GSEP Corner

Preface 

As the second quarter of 2022 beckons, things appear to be fast returning to normal and everyone is gradually settling back into work. Organizations in Canada are fast embracing the new normal and adopting more flexible workplace practices. In the new normal, employee health concerns have remained a major subject at management meetings.  

Yet, things aren’t quite so normal. The now not-so-new sheriff in town is COVID-19, which has taken the world by storm and surpassed other health conditions that have plagued the work environment and workplace performance over the years, such as stress, heart-related ailments, sleep problems, allergies, body pain and depressive mood (McGregor et al., 2018). COVID quickly gained top-of-mind status with most employees who, by the nature of their employment, must report physically to work.  

Now into its third year as a significant health concern, COVID-19 has affected the world of work perhaps more than any other development in the modern era (Pieh et al., 2021). Its highly contagious nature, along with its tendency to periodically mutate into even more contagious variants, continually stretches the limits of modern medicine as the world struggles to find a solution. The ceaseless pressure to maintain productivity and profitability as the world begins to embrace the new normal presents new challenges with consequences that extend beyond the workplace.  

Workplace absenteeism and presenteeism  

The life of the modern-day business manager is not an easy one. They have a lot to contend with. While absenteeism remains a common disruptor to workplace activity, its parallel component, presenteeism, reintroduces itself as a clear and present danger for all organizations – particularly in the wake of COVID-19. Whilst absenteeism refers to a worker’s absence from work due to illness (either personally or as a caretaker for a sick dependent), presenteeism describes a situation where a legitimately ill person continues to physically come to the workplace (Howard et al., 2012). Where such an illness is as infectious as COVID-19, the consequences are not only monumental but extend beyond the workplace and assume a societal challenge of paradigmatic proportion.  

Presenteeism during COVID-19 

The costs and risk factors associated with workers coming into work while sick with COVID-19 are an enormous and relatively novel situation that organizations are forced to cope with. Where health conditions are non-contagious, sickness presenteeism has been observed to have some benefits to ailing staff, as the work environment offers structure, builds self-esteem and provides opportunities for social engagement and support (Kinman & Grant, 2022). Nonetheless, there is evidence that suggests that working while ill can delay, rather than expedite, the process of recovery, thus increasing the risk of future health problems and sickness absence (Skagen, 2016; Kinman & Grant, 2022).  

Inherent factors that encourage presenteeism  

Unfortunately, the pressures associated with having to turn up at work, especially in non-remote, in-person work sectors like retail, construction and hospitality, compel workers to take difficult decisions and go to work despite their ill health. They may also face the risk of lost hourly wages or even unemployment if they stay home sick.  

“Unhealthy” workplace culture can also be a factor. Employees may be gaslighted into self-doubt and question the seriousness of their own conditions because they are reluctant to let down their managers and colleagues. This may be a particular concern in situations where staffing levels are low or organizations are faced with other challenges that threaten their survival (Kinman, 2019). Workers may fear that their managers and colleagues do not consider them sufficiently unwell to necessitate time off from work if their symptoms are mild. This further constrains workers to put on a brave face and face the challenge of working during illness, unwittingly spreading it to other colleagues. The unfortunate long-term consequences, beyond prevailing a contagion that could otherwise be averted, includes reports that some people have continued to experience symptoms such as chronic fatigue, weakness, low productivity and cognitive difficulties several months later (Wise, 2020).  

Summary, reflections and further research direction 

The simple solution to stalling workplace presenteeism would be to encourage sick employees to stay at home and call in sick when they observe that they are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, however mild (Pieh et al., 2021). Unfortunately, in the real world, things are never quite so simple. Therefore, sacrifices have to be made by both employees, who should conscientiously concede to reduced income during their periods of ill health, and managers, who should consider introducing half-pay conditions for workers performing in-person roles whose absenteeism is demonstrably a result of COVID-19-related illness. This demonstrates a sense of fairness to the affected employee and is a gesture of encouragement to avert the spread of the disease.  

Workplace presenteeism has a negative impact on employees, their co-workers and the community. It can exacerbate health problems and increase long-term sickness absence for the worker, increase accidents and injuries for the worker and co-workers, and transmit contagious illness to the community in which the workplace is embedded (Kinman, 2019) 

Tade Owodunni is a doctoral student in Business Administration at Royal Roads University, a Nigerian-trained lawyer, corporate governance practitioner and certified compliance and ethics professional. He emerged as the best graduating student (Nigeria) from his Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program at Business School Netherlands in 2018. Tade’s research interests include corporate governance themes, small business growth and career development subjects.  

References

Howard, K. J., Howard, J. T., & Smyth, A. F. (2012). The problem of absenteeism and presenteeism in the workplace. In Handbook of occupational health and wellness (pp. 151-179). Springer, Boston, MA. 

Kinman, G. (2019). Sickness presenteeism at work: prevalence, costs and management. 

Kinman, G., & Grant, C. (2021). Presenteeism during the COVID-19 pandemic: risks and solutions. Occupational medicine, 71(6-7), 243-244.  

McGregor, A., Ashbury, F., Caputi, P., & Iverson, D. (2018). A preliminary investigation of health and work-environment factors on presenteeism in the workplace. Journal of occupational and environmental medicine, 60(12), e671-e678. 

Pieh, C., Budimir, S., Delgadillo, J., Barkham, M., Fontaine, J. R., & Probst, T. (2021). Mental health during COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom. Psychosomatic medicine, 83(4), 328-337.  

Skagen, K., & Collins, A. M. (2016). The consequences of sickness presenteeism on health and wellbeing over time: a systematic review. Social Science & Medicine, 161, 169-177. 

Wise, J. (2020). Long covid: doctors call for research and surveillance to capture disease. bmj, 370. 

Students are faced with a variety of daunting tasks. They navigate institutional expectations, manage time for their studies and homework, often while working multiple jobs and contributing to a household by way of care for others, duties around the house and balancing their budget. Further, they are subjected to a changing world full of environmental, economic and societal uncertainty. The “evolving future” has become as unpredictable as it is unstable, and within these challenges lies the importance of fostering “the lifelong process of managing learning, work, leisure, and transitions” (CERIC, n.d.).  

I live in Abbotsford, BC. In 2021, we navigated the global pandemic, raging forest fires, a heat dome and a devastating flood. Our community remains shaken to the core by these unprecedented challenges. This is one town, in one province of our massive country. Our challenges are unique to Abbotsford, but the outlook is equally complex across Canada. During such challenging times, the importance of career influencers – “professionals [who] have the potential to influence students in their careers through their role and everyday practice” – is undeniable (Ho, 2019, p. 137). We need students to become agents of change, and career development is one path to hope for our people, communities and world. 

My PhD research focuses on the role of legacy in pedagogy (Legacy Learning). I examine Plato’s theory of the loadstone (attracting students to you like a magnet and infusing them with your knowledge and ability to attract further students); Maxine Greene’s consideration of learning through sedimentation (information builds up as sediment and is passed along to the next person in a synthesized form) (Greene, 2013); the role of mirror neurons in learning (you neurologically “practise” what you observe and the effect can be strengthened through relationship) (Zardi et al., 2021); and Indigenous ways of teaching and learning, amplifying the work of Sarah Davidson and Robert Davidson in their book, Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning Through Ceremony (2018). Davidson & Davidson point to the importance of process, with failure as an option and celebration of the journey as the focus as opposed to assessment. 

I propose that legacy is a pathway to exponential growth, but our students are currently drowning in a tidal wave of information that flows over them through technology (Chan et al., 2015). Students are squeezed between the potency of exponentially growing knowledge they receive verbally, physically and affectively through their instructors, and the flow of information coming at them from their devices. To combat this evolving issue and turn the focus on successfully developing and producing agents of change, I propose including mindfulness and reflective practices as part of the higher-education curriculum in tandem with David Boud’s “feedback loop” – an ongoing conversation between the instructor and student to promote learning (Carless & Boud, 2018, p. 1318). 

So, how does career development fit into this conversation? By framing curriculum within a Legacy Learning context, the evolution of a career is framed as a process achieved by considering students’ past experiences in relation to their current place in the process, and how that feeds their future evolution. Each journey is unique. There is no longer an arrival employment opportunity. Rather, future stops encourage community involvement by furthering equity, diversity and inclusion as a vital aspect of society’s future; averting ecological impacts of current and past practices; and actively engaging with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Each student has an important part to play in our future, but they will need our stories, support, guidance and encouragement to get there. As I said earlier, we need agents of change, and to get there, students will need everything we have to offer. 

Hannah Celinski is an Assistant Professor and Department Head of Arts Studies at The University of the Fraser Valley. She began as a music theatre performer in Toronto, eventually opening Aerial Dance & Acro Academy in Abbotsford before returning to academia. Celinski is currently pursuing a PhD in Educational Theory and Practice: Curriculum and Pedagogy at Simon Fraser University. She has a Master of Arts in English from Simon Fraser University, a Bachelor of Arts in English (Honours) from The University of the Fraser Valley and a Music Theatre Performance Diploma from Sheridan College. 

References

Boud, D. & Carless, D. (2018). The development of student feedback literacy: enabling uptake of feedback. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 43(8), 1315-1325. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354  

Chan, N., Walker, C., & Gleaves, A. (2015). An exploration of students’ lived experiences of using smartphones in diverse learning contexts using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Computers and Education, 82, 96-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2014.11.001 

CERIC. (n.d.). Glossary of career development. https://ceric.ca/glossary-of-career-development 

Davidson, S. & Davidson, R. (2018). Potlatch as pedagogy: Learning through ceremony. Portage & Main.  

Greene, M. (2013). Curriculum and consciousness. In David Flinders (Ed.), Curriculum studies reader (2nd ed., pp. 134-147). Taylor and Francis.   

Hagendoorn, I. (2004). Some speculative hypotheses about the nature and perception of dance and choreography. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11(3-4), 79-110. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SU17_clyZ_l8m7SG98c8kjY2pN1AgqHM/view 

Ho, C. (2019). Professionals in post-secondary education: Conceptions of career influence. (Doctoral dissertation, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, Canada). Retrieved from http://summit.sfu.ca/item/18827 

Richter, D. (2007). The critical tradition: Classic texts and contemporary trends. Bedford/St. Martin’s. 

Zardi, Andrea, Carlotti, Edoardo Giovanni, Pontremoli, Alessandro, & Morese, Rosalba. (2021). Dancing in Your Head: An Interdisciplinary Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 649121–649121. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.649121 

In her book Pathways for Remembering and Recognizing Indigenous Thought in Education: Philosophies of Iethi’nihsténha Ohwentsia’kékha (Land), Sandra Styres explains that the purpose of stories is to make sense of “one’s place in the past in order to be in the present” (Styres 2017, 50). This use of stories, or storying (Styres, 2011), for people to understand themselves, their relationships and their connections to others, places and concepts is a philosophical perspective that can support career development work.

Storying is more than the person’s self-making (Savickas, 2012), it includes the context the person brings to each experience through responsibility and relationship “to family, community, nations, and the environment” (Firman, 2005, 226-227). Or, as Styres puts it, “storying refers to how we describe in story our experiences through personal, community, national, and global narratives” (Styres, 2008 as cited in Styres, 2011, 718).

When we tell our story (Offet-Gartner, 2011) we learn from our telling. We tell our stories in circles (Little Bear, 2012), where each time we tell the same story we add “depth and dimension” (Styres, 2017, 186) to it. As we tell our stories we are actively building our connections to not only our physical, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional selves, but our connections to our family and communities (Pidgeon, 2014) and all the holistic individuals within those groups, each with their own physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional selves. This, then, is the impact of storying: the construction of the holistic self.

Styres concept of storying is “circular, iterative, and relational” (Styres 2017, 38). When it applies to career development, storying requires three parts: story, circularity and awareness of relationships. Story, or narrative, is a core aspect of modern career development practice (McIlveen & Patton, 2007) and Peavy has identified how we link our experiences together through stories and create “an evolving biographical narrative under continuous revision” (Peavy, 1995, 1-2). For Anishinaabek (Peltier, 2018) and Niitsitapi (Marule, 2012) peoples as well as many other Indigenous peoples, the story is not just a narrative but is derived from observation and critical reflection.

Circularity, or iterativeness, is embraced by Western career development professionals who focus on experiential learning (Kolb & Kolb, 2009, Jarvis, 2006). It is a concept that is especially important for career development because we learn from the telling, and learn again from the retelling later (Styres, Haig-Brown, & Blimkie, 2013); with every revisit to the story the person brings their prior experiences to bear (Styres, 2017) on the retelling. This circularity (Akan, 1999) enables a great deal of reflection and personal growth.

The awareness of relationships is an aspect which is not centred as much as it should be in career development. Krumbotlz (2009) and others touch on the importance of relationships to clients, but it is rarely with the complexity and centrality of relationships that is seen in the Indigenous paradigm (Kovach, 2020, Peltier, 2018, Held, 2019). From Saulteaux (Akan, 1999), to Oneida (Antone, 2003), Okanagan (Cohen, 2001), Mi’kmaq (Pidgeon, 2014) and Mohawk (Styres, 2017), the “self-in-relationship” (Styres, 2017, 56) concept is central to the understanding of humans for Indigenous peoples in what is now Canada. From this perspective the relationship is not simply of a familial or romantic nature, but a relationship with the land, nature, our family, community and nation, and those who came before and those who will follow (Chartrand, 2012, p. 148).

The exploration of storying as a career development method, and the Indigenous philosophical paradigm, may open future directions for career development and counselling research and practice.

Noah Arney is a Master of Education student in Educational Research at the University of Calgary. He is a Certified Career Development Professional with over 10 years of experience in student affairs. He is a Career Services Co-ordinator with Thompson Rivers University. His research focuses on Indigenous students’ perception of work-integrated learning.

References

Akan, L. (1999). Pimosatamowin Sikaw Kakeequaywin: Walking and talking. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 23(1), 16–39.

Antone, E. (2003). Culturally Framing Aboriginal Literacy and Learning. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 27(1), 7–15.

Bear, L. L. (2012). Traditional knowledge and humanities: A perspective by a blackfoot. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 39(4), 518–527. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6253.2012.01742.x

Chartrand, R. (2012). Anishinaabe Pedagogy. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 35(1), 144.

Cohen, B. (2001). The Spider’s Web: Creativity and survival in dynamic balance. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 25(2), 140–148. Firman, B. (2005). Renewing Aboriginal Education through Relationship and Community (Issue July). UBC.

Held, M. B. E. (2019). Decolonizing Research Paradigms in the Context of Settler Colonialism: An Unsettling, Mutual, and Collaborative Effort. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918821574

Jarvis, P. (2006). Towards a comprehensive theory of human learning. London: Routledge.

Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2009). The learning way: Meta-cognitive aspects of experiential learning. Simulation and Gaming, 40(3), 297–327. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878108325713

Kovach, M. (2020). Conversation Method in Indigenous Research. First Peoples Child & Family Review, 5(1), 39–48. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.7202/1069060ar

Krumboltz, J. D. (2009). The happenstance learning theory. Journal of Career Assessment, 17(2), 135–154. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072708328861

Marule, T. R. (2012). Niitsitapi Relational and Experiential Theories in Education. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 35(1), 131.

McIlveen, P., & Patton, W. (2007). Narrative career counselling: Theory and exemplars of practice. Australian Psychologist, 42(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/00050060701405592

Offet-Gartner, K. (2011). Rewriting HerStory: Aboriginal women reclaim education as a tool for personal and community, health and well-being. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 30, 1499–1506. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.290

Peltier, C. (2018). An Application of Two-Eyed Seeing: Indigenous Research Methods With Participatory Action Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918812346

Pidgeon, M. (2014). Moving Beyond Good Intentions: Indigenizing higher education in British Columbia universities through institutional responsibility and accountability. Journal of American Indian Education, 53(2), 7–28.

Peavy, R. V. (1995). Constructivist career counseling. ERIC Digest. ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Student Services Greensboro NC., Canadian Guidance and Counselling Foundation Ottawa (Ontario)., 1–6.

Savickas, M. (2012). Life design: A paradigm for career intervention in the 21st century. Journal of Counseling and Development, 90(1), 13–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1556- 6676.2012.00002.x

Styres, S. D. (2017). Pathways for Remembering and Recognizing Indigenous Thought in Education: Philosophies of Iethi’nihsténha Ohwentsia’kékha (land). University of Toronto Press.

Styres, S. D. (2011). Land as first teacher: A philosophical journeying. Reflective Practice, 12(6), 717–731. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2011.601083

Styres, S. D., Haig-Brown, C., & Blimkie, M. (2013). Towards a pedagogy of land: The urban context. Canadian Journal of Education, 36(2), 34.