Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER September 21, 2015 2 NEWS Recent stories posted on www.hrreporter.com. Check the website daily for quick news hits from across Canada and around the world. WEB O N T H E ACROSS CANADA CFOs confident about economic growth: Survey 54 per cent plan to hire for open roles Foreign sailors paid $2 per hour while Canadian crews jobless: Union Asking Federal Court for judicial review Jobs added in August, but unemployment rate rises Gains entirely from full-time employment Waiting for work: Retail workers face volatility of on-call work Labour activists pushing for elimination of on-call shifts Laura's to close just 15 stores due to lower rents, supplier discounts To employ about 2,000 workers, down from 2,330 Starting salaries for professional jobs to increase 3.4 per cent in 2016: Poll Tech sector to see biggest pay gains AROUND THE WORLD Obama orders government contractors to offer paid sick leave Order to impact some 300,000 people Indonesian employers resist workers' calls for higher wages Slowdown in Southeast Asia's largest economy U.S. employers added 173,000 jobs in August Unemployment falls to 7-year low U.K. prime minister promises tough fines for not paying minimum wage Fines could reach 200 per cent of unpaid wages U.S. private payrolls rise steadily; productivity revised up Job growth remains strong and broad-based, except in energy industry: Expert TV station outlines journalist killer's troubled work history Moments after Vester Flanagan was fired in 2013 from the Virginia station WDBJ, he handed a wooden cross to the news director and said, "You'll need this," GM Jeff Marks says hrreporter.com FEATURED VIDEO Alleviating workplace anxiety Relationships with co-workers, supervisors can help: Study BY SARAH DOBSON IT'S PROBABLY no surprise to hear workplace anxiety can affect job performance. But as it turns out, relationships with co-workers and supervisors can help combat this anxiety, according to a study. "e quality of the relationships that we foster in the workplace is going to help us deal with our workplace problems, not only our anxiety but all kinds of workplace problems, and will lead to better outcomes for people," said John Trougakos, associate professor of management at the University of Toronto-Scarborough and Rot- man School of Management, and co-author of the study. Typical levels of job perfor- mance require the execution of multiple tasks over sustained periods of time. These require the "protection and facilitation of cognitive and personal resources," say the authors of "Are Anxious Workers Less Productive Work- ers? It Depends on the Quality of Social Exchange." When employ- ees experience high levels of work- place anxiety, these resources are depleted, resulting in emotional exhaustion and reduced levels of job performance. "In the long run, to build social connections with people is obvi- ously beneficial because we have to oftentimes invest resources to get resources," he said. While it's known that one of the biggest sources of anxiety is cog- nitive interference — unwanted, distracting thoughts that can pre- clude or block the ability to focus properly on the task at hand — it's now apparent we should also look at emotional exhaustion, said Julie McCarthy, co-author and associ- ate professor of organizational behaviour and HR management at the same university. "If you're anxious on the job, it may be harder to focus on tasks that you need to do because of the concern. But, above and beyond that, these high levels of anxiety are going to deplete our resources, they're going to deplete things so that we're going to eventually have SOCIAL > pg. 28

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