I was in an OH&S meeting once where they were talking about buying walkie-talkies so staff could more easily communicate with each other in our large Central branch. One of the clerks spoke up and said “What sort of training will we get?” A high level manager could barely hide her distain as she replied […]
Been sick the past couple days but dragged my ass into work as I had a big event on. I texted Shea to ask if she was going to bring the kids and she replied “I feel like absolute crap. I did a Covid test and it negative but I feel like I was hit […]
One highlight of working at Central Library was being able to go out and walk around Wascana Lake (part of the largest urban park in North America!) regularly during my lunch breaks. Always liked this photo I took on my route one day…
I was recently out for supper with a bunch of friends including one high level manager who oversees a Canada-wide IT team for a large corporation. It was interesting to compare notes about our workplaces. He said he is all about high performers and strongly believes in performance management, expecting high results but also rewarding […]
This isn’t really advice I was given by someone but more of a personal observation I’ve made after seeing it repeatedly over the years. Whenever there is something decided, especially when its some sort of major decision, there’s usually an overt reason people give for the decision but also a covert reason they may or […]
Yesterday’s post got me a bit nostalgic for the HR Unit I was part of for the first few years of my career at RPL – what a great team!
I first heard this advice years ago when I was still in the role of Organization Development Specialist at Regina Public Library. In hindsight, I don’t think I appreciated what an amazing job that was to have right at the start of my library career. Our Director (still the same guy all these years later) […]
A long time ago, a colleague gave me a way to think of hiring that totally changed how I view the process of selecting a candidate. Before, I was just thinking “Who can best do this job?” but he pointed out that you’re not just hiring the person for the immediate job but potentially for […]
In my Wisdom Wednesday series, I’ll eventually do a post about the difference I see between what I call “black & white” thinkers and “grey area” thinkers. (Myers-Briggs has 16 classifications. True Colors has 4. Hamology basically only has 2!) One big aspect of this difference is that are those who think there are hard […]
We didn’t see eye to eye on everything but I was very fortunate to have the first manager in libraries that I did as he was very experienced and knowledgeable (obviously people have to start somewhere but it can be a lot tougher if your manager is someone who’s newly hired or has only been […]