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Let’s make some female friends in the workplace, shall we?


Helping women achieve workplace equality means sticking up for one other, not putting people down


ing like the airbrushed models on magazine covers (like we are supposed to, right?) is quite literally impossible.


B We can work


our but ts off to statistically earn about eighty cents to every dollar that our male counter- parts earn. None of these things are wonderful. The sad thing,


The Corporate Climb


Laura Wittig


however, is that of ten none of these things are the worst par t about growing up and living as a woman. From young girls play- ing in the play-


ground, to senior citizens living together in assisted-living facilities, it is the girl-on-girl bullying that seems to be the worst part about going through this world as a female. It is the gossip, the judgment, and the emo-


tional (and sometimes physical) abuse that can really be the absolute worst part about being a female. So the question remains – if we are all walking down the same, some- times extremely difficult road, then why do we insist on making it even that much more difficult on each other? Girls can be mean. Even women who are


actually wonderful, intelligent and loving people at heart can still be mean (both intentionally and unintentionally). So what can we, as the kind, amazing women that we truly are, do to end this cruel tradition that consistently sets us all back? Here are three ways to end the mean girl


trend. 1. Educate the young women in our lives. I have heard many little girls make mean


comments about other little girls that they know. Sometimes they know that they are being mean. Sometimes they are simply repeating things that they have heard oth- ers say.


Leaning in. Photo by Gabriel Saldana. It is time for us to step up and be role


models; stop them when they make these statements, and then take it a step further and educate them. Tell them about how important differences between girls are, and emphasize the strengths and skills that others have. As a role model, you should have a zero tolerance policy for girl-on-girl hate and girl-on-girl bullying. Junior high wasn’t pleasant for most girls I know. It’s time to change that. 2. Don’t fall into the trap yourself. It is very easy to engage in gossip, some-


times by even just agreeing and nodding our heads. We have all done this. It’s time to stop. Stand up for women when you can, and if you can’t… at least change the subject. Gossip helps nobody. Not the


victims of it, the people who are listening to it, and certainly not the people who are spreading it. 3. Change your perception. Unfortunately, it is very easy to pass judg-


ment upon others. So if it is that easy, why can’t we pass along our positive thoughts just as easily? I challenge all of the women out there to start voicing the happy opin- ions rather than the negative ones. If someone has done something fantas-


tic, maybe even a stranger or a friend of a friend – tell her. Te difference a compli- ment can make in someone’s day is the same difference an insult can make. So why do we often choose to voice our negative opinions and keep our positive opinions silent?


It’s time to reverse some bad trends. Girl-


on-girl bullying is prevalent and present in women of all ages. It’s time to stop wasting our very valuable time and resources fight- ing against each other. Let’s all take a stand by not putting up with it anymore. Don’t let your daughters and nieces do it, don’t let your mother do it, and most importantly, stop doing it yourself. Athena Leadership is a Manitoba-based


non-profit organization dedicated to ad- vancing young women in leadership. Laura Wittig currently serves on the Board of Di- rectors as the Director of Communications. She is a proponent of helping other women advance in their careers, and seeks to share her perspective on how we can always keep learning personally and professionally.


Working from home the way to go? T


There are plenty of benefits to telecommuting, with the only hindrance being a lack of collaboration By Ada Slivinski


he term telecommuting was coined in 1972 by Jack Nilles, who began work- ing on a communications system for


NASA from home, and called what he was doing “telecommuting.” He explained it as “moving the work to the workers instead of the workers to the work.” Today’s technology makes working re-


motely even easier. Estimates are that four per cent of workers in the United States telecommute, while 40 per cent have jobs that could be performed from home. Determining the number of people


who telecommute is difficult because the parameters are hard to define. Some work full-time from home, others only one or two days a week. Still others go to the of- fice during the day, and work at home in the evenings and on weekends (something Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer assured her staff would still be able to do when she cancelled the company telecommuting program). With the popularity of smartphones,


most employees are accessible during nearly all of their waking hours. Work doesn’t end when you leave the office at five. Many employees answer emails after dinner and send a note to their boss before their morning commute. It’s only fair that employers compensate


them with some flexibility during formal work hours.


July 2015 Building trust For telecommuting to work, there has Conference calls can help keep the collaboration going. Photo by Mike McCune. Telecommuting can also save compa-


nies considerable costs. Businesses no longer need to pay for the office space to accommodate all their employees. Much of the growth of telecommuting has been in small- and medium-sized businesses because the savings allow them to be competitive.


In turn, employees don’t have to pay for


gas or transit to get to the office every day, and can save on work clothes and lunches out. Working remotely and with more flex-


ibility also tends to boost employee mo- rale, and can help parents balance family demands.


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to be a relationship of trust between the manager and the employee. Employers need to trust that their staff isn’t slacking off just because there’s no one keeping an eye on them – and workers need to be honest and accountable with their time. While there has been a growth in the


popularity of telecommuting since its first days, recently there’s been a shift in the op- posite direction with Yahoo! and Best Buy cancelling their telecommuting programs. When Mayer first spoke about the


change, she said, “people are more produc- tive when they’re alone, but they’re more collaborative and innovative when they’re together. Some of the best ideas come from pulling two different ideas together.”


Smart Biz 7


eing a woman is difficult on the best of days. Stilettos hurt. Doing your hair and makeup takes a long time. Look-


So with all of these benefits, why aren’t more people telecommuting?


As Nilles, the father of telecommuting,


wrote in 1998, the main reason is resist- ance to change. “As everyone ‘knows,’ the information workers all have to report to the information factory in order to do their work. Tat's the way we've always done it. It is very difficult to get managers of organizations to think about working in other ways. As a consequence, the free- ways are clogged every day around the world, mostly with people driving (alone) between their homes and the information factories.”


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