories from my career. Some of them are funny. Some of them are emotional. They all tell you a little bit about the country. And they tell you a lot about journalism, some behind-the-scenes stories that involve journalism, that involve big-name celebrities, big-name events, and the kind of things that happened at these various situations that I was in that I never actually had time to tell on the air

or I never told on the air. But here they are in the book. So they are the stories behind the stories in many cases. So if you get a chance, grab a copy. And I look forward to hearing from you when you want to tell me what you think of it all. So that's off the record. That's the update on off the record.

That's the update on my schedule for the next few days and few weeks. So now let's get back to this issue of jobs and how Canadians feel about jobs. So when we come back, I'm going to be talking to one of the leading people in Canada who studies jobs. He's Professor Scott Sheeman from the University of Toronto. And he has a very particular way about gathering information about how Canadians feel about their work and about how things have changed as a result of the pandemic and whether that's changed their view about work in general

and where they specifically work themselves and whether they want to continue doing the work they have been doing. So that's all coming up. And we'll begin that interview with Professor Scott Sheeman right after this. This is The Bridge

with Peter Mansbridge. I want to start by actually referring to an article that was written about you at the University of Toronto in June of last year. So it was really, in many ways, kind of at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, a couple of months in, but more or less at the beginning. The headline was, Will the Pandemic Change the World of Work? U of T researcher Scott sheman aims to find out so that was you know obviously more than a year ago and we all had different thoughts and impressions about what was going to be happening as it turns out what you determined then has it

been what you realize now yeah you know there a couple of major shifts. So just a little bit of a background first. So we were in the field, I'm a sociologist who studies work, and I went into the field with a national survey in September of 2019, thinking, oh, I'm just going to do one survey every year for the next decade to track trends and see how things are going in the Canadian workforce. And then when the pandemic hit, we rapidly shifted into a monthly and then bimonthly follow-up of the same individuals. So we have pre-pandemic baseline, which is important, right? Because then we can track and see, okay, did change really happen? A lot of surveys are asking people now or ask people during the pandemic how they felt. A couple of things that we've seen, a couple of big shifts that

everybody pretty much knows about, but they are major overnight shifts. One is the dramatic shift to working from home or working, well, working from home. I was going to say remotely, but it's working from home pretty much. So almost overnight, roughly anywhere between 30 to 40% of workers who could work from home pretty much overnight shifted to that arrangement. And so that was a dramatic shift in terms of changing the way resources are used, changing the way managers have to go from seeing people in person to suddenly managing people that they can't see anymore. And, you know, all the other kinds of shifts that came with that adjustment. Now, that has led to a lot of discussions about things are not going to go back to the way they were. A lot of people got a taste of working from home,

and now they want to continue to work from home at least part of the time. And that gave rise to what everybody refers to as some kind of hybrid model. The sweet spot is probably two days a week at some location and three days a week at home or some combination around that. The other big shift that we saw almost overnight as well was a dramatic, what I call the great pause. A lot of people talk about the great resignation with a turnover intentions and people leaving, but unprecedented temporary layoffs almost overnight again, where, you know, there's always layoffs, people always go in and out of the labor force. But if you look at the Statistics Canada reports back in March and April of 2020,

you know, the headline on the top was not business as usual. That's an understatement. I mean, about 1 million Canadians, pretty in pretty rapid, abrupt kind of experience to being temporarily laid off. Now, a lot of people we did in-depth interviews with a lot of those people in our surveys, and a lot of those people had a sense that they were going to go back. But as you can imagine, I mean, a lot of them described it as a kind of a forced vacation. Okay, you're off, we'll call you when things get back to normal. And of course, a lot of people, one of the most common refrains is nobody knew what was going to happen. So those were two pretty dramatic shifts almost overnight. And then the third is the public facing employee, right? The person who

is engaging publicly with clients, customers, what have you. And so those three buckets really kind of experienced have really shaped the way work has changed and we're still in it. I mean, it's obviously changed, but we're still kind of in this no man's land of where things are going to go. A lot of people who were laid off, by the way, did go back to work, but a lot of them sort of had a second, you know, a moment of reflection while they were on their forced vacation about, is this really what I want to do? Well, that's what I want to get at because the,

the, is this what I'm going to do or what I want to do? Should I be thinking about a different job should i be thinking about quitting the job i'm in they've been in a way forced to consider all those uh emotions over the over this last year and i what spurred this conversation on was something i happened to have seen and i'm sure you've seen it the mckinsey report on they call it you know great attrition or great attraction the choice is yours and it's a it's this issue about jobs and let me just read the first line of their report uh and if people who want to dive deeper into a mckinsey report and all its graphs and things can can find it quite easily online but here's the first line more than 15 million u.s workers and counting have quit their jobs since april this was written in

september so it's about a five month period a record pace disrupting businesses everywhere companies are struggling to address the problem and many will continue to struggle for one simple reason they don't really understand why their employees are leaving in the first place. Now, obviously, McKinsey is doing a U.S. study, but I'm wondering, you know, numbers obviously would be different. But is've been following this very closely and I've been curious about it in our own data. So, again, I'm going to just speak to the data that we we asked 2,500 Canadian workers, taking everything into consideration, how likely is it you will make a genuine effort to find a new job with another employer within the next two years? Now, that's a standard survey question that people who study work ask to measure what's called turnover intention. So it's, you know, it's not people know exactly what's going to happen. And the answers that are provided are not at all likely,

not too likely, somewhat likely, or very likely. And then there are people who can say it's not applicable because I'm retiring or, or what have you. So what's interesting is typically I've been looking at that question for many years in the U.S. and Canada, and roughly 25 percent always kind of say very likely. So if you think of very likely as the response of it's on people's minds, very likely. Twenty four percent in September of 2019 said very likely. Fifty four percent said not at all likely or not too likely. So that's the majority of workers who are feeling pretty stable. We repeated the same survey design in September of 2020. So we scooped up another random sample of this time 4,000 Canadians. So we increased the pool because we knew there was a lot of volatility in the workforce and so forth. We asked the same question in September of 2020, 61% said not likely, right?

So that went from 54% to 61%. Only 19% said very likely. So we saw a drop. Again, if you look at those numbers, relative comparisons, if it were really true that there was a lot of churn in the workforce, you'd see that number probably rise. And I'll just give one other data point here. Then we just repeated the same exact survey design. We scooped up another, this time 3,500 randomly selected Canadians in September of 2021, right after

the election. So we've got some interesting data there. Three days after the election, we went into the field. We asked the same question, and we got 58% said the not likely group, and only 20% said very likely. So we actually, if you look at those three, and you put them side by side, they're similar on all other characteristics, gender, race, age, education. They're purposely designed to be comparable. Answers to that question went down. Am I saying that there isn't a lot of churn in the workforce and maybe in the United States it's different? I'm not sure, but our data really don't support that. And the only final thing I'll say is we've also followed the same Canadians from that 2019 survey throughout the pandemic. So we've interviewed them 12 different times since September 2019. And we've asked that same question. And it actually plummeted when the pandemic hit. And that kind of makes sense, right? If jobs are being lost, it seems like the ship is going down. Are you going to be broadcasting that you're like, hmm, maybe number that said very likely to turn over in April dropped

down to 13%. And that makes sense. I mean, the world was like, you know, changing dramatically. So that's a long way of answering your question. But I we don't see the similar kind of crazy, like big resignation happening in Canada, at least not in our data. Yeah, that it's really fascinating though. The, the, the difference between the two. Now I know your, your studies don't try to determine why, you know, Americans are seemingly different than Canadians on this issue, but do you have any theories as to why there may be a difference? Yeah. It might actually be that, you know, so we're not actually asking

the question, have you left your job? Although we do ask that in the longitudinal study, in the study where we follow the same people, we ask you whether you left your job employer in the past month. So let's say you were working full time all the way up till June of 2020. And then you said, you know, I've had enough and I'm going to try to find something else. We look at that, but I don't really know the answer to the question. I mean, I haven't been able to figure out why there's a mismatch between our own data and what I think is a pretty prominent narrative in the media, at least. And that's something I've seen actually in the Canadian media.

I've noticed a lot of stories about this great resignation. And what's interesting is there was one survey. Again, it was a snapshot survey recently of employees and 25 percent said very likely that they were going to leave their jobs and it was framed in that story as oh there's a big great resignation but as i told you like sure that's the stand that's that's the standard that we found in 20 um in 2019 of september and to be honest i think our sample is probably more representative because i think theirs was a very small sample of about 500. But again, the narratives get a little overblown because that's the story that I think, you know, catches attention, right? But again, I'm not saying people aren't thinking about it

and there isn't a lot of churn, but by this measure, we don't see it. And I'm not quite sure what to tell you about why it's different in canada than the u.s have you been able to to see in in the questions you're asking the answers you're getting um any sense of uh of what's you know going through the minds of employees because i guess one of the things this suggests is that there's been so much no matter what how they end up determining whether they're going to keep their job or look for another one or just i would now quit what is does seem to be clear is that they i don't want to say you know in a way it's their mental health as a result of the pandemic

in terms of how they're constantly thinking about you know their place in life their situation with their family their their long-term goals and ambitions as a result of the pandemic are you able to see any sense of that in the data you're incorporating and how it's impacting people's thoughts about their job? Yeah, you know, it really comes down to those three buckets that I was talking about. When you talk to people who've worked from home pretty much throughout the whole pandemic, and we have, and you ask them, you probe about, you know, their experiences and what they've been going through, you see a whole range. I mean, in a way, one big takeaway for me about work in the

pandemic is there's so many countervailing forces, right? Okay. So people who work from home love the fact that they don't have to commute. So that's an upside. The downside is that a lot of people feel lonelier, disconnected. So positive commutes really bad for mental health a lot of people end up angry at work uh so that's a that's a plus but then the negative is very little feeling of connectivity with co-workers or colleagues especially if they started the job during the pandemic we talked to people who never have yet met people in person they it's only been through Zoom. And it's just harder to get that supportive bond or those connections. I think it's interesting, the people who had the temporary layoff, again, April, some in April, and then it kept going into May, and it kept going into June.

And a lot of people said those first two months were really like a forced vacation, where they actually felt better. And some our data show, they actually felt better. And thankfully, a lot of them say because of the CERB. Again, if you're in the U.S. and you don't have that safety net, it's a different story. But those people, a lot of it, a lot of them described it as like a temporary pause or like an extended vacation where that gave them time to think about their life, think about what they were doing. Some of them actually decided to retool to, you know, to do some studying on their own and think differently about their own experiences. For those who experienced an enduring uncertainty and insecurity, that's where the anxiety, like after a while, it's like, okay, this is no longer an extended vacation. They started thinking about, um, what they were going

to do next. So for some of them, they made a decision to switch into something that was maybe a bit more secure. And a lot of people, um, in public facing jobs were very concerned about kind of, um, health threats. And so they started thinking about like, is this worth it? How much of it, you know, how much of this is really worth the kind of exposures that I'm experiencing. So it's kind of a, the stories are really almost kind of like three main groups. Well, actually, and you know, if you talk to managers or others,

so there's that dynamic too of what they've experienced and how they thought about, wow, this whole reorganization of work, I'm questioning whether it's really worth it or not, you know, especially when there's a lot of uncertainty, right? People don't like uncertainty. You still got people wondering whether they're going to go back to kind of like, are you going to go back? Are we going to go back to the office or not? What's that going to look like? And then all the inequalities that that introduces, managers are going to have to manage that. That's a big thing we hear. When you have people who are working in teams and they're working at different times and different days and different locations, somebody's got to coordinate

all that. And that's a new set of challenges. Now, I'm not saying people won't rise up to it, but it's more work. Let me just close on this one point, and it's kind of related to what you just suggested, because I think if there's one thing that I've heard, you know, a degree of concern about if we head towards this hybrid model where some people will be working at home and some will be in the, or it'll be kind of a split week. The area that I had seen a lot of concern around was that for those who choose to stay at home and work from there, they're not going to be able to make the same kind of impressions with managers as those who choose to go into work and there'll be a kind of a stunting in their progress in terms of of work is that a legitimate fear or is that one that that management is aware of and is will will try to cope with yeah that's that's

a really great question you could do a whole could do a whole podcast or series on this question where there's definitely a concern about the inequalities that are introduced, be able to stop and chat kind of thing where you can pop your head into somebody's cubicle or office. There's a lot of variation on how important that is. But I think a lot of the stories are like, look, if I can't see the individuals. We wrote a piece in The Star not that long ago about I had a thesis about that some status is lost, right? Like status is exchanged in our day to day interactions. And if suddenly, like I as a manager, I don't have that capacity to kind of get a sense of what you're doing one way or another. I think people want to try to maintain that status. And I think it could flow both ways where someone who feels like they're not seen as, even on Zoom calls where one will not turn on the camera and the other one will. And I don't I found myself occasionally asking, are they are you there?

Whereas the other I mean, that's not that's not face to face, but it's still sort of like I can see your face and I can see you shaking your head and I know you're there. And I have to tell you, like, I think we're social creatures, right? I think we want that kind of feedback, um, at least some of the time. So that's the question is like, that's going to be the new challenge is if there's some portion of the week, that's not collectively together at the workplace, how's that going to look? And one of the dynamics that pops up is another new divide we could probably talk about in another segment, but people who don't have kids at home, we found in our surveys that there was seemed to be a tick upward in terms of like, okay,

if you're working from home and you have domestic responsibilities or childcare, other things in the background, and I'm pointing in the background because on some calls I've been on with people, their kids are like throwing balls in the background, people, people, and this is not anti kid or anything, but like some people who don't have kids have reported to us, they felt like they had to pick up the slack. They understand it. They're empathic. They're not jerks, but they're still feeling like they're working longer and harder.

And yet that's yet another divide as if we need it anymore. Right. In society. But so, yeah, your question is great because it's like it each at each turn, all of these changes that the pandemic has brought on or maybe just brought up really, really, really have potential powerful effects on people. Well, one of the great truths that you've said in this discussion is that there are lots of points to this discussion, and we could have many segments or podcasts on it in the future, and perhaps we will. Listen, it's been great of you to take your time for this. We really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So that was Professor Scott Sheeman, University of Toronto. And it's the kind of conversation that will provoke, I think, a lot of responses from many of you who are not shy about sending me letters at the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com about this issue. And you

have over the last 20 months, this whole issue of work and what you've been thinking about as a result of the events of the last 20 months during the pandemic. You know, I've heard from, I've heard from teachers, I've heard from parents, I've heard from shop workers, I've heard from healthcare workers, I've heard from a lot of different professions about how they've been impacted in terms of their daily work. who have been at home and worked from home, and the difficulties that has presented in some cases because of small kids who were at home as well, not in school. And it's given a lot of people a lot of time to think about their place in the workforce. But I did find it fascinating, as Professor Sheeman explained, that the Canadian numbers, and he's done a pretty intensive survey and probably, to some degree,

more intensive than the one McKinsey did south of the border, but, you know, I won't go there. But the fact is that it seems like Canadians' attitudes about work in terms of the jobs they do and whether they want to quit and move to something else have not really changed as a result of what's been a kind of fundamental change in our lives over the last 20 months. But you may have something to say about that. And if you do share it,

send a, send a email to the man switchcast at gmail.com. Now, in his closing remarks there, you know, I had to laugh about this issue on Zoom, and I'm sure many of you have been in this situation too, where you've been, you know, I sit on a couple of boards, but I also sit on, you know, a few other, you know, situations where there are a number of people on the Zoom call

and you're having a big meeting. And every once in a while you'll see somebody turn their camera off. And so the assumption is they're not even there. They've gone out there, you know, they're so bored, they've got up, they've gone for a walk, they've done something is they're not even there. They've gone out there, you know, they're so bored. They've got up, they've gone for a walk, they've done something, they're not there. And it's easy to find out, right? You ask them a question and they either answer or they don't. But I found myself shutting off the camera every once in a while. And I usually shut it off if I'm eating. Some of the meetings that I have go a stretch over the, you know,

the lunch hour. And, you know, I'll make myself a sandwich or something, and I'll eat that. And I can't stand watching somebody else on a Zoom call eating, so I'm assuming they don't want to watch me eating either. So that's why I, you know, I'll turn the camera off or if, you know, sometimes I just turn it off for, so I can focus a little more on the conversation instead of looking at all

these boxes of different people sitting there in their homes, trying to take part in the meeting. Anyway, it is an interesting thing aside from, and also, of course, dogs or kids or cats or whatever playing around in the background makes for some funny moments. All right. Time to wrap things up for this day, for this Monday, the start of another week. And a week where I will just mention very quickly, I won't be on the next two days,

Tuesday or Wednesday, but back Thursday and Friday. So don't get too worried. If you can't find a copy of The Bridge tomorrow, time to go back and look at some old ones. Or listen to some old ones. So, back Thursday, noon Eastern, on SiriusXM Canada, channel 167,

Canada Talks, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And speaking of number ones, I've seen on the Apple Charts, Canada Politics podcast, the bridge has been number one for most of the last two or three weeks. Not every day, but most of the days. That's been nice too.

All right. Hope you have a great day. And we'll talk to you again in a couple of days. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again soon. Thank you.