My workplace is cracking down on ‘hush trips’ – what’s the problem if the work gets done?

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Question: During a recent conversation over lunch with colleagues, it came up that our organization wants to crack down on “hush trips” — people working remotely from a vacation spot without telling their employer. I’ve done this — what is the problem if the work gets done?
We asked Alyssa Dawn Faller, founder and VP people experience at Fractional HR Experts, to tackle this one:
From the employer’s perspective, there can be risks if employees are taking hush trips.
If your organization is based in Ontario and you take a trip within Ontario, that should be okay. But if you are in another country and you told customs it’s a vacation, you may not be able to legally work there. When it comes to security, your company may have very strict rules around where data is stored and how it can be stored. If you go to an Airbnb, you may be using a WiFi password – but who else has that password? If you are bringing your assets somewhere, you have to protect those assets. There’s also the issue of injury on the job, which can be tricky if you are in another province or country and have an accident.
I think that all organizations need to have policies around remote and hybrid work. If there are hush trips happening, there’s a chance that the employer hasn’t explained the policies around working remotely. It’s up to the employer to let people know about their policies to build a culture of transparency and trust.
As an employee, you can reach out to HR and ask for the employee handbook, find out the policies and procedures. I would also do some investigations yourself about where you’re going because you need to know, am I covered? Am I not covered? I do think you should talk to your manager about your plans, but I also think organizations need to build a culture where people feel like they can talk to their manager.
Since the pandemic, society has been changing so rapidly that people don’t believe that working 9 to 5 in the office is necessarily the way to do things. To be great employers and be recognized for their brands, employers should want to do what is best for their employees. Employees need to feel like they can say, ‘There’s a wedding I’m going to in another city and I want to take an extra day and work remotely while I’m there.’ Things like that give employees flexibility and they love it. It also directly leads to financial dollars, because revenue increases when employees are happy.
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One of the toughest pills to swallow about the current job market is just how valuable a network is.
While it’s hard to quantify how many job openings go unposted, we all know people who have landed plum positions through recommendation, word of mouth or a friend-of-a-friend. In an era where remote work is so common, making professional connections in person can be especially valuable, says Bree McEwan, assistant professor of communication and culture at University of Toronto, Mississauga.
“When we meet someone in person, it gives us more information about them and a better sense of who they are than [through] a LinkedIn connection,” Dr. McEwan says. “It’s a way of forming stronger weak-tie, casual relationships that can provide more information about a specific topic or industry.”
Read why these kinds of networking groups may – or may not be – worth the investment.
As more Canadians struggle with their mental health, many feel they aren’t getting sufficient support from their employers.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has seen a steady increase in mental health and addiction cases in recent years, including a significant spike during the pandemic.
“There were some increases during COVID around mental health and suicidality, and people are still struggling,” says Dr. Donna Ferguson, a clinical psychologist at CAMH.
A troubling new study conducted by mental health support app maker Wysa suggests one in four Canadians are bothered by thoughts of self-harm, and 12 per cent of workers have had a colleague who attempted — or lost their life to — suicide in the past year.
According to the survey of 2,000 Canadian employees, 31 per cent also say their employer is overlooking serious mental health problems at work. Furthermore, 34 per cent say their employer treats mental health as a “check-the-box” exercise, and 36 per cent say their leaders view it as a personal issue, not a workplace concern.
Read why workplaces need a “proactive approach” to educating employees about mental health resources.
For decades, folklorists at Memorial University have had a Mrs. W. R. King to thank for sharing the local superstition that a lid left off a kettle as tea was steeping was a sure sign a stranger would soon come knocking.
But it was not until a project dubbed Missus Monday took off that researchers at the Newfoundland and Labrador university were able to put a full name to their mysterious source. They now know Mrs. King’s first name was Myrtle, and she worked as a switchboard operator in St. John’s, N.L.
The project of the university’s Folklore and Language Archive aims to find the first names of women who contributed remedies, recipes and local beliefs, but were only credited as a “missus,” with their husband’s last name and often his first name or initials. Nicole Penney, an assistant archivist at the centre said men and unmarried women had their first and last names included, but the tradition was to identify married women with their husbands’ names.
Read how Missus Monday is finally giving these women the recognition they deserve.
“We’ve grown really quickly in a very short period of time, so I almost feel like half of my time is dedicated to recruiting new people,” says Fatima Zaidi, founder and CEO at Quill Inc. “We’ve actually had no voluntary turnover since we launched the company in 2019, and I think hiring the right people has been an important part of that.
“My first piece of advice is to look for personality traits like true grit, hustle and resilience. In a startup, every day brings a new set of challenges and it’s a bit of a roller coaster. Great startup employees are constantly troubleshooting. They are a Jill or Jack of all trades, and they approach their goals analytically.
“I think a lot of founders fall into the trap of not realizing that a lot of people who come in with fancy resumes with bells and whistles can’t roll up their sleeves and get in the trenches and problem solve and be comfortable with uncertainty. The fancy resume doesn’t always equate to the kind of output that you need as a startup.”
Read the full article.
Fresh off her master’s degree in environmental design from the University of Calgary, Ximena González took a part-time job as a receptionist at a planning firm.
“I’m a migrant from Mexico and I did not have experience in Canada working in an office, so I took this job because it was somewhat related to my field,” she says. She hoped to get a foot in the door and build a career.
While she answered phones and cleaned the kitchen, she observed that another receptionist, an undergraduate student, was helping senior staff with reports – a task that could lead to meaningful experience and a promotion. Ms. González asked about it and was told, “She’s here to learn.”
Ms. González was dumbfounded. Meanwhile, another staff member said to her, inexplicably, “Finally, we have a receptionist without aspirations!”
When she asked her immediate manager (a woman) and then a higher-up male boss about doing similar work, she was turned down. “I started getting angry,” Ms. González recalls. “[I wondered], am I being discriminated against?”
Read the full article.