The Whirlpool appliance brand is working with a specialized service provider to implement disability inclusion training for Whirlpool retail salespeople.

Through this new offering, retail sales associates will be taught about how leveraging technology can help autistic and neurodivergent people gain independence in their daily lives through an app called MagnusCards. This app was developed by Magnusmode, a company dedicated to creating practical tools that enable neurodiverse people to participate in the world in more meaningful ways. Founder Nadia Hamilton was inspired by her autistic brother to create Magnusmode.

MagnusCards provides digital, step-by-step visual guides to support home and community living for autistic and neurodiverse people worldwide. A special “Disability Empathy Training Module” is a course that puts an empathy-first focus on customer service training. It equips trainees with the necessary tools to create an inclusive environment and to understand the needs of neurodivergent customers.

The tools include active listening techniques and effective communication strategies, while also providing examples of harmful and inclusive language and unconscious bias. The course also features interviews with individuals with various disabilities that provide real-life examples to illustrate course concepts.

“As the exclusive homecare sponsor of Magnusmode in Canada, we’re thrilled to announce the third year of our ongoing collaboration with the introduction of the Disability Empathy Training Module,” said Mareike Greve, senior manager of brand experience at Whirlpool Canada. Greve’s company is committed to providing an inclusive environment for all its customers and employees, “and by introducing the Empathy Training Module for retail sales associates, we can help better ensure a culture of empathy and understanding that benefits all.”

The training module will be tailored to retail locations, identifying unique barriers to inclusion in various retail environments. Magnusmode will be responsible for oversight and management of the project. Upon completion, a custom-designed course completion badge will be provided to all trainees to build pride and employee engagement around accessibility.

Environmental initiatives can play well with customers. But do they matter for your staff? When RONA inc. got named as one of Canada’s Greenest Employers last month, we called the retailer to find out how the various initiatives RONA undertakes matter to their employees.

Especially since the company won for the fourth year in a row.

Canada’s Greenest Employers is organized by Mediacorp. Home Depot Canada and IKEA Canada were also on the list. The national competition celebrates employers who stand out for their sustainable development initiatives and environmental awareness efforts.

One of the measures in the competition is the participation and degree of involvement of employees in the company’s programs.

While proclamations and achievements such as this one play well with the media and even the shareholders, do they matter to customers? According to Mélanie Lussier, senior director, communications, public affairs, and sustainable development at RONA inc., the answer is a hard “yes.”

“Our employees are committed to making a difference, and we rely on their active and enthusiastic participation to carry out our projects,” she says. “For example, in 2022, RONA launched its brand-new ECO Squad in corporate stores, made up of employees who are motivated to play an active role in helping the organization achieve its environmental goals.”

Lussier says the green awareness and energy come from right down on the store floor. Staff gets behind these initiatives and make them happen.

“This recognition is mostly due to the excellent work and commitment of all our associates. They contribute to the achievement of our ambitious environmental goals and to the continuous improvement of our practices. Our presence in this ranking shows that our efforts are paying off. Many thanks to all of our associates for their invaluable contribution!”

The effects of such green efforts are positive for both existing and new hires. “Creating a culture of sustainability that reaches all areas of the company is very important to us at RONA,” Lussier adds. “It is something that resonates strongly with our employees and with potential candidates since they care about partnering and encouraging responsible businesses.”

By Michelle Ann-Zoleta, Health & Safety Manager at Peninsula Canada

April is National Stress Awareness Month, and it brings attention to the negative effects of stress and how to best manage it. In today’s fast-paced world, it comes as no surprise that workplace stress is a common challenge. If left unmanaged, it can take a huge toll on one’s mental and physical wellbeing. However, there are effective strategies that employers can take to help reduce stress in the workplace.

What causes stress in the workplace? There isn’t only one cause of stress in the workplace. It depends on the nature of the job and the way the individual handles their stress. However, there are common factors across within workplaces that can contribute to feelings of stress.

Some of the examples include:

• Workload
• Lack of training and/or preparation
• Role conflict (conflicting job demands, too many roles, multiple supervisors/managers)
• Lack of clarity about job expectation and responsibilities
• No work/life balance

What can employers do to address stress in their workplace? It’s important to note that a stress-free workplace benefits your business by reducing employee turnover and boosting workplace morale and productivity.

Below are five ways employers can address stress in the workplace.

1. Normalizing the conversation surrounding stress will help staff feel comfortable talking to their managers about how they’re feeling.
2. Employers should assess the workplace for the risk of stress.
3. Check in with staff on how their job is going in terms of deadlines, tasks, responsibilities, and see if you can provide additional resources or help.
4. Recognize and celebrate good work.
5. Offer an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to support the mental health and wellbeing of your staff.

A global leader in HR and health & safety consulting, Peninsula has been supporting small and medium businesses for 40 years. We are trusted by over 140,000 SMB globally. In Canada, we helped over 6,500 SMBs with tailored HR documentation, 24/7 employer advice, and provide employment management software. We pride ourselves on delivering a service that mitigates risk, adds value, and allows businesses to focus their time on what matters most.

By Sarah McVanel

Sarah McVanel is the founder of Greatness Magnified, an organization that specializes in providing training programs and certifications for employees at large. She is a recognition expert, professional speaker, coach, author, and creator of F.R.O.G.—Forever Recognize Others’ Greatness. She invigorates companies to earn great people and to see their people as exceptional so that, together, they can create a thriving culture where everyone belongs.

Asking why folks are resistant to returning to the office, even after “all this time,” can help you to understand why someone might quit even when things are going well. Conduct “stay interviews” and learn what is threatening your retention.

Traditionally, people put up with a lot as part of working for a living, but in Covid, we saw other impacts. An example is the commute and all its downsides—taking time away from family, fatigue, not spending enough time exercising, maybe even some anxiety—and suddenly, it is not “why are they resisting our HR policies?” It’s a request for support of a healthy work and life.

Expectations of Flexibility at Work. We have all come out of Covid and have forever changed. You cannot go through the biggest health crisis of your lifetime without having had, as psychoanalyst Dr. James Hollis calls it, “a meeting with ourselves.” Not everyone has an intention to stay so firmly rooted that it’s impossible to shake. And we HR folks know that intention to stay is one of the best predictors as to whether there is looming turnover.

Think about it: What about professionals struggling to make a living wage? What if the rising cost of groceries paired with the gas bill makes the decision for them to work closer to home? What if they don’t get their mojo back post-Covid, and they’ve lost their sense of purpose and passion for the work? What if they’re looking for a role that gives them more satisfaction personally?

Whether you’re reading this as an employer, a middle manager, an HR professional, or an individual contributor, we all know folks are asking themselves questions like:

• What is this job worth to me? What is it costing me?
• What is this job giving me? How is it fueling me?
• What gives me meaning and spirit? Am I getting it here?
• Who is important to me? Does work make me feel more connected?
• Am I safe here, getting to work and getting home?

Asking questions like the ones above helps get a picture of why people stay and how likely they are to stay.

Stay Planning. Guess what? When you ask questions like “What makes people stay?” you find answers that were there all along and that you can now act on.

We’ve been building Stay Plans with our clients in 2024. With a bit of prep and a powerful mix of folks, we facilitate a one-day process where a one-page Stay Plan maps out one clear “reason to stay every day” elevator script, clarity of the burning platform, the max three priorities to fix turnover, the outcome and process measures to track progress, and a list of quick wins across all 10 phases of the employee experience journey.

(If you’re unsure why folks would stay or how to build a plan to solidify stay in your organization, we should talk. Book a chat with me. Let’s see how we can make 2024 the year of stay.)

Can bosses get too particular about their team’s duties? And can that behaviour be a deterrent to that team’s capabilities—and their well-being? You know it can! A recent article posted by CNBC reported on a presentation made by one of the biggest bosses in the U.S.: the former president and CEO of IBM, Ginni Rometty.

Rometty spent almost 40 years at IBM, including the last eight in the top job. By her own admission, she was a perfectionist, and it took years for her to see the drawbacks to that behaviour. Speaking at the World Business Forum, she shared how she spent years sending work back to her staff filled with corrections and suggestions for what she thought would be better. As she tells it, she thought this kind of clarity, finding and correcting mistakes, would make her people better.

But a colleague finally pointed out that such actions were demoralizing. Rometty was told that her team didn’t want to try hard if the boss was only going to change and “fix” everything they submitted. “That’s pretty disabling for people … I was disempowering them. Of course, it was never my intent, but I learned to stop it,” she told the audience, according to CNBC.

“Perfectionism is the enemy of progress,” she said.

Like Millennials, Gen Z values work-life balance and meaningful work, and has a reputation for changing jobs fairly easily. Employers can use this to their advantage by leveraging their strengths to attract young workers from the competition. Members of Gen Z also share some common anxieties with Millennials, especially in this time of high inflation and rising prices, according to leadership coach Nicole Gallucci.

“Am I ever going to be able to afford a home? What kind of family am I going to be able to afford to raise in a dual-income environment? How are my partner and I going to figure that out?”

Gallucci, the author of Life Blueprint: a step-by-step guide for creating an extraordinary life, knows these generations well through her work teaching marketing at two Ontario colleges. She says Zoomers are “literally grappling with all of these challenges, and at the same time, they’re also trying to figure out, ‘what do I want to be when I grow up?’—as we all are!”

On the other hand, Gen Z exhibits a stronger preference for the community feeling of an office space, as opposed to the Millennial penchant for remote or hybrid setups. They also use professional networking websites like LinkedIn less than Millennials do, and their technology use overall is more mobile-centric.

Gallucci says that Gen Z is on the vanguard of confronting trends that will impact the workplace as a whole such as Artificial Intelligence, which she calls “a remarkable tool” but not “a replacement.”

The rapid development of AI, she says, is “amazing, but it’s also something to be a bit apprehensive about for so many in this generation—I would say so many in every generation,

but I think this generation is going to be the one who literally leads the charge on it, decides how it’s going to get used.”

While it may be daunting, Gallucci says we have been here before, pointing to the massive industrialization and technological advancements following the world wars, among other examples. “We’ve gone through these rises and falls of new technologies. Look at the dot-com explosion: everybody panicked when dot-com came in because, are we going to lose our jobs?

And we didn’t. We just found other ways to work.”

Gallucci doesn’t shy away from the angst this process can induce, including for Zoomers.

“They’re young, they’re still figuring out life, they’re still figuring out work and how work works. And on top of this, they’re trying to adopt and adapt this technology.” But she believes employers can support their younger workers through the transition if they play their cards right.

(This story is an excerpt of a larger article dealing with HR issues in the latest issue of our sister publication, the print magazine Hardlines Home Improvement Quarterly. HHIQ is mailing out later this week, so watch for it at your store!)

By HR and health & safety consultancy Peninsula Canada

In today’s fast-paced world, companies need to continuously innovate and evolve. To successfully achieve that, employers should prioritize their employees’ professional growth and development.

Creating and supporting a workforce that stays up to date has obvious advantages. By fostering a culture of learning and growth, companies not only stay on top of the latest industry trends but also create a more motivated and skilled team, ready to take on new challenges and drive success. Employers should want their workforce to reach their full potential; this in turn will help build a stronger, more competitive business.

Employees are more likely to stay with a company that invests in their career growth. Offering career development opportunities reduces turnover, leading to a more stable and devoted workforce.

As employees gain new skills and knowledge through career development opportunities, their performance in their current role tends to improve. They become better equipped to handle challenges and take on new responsibilities.

When employees see opportunities for growth and advancement within their organization, they are more likely to feel satisfied and engaged in their work. Knowing that their efforts contribute to personal and professional development can boost morale and motivation.

There are various ways employers can support employee career development. It’s important to engage in career discussions with employees to understand their aspirations and create personalized career development plans. Whether through coaching or workshops, there is something for every employee to help them thrive.

Peninsula is a trusted HR and health and safety advisory company, serving over 6,000 small businesses across Canada. Clients are supported with ongoing updates of their workplace documentation and policies as legislation changes. Additionally, clients benefit from access to a 24/7 employer HR and OHS advice line and coverage on legal through the Peninsula Protect service promise.

Laura Freeman is executive vice-president of human resources and chief human resources officer for Orgill Inc., the Memphis-based hardware distributor that serves independent hardware and building supply dealers worldwide, including hundreds in Canada.

As the world settles into a “new normal” following the Covid pandemic, we talked with Freeman about what’s changed post-Covid for the HR role.

A lot of her concerns about HR still remain. “We’re still very focused on recruiting and retention of the workforce,” she says, especially as more members of the Generation Z demographic are joining millennials in the job market. “When you think about your hiring, about 50 to 60 percent are falling into those two generations.”

Freeman says traditional hiring practices don’t necessarily apply with them, even some of the more recent ones like Indeed. HR people have to be more imaginative now, and use social media better. “Those audiences are so much in tune with social media. How are we using it for engagement and for recruiting?”

She sees more and more of Orgill’s retail customers using social media, whether it’s Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. But it’s best used not just to engage customers but to tell stories online about employees. For example, a staffer may have helped a customer in a particularly thoughtful way. That situation is used to showcase what a great place the store is to work at. The messaging is good for the store, and Freeman says it’s valuable to use further, “moving it over to say, ‘hey, would you like to be part of the team?’ as a way to find those qualified candidates.”

But getting them is only part of the battle, one that hasn’t changed since before—or during—Covid. “Once you find them, how do you keep them engaged? What are we doing in our work environment that’s attractive to them?”

Policies about cell phone use on the job is one example Freeman offers. Are they able to carry them with them or do they have to put them in a locker? For Orgill, that may be a safety issue as well as a worker rights situation. For stores it could be a combination of both. “It’s balancing those needs from the people side of the business.”

The Cedar Shop is a Sexton yard in Calgary that last year won the Best Contractor Specialist award at the Outstanding Retailer Awards. It has an innovative internship program in which Mitch Wile, the store’s president, trains two high school interns every spring. Hardlines HR Advisor got curious about this program, and how it evolved.

The internship program dates back to 2019 when conversations began between Liz Kovach, president of the Western Retail Lumber Association (WRLA), and Eddie Choe, director of business development at Trimlite Doors, Calgary.

“We wanted to introduce this industry to the younger generation,” Kovach recalls. “They can go to career fairs, but it’s very difficult to know what kind of a career you might have, walking through the booths … I thought there’s got to be a better way (through internships). Eddie said he had a colleague at the Calgary Board of Education and we started talking.”

Covid got in the way, unfortunately. “In 2021, we rekindled our discussions,” Kovach said. “We went to Calgary and met with the Unique Pathway team at the Calgary Board of Education … We told them we wanted to introduce new talent into the industry.

The first internships were in place last spring, with mouldings giant Metrie Inc. taking on interns from the vendor side, and The Cedar Shop introducing interns from the retailer side.

“At the same time, the WRLA was introducing our Let’s Go Build public awareness campaign,” Kovach says. “The Calgary Board of Education had some criteria. The students need to come out with some skills, they said. They didn’t want to offer internships where the interns didn’t learn anything.

“The WRLA has recently done an Alberta Labour Market Study for our sector. It sorted out a lot of misconceptions,” Kovach explained.” One of them is that we think that once you enter the industry, you never leave. In fact, 63 percent of the people that enter our industry leave. We can’t afford to have that many people leave. We have to have some sort of introductory course. We used to refer to it as Lumber and Building Materials 101, but we’re now calling it Building Materials Fundamentals.”

“There has to be a way where everyone that comes into our industry can learn the lingo of our industry.”

A recent Hardlines Podcast featured Michael McLarney talking to Pierre Battah, a leading HR advisor in Canada. Battah has also written a great book: Humanity at Work: Leading for Relationships and Results. He’s also a broadcast journalist, frequently featured on CBC and Radio Canada. Scroll down to the link at the bottom of this article to listen to that podcast.

In their half-hour conversation, McLarney and Battah focused on the realities of managing teams in the retail home improvement environment. HR management has to be done through “check ins” on the fly, because stores are very busy places, Battah said. And the whole point of the “check-in” process is to increase an employee’s engagement.

What is engagement? It’s a commitment of a retail floor employee to a customer, to serving them as well as they can. And more than that, it’s being fully absorbed in whatever the retail task is that day. Battah gave some statistics of employee engagement.

“We know that a third of our folks are born engaged,” Battah said. “They are our owners and managers—they are our leaders. Twenty percent of our employees are involved in a transactional relationship. They have the attitude of ‘you pay me, I’ll do my job.’ But it’s a job. The other 50 percent, if we do a few things, including management by walking around, we have a shot at affecting them—and engaging them.”

Check-ins with staff are important to increase employee engagement, Battah counselled. They ideally are done one-on-one, between the manager and the employee. And, ideally, they are done daily. Checking in doesn’t have to take very long—few minutes if that’s all you have time for. “It’s these small little connections,” Battah says. Do them at the beginning of a shift. Or while you are walking through the store. Take time to check in with each employee. “There’s not a lot of magic bullets on leading people,” Battah confessed. “But checking in is one of them!”

(Pierre Battah, management consultant, HR guru, radio personality and author, is our guest on the latest episode of our Podcast Series, “What’s in Store.” You can listen free and get notifications of upcoming podcasts by clicking here! Scroll down at the linked page to see our complete library of episodes.)