Dr. Linda Duxbury - Generations in the Workplace, Work/Life Balance
Linda Duxbury is a Professor at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University. She received an M.A.Sc. in Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Management Sciences from the University of Waterloo. Within the past decade she has completed majors study on Balancing Work and Family in the public, private Sectors and not-for-profit sectors; HR and Work-family Issues in the Small Business Sector; Management Support (What is it and Why does it Matter?); Career Development in the Public Sector and in the High Tech Sector; generational differences in work values. Dr. Duxbury has also (and is currently) conducted research which evaluates the organizational and individual impacts of E-mail, portable offices, cellular telephones, telework, flexible work arrangements, shiftwork, regular part-time work and on-site day care programs, change management and studying what makes a "supportive" manager. She has recently completed a major a follow-up study on work-life balance in which 32,800 Canadian employees participated.
Dr. Duxbury has published widely in both the academic and practitioner literatures in the area of work-family conflict, change management, supportive work environments, stress, telework, the use and impact of office technology, managing the new workforce and supportive management. She has also given over 300 plenary talks on these issues to both public and private sector audiences.
Within the business school at Carleton, Dr. Duxbury teaches fourth year, masters and Ph.D. courses in Managing Change as well as the Masters course in Organizational Behaviour.
Dr. Duxbury is also an accomplished trainer and speaker in the area of supportive work environments, work-life balance, recruitment and retention, change management, gender and communication and the communication process. She has completed research on the four generations in today’s workplace and provides strategies for working in this new labour market.
Dr. Duxbury held the Imperial Life Chair in Women and Management from 1992 to 1996 and was director of Carleton Centre for Research on Education on Women and Work from 1996 to 1999. In 1999 she was appointed to the Fryer Commission on Labour-Management Relations in the Federal Government. In May 2000 Dr. Duxbury was awarded the Public Service Citation from the Association of Public Service Executives for her work on supportive work environments. In Oct. 2002 she was awarded the Canadian Workplace Wellness Pioneer Award for her "pioneering efforts, creativity, innovation and leadership" in the field of organizational health.
Programs
You, Me and Them: Dealing with Generational Differences in the Workforce
Now more than ever we need to understand how to deal with generational differences in the workplace: veterans, boomers, Gen-Xers and nexus, all working together, though not necessarily in harmony. This talk will deal with why the different generations think and feel the way they do and give information on recruiting, retaining and motivating the different age cohorts.
Managing a Changing Workforce
In this century we will see a fundamental shift in the change in the nature of the employer-employee relationship as organizations seek to attract and retain good employees in a declining labour market. This labour force shortage will arise as the massive baby boomer generation retires and companies compete to hire the small pool of “baby – bust” employees. Other factors that contribute to these changes include the following: birth rates are declining throughout the world, populations are aging, the age at which people are taking retirement has fallen, people are staying in school longer (or returning to school), and the skill-intensity of employment is increasing.
Dealing with Boiled Frogs: It’s All About Workloads
Even though many employers implement family friendly polices such as flex time and compressed work weeks, they do not get the desired results. This presentation focuses on the reason why many of the family-friendly practices just do not seem to work – they are implemented into a culture which focuses on hours of work not output: where “presenteeism“ is equated with productivity. The session begins with an examination of why employee workloads, especially at the managerial and professional level, have increased over the past several decades. It then presents evidence on why employers should care – the impact of high workloads on the employer’s bottom line. The talk ends with a number of suggestions on how workloads can be decreased – without hiring more staff.
