Canadian HR Reporter

PM40065782 RO9496 August 10, 2015 INSIDE MSD PREVENTION Ergonomics training can help prevent musculoskeletal disorders Self-monitoring Software can help employees track their own productivity page 6 Hiding knowledge Are your workers concealing their know-how? page 10 Rewording job ads Emphasize total rewards to find the best candidates page 13 page 15 Exhibitors speak with visitors at a national job fair and training exposition in Toronto. Credit: Aaron Harris (Reuters) Interview process getting longer Various screening methods increasingly popular: Study SARAH DOBSON RE C RU I TE R S and hiring managers know well the delays that plague recruitment. Go- ing through the interviews and screening procedures is often a long, drawn-out process. And it's getting longer. e av- erage interview time — from the moment a person applies to when he finds out he got the job — has increased globally in length by 3.3 to 3.7 days since 2010, according to a Glassdoor report. at trend remains even after accounting for shifts in job titles, compa- nies, industries and jobseeker demographics. Of the six countries surveyed, Canada has the quickest time- lines, averaging 22.1 days in 2014, compared to 22.9 in the United States. Overseas, it is consider- ably worse, with France averag- ing 31.9 days, Germany at 28.8, the United Kingdom at 28.6 and Australia at 27.9. e time factor used to be less of an issue. In Canada, the average was 12 days in 2010, according to the research, based on a statisti- cal analysis of hiring times from 340,250 interview reviews (with 14,600 from Canada) by job can- didates on Glassdoor.com. When stress isn't distressing Workplace stress could actually be good for you – it's just a matter of taking the right approach BY LIZ BERNIER JUST MENTIONING the word "stress" can be enough to sum- mon the feeling — especially at the workplace. It's something we dread, something that keeps us up at night, and certainly not some- thing we consider helpful. "For years, I've been telling people 'Stress makes you sick.' It increases the risk of everything from the common cold to cardio- vascular disease. "Basically, I've turned stress into the enemy — but I've changed my mind about stress," said Kelly Mc- Gonigal, a health psychologist at Stanford University in California and author of e Upside of Stress, in her TED talk. Stress isn't necessarily a bad thing, she said — in some cases, it can actually be beneficial, if a per- son takes the right approach. In fact, changing the way people think about stress could actually lessen its negative impacts on their health, said McGonigal, who's not the only expert to have arrived at that conclusion. "e main impact of stress is based not on the amount of stress or on the genes of the person, but on the mindset of the individual toward stress," said Shawn Achor, a positive psychology expert and founder and CEO of Goodink in Cambridge, Mass. In 2009, Achor and two others researched 380 managers to test the impact of mindset on stress. eir findings? "If someone views stress as a threat, it becomes debilitating. When someone is taught to view stress as a challenge, it becomes enhancing," he said. "When you perceive stress as a challenge, your immune system strengthens, growth hormones are released to repair your body, cog- nitive functioning speeds up and social bonds deepen. e groups that we trained… to see stress as positive had a 23 per cent drop in the negative effect of stress. Stress is inevitable — its effects are not." Stress responses Of course, there is a difference between acute stress and chronic stress, said Jeremy Jamieson, as- sistant professor of psychology at Rochester University in New York. If a person is working in a truly toxic environment and suffering from chronic stress, changing her mindset about stress really won't have the same impact as it would on acute stress. "It doesn't really matter what you do, (chronic stress is) gener- ally pretty negative," he said. But a lot of the short-term stressors, the acute stress — espe- cially when it comes to the work environment — involve things such as deadlines, performance evaluations and time pressures. They're stressful but once the Sexual harassment damages see gains 2 recent cases in Ontario highlight evolving approach BY SARAH DOBSON THE T WO CASES were ex- treme, to say the least. One involved a receptionist who suffered through several incidents of sexual assault and harassment by her employer and was subse- quently fired after recovering from dental surgery. Michelle Silvera was recently awarded damages of $206,000 (including general and aggravated, punitive, breach of the human rights code and loss of fu- ture income) by the Ontario Supe- rior Court of Justice in June, along with $90,000 for wrongful termi- nation from Olympia Jewellery. e other involved two tem- porary foreign workers who suffered through several in- stances of sexual harassment, sexual solicitations and advanc- es — creating a sexually poi- soned work environment — and reprisal, while working for Pre- steve Foods. In May, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario sepa- rately awarded them $150,000 and $50,000 as compensation for injury to their dignity, feelings and self-respect. Considering the large amounts, will we start to see larger awards handed out for sexual harassment? "It may be part of a wider trend or it may be those specific circum- stances," said Paul Willetts, em- ployment lawyer at Vey Willetts in Ottawa. "e facts that were pre- sented in those cases precipitated the results that occurred so I think, to a certain extent, that's why you saw a larger damages award." However, there is case law that said the tribunal would be willing to award more, said Willetts, who has seen, generally, increases from SCREENING > pg. 9 CHANGE > pg. 2 COURTS > pg. 8

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