Research Briefs – October 2018

In This Issue…

1. The Rising Importance of a National Brand for Organizations – Part 2
2. The Talent Gap – Is it Reality or Fiction?
3. Flashback Feature:
   Unions and Workplace Smoking Policy

The Rising Importance of a National Brand for Organizations
Part 2: Brand Canada
Françoise Morissette, Queen’s IRC Facilitator, 2018

In 2004, my colleague Amal Henein and I, undertook a pan-Canadian research project seeking answers to the following questions:

• How is Canadian Leadership different from that of other countries?
• How effective is the Canadian Leadership brand and how can we expand our capacity to lead?
• How can we ensure Canada has an abundant supply of capable leaders?
• How can we strengthen our leadership presence and impact, particularly in the international arena?

To discover a wide variety of perspectives and paint a complete picture, we set out to interview two key groups likely to have expertise on these topics:

• Successful leaders in all sectors of the economy and regions of the country (295 interviewees)
• Leadership development professionals in variety of settings and sectors (66 interviewees)

Throughout the research, we ensured regional, linguistic and diverse representation: gender, age, ethnic background, people with disabilities etc. The research resulted in Made in Canada Leadership, published in 2007 in both official languages.

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>> Click here to read Part 1: Branding Context & Impact before reading Part 2.

The Talent Gap — Is it Reality or Fiction?
Philip C. Wilson and Bill Greenhalgh, 2018

A simple Google search on the words “talent management” reveals almost 17 million hits, and if we look at studies in all countries over the last decade, every time CHRO’s & CEO’s are surveyed, two of the top three challenges they say they face are lack of talent and a shortage of leadership. It isn’t clear whether these two are linked (i.e. is talented leadership scarce; or is it that both leadership and specific talents at all organizational levels are in short supply.)

Whatever the answer, it does appear to be a universal and long-standing issue. One would think that if it is so important and companies have been working on it for decades, they would have found a solution by now.

This raises the question, with all this information and such a multiplicity of studies, why has it not been fixed? Thus we address the question “Is the talent gap reality or fiction?”

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Flashback Feature:
Unions and Workplace Smoking Policy
Graham S. Lowe and Deborah J. Neale, 1992

Do you remember when workers could smoke in the workplace? This article was written in 1992, at a time when concern over environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) was being identified as a leading occupational health hazard and policy makers were instituting smoking restrictions and bans in workplaces.

This study draws on three major sources of information: published literature on workplace ETS and smoking policies; unpublished literature from unions, health promotion organizations, employers, etc.; and interviews with over 30 union representatives and officials of health promotion organizations. The issue of workplace ETS and union involvement in policy-making is addressed from the perspective of union-management and union-government relations.

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