Rotman Prof Talks Gender Equality and More – Toronto News
Toronto’s finest business schools have been doing their part to improve the landscapes of work environments and executive education. We’ve laid out this week’s highlights below.
Companies Find One-Stop Shopping for Executive Education – The Globe and Mail
Western University Canada’s Ivey Business School recently launched The Ivey Academy, a full-service learning and development center for executive education. This is good news for companies like Bruce Power LP, as they have been partnering with Ivey for years on leadership development education. Now, Ivey can also offer them services like corporate retreats and talent assessments.
“It would be nice to be able to [undertake executive education] with someone who knows us really well and knows a lot of our leaders really well and knows what our issues are,” says Cathy Sprague, Bruce Power LP Executive VP of Human Resources.
“We’re not the experts at everything,” Mark Vandenbosch, Dean of Ivey Business School, says in a recent interview in The Globe and Mail. “So … let’s figure out who are the people that we believe are up to the standards that we preach…so that when you put the parts together it’s more of a journey than a set of interactions.”
You can learn more about The Ivey Academy here.
Gender Equality In the Workplace: How Men Can Move the Needle – The Telegraph
Sarah Kaplan, Director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy and Strategic Management Professor at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, interviewed two executives about the role of male executives in increasing workplace diversity (specifically, gender).
Kaplan spoke to Richard Nesbitt, President and CEO of Global Risk in Financial Services and adjunct professor at Rotman, and Kevin Lobo, Chairman and CEO of Stryker Corporation, and Director on the board of Parker Hannifin. The executives agreed that creating resources for women and determining their needs in the workplace is essential to creating an inviting environment.
“It’s important to have an official women’s network with an executive sponsor,” Lobo says. “I would advise people to put a thoughtful structure behind the initiative, give it a budget and empower people to run it effectively.”
Lobo emphasized that this course of action was a game-changer for Stryker. Stryker now has a mentorship system, so that women in the company have someone to talk to about their career path.
Sarah Kaplan, Rotman School of Management professor and Director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy.
“In academia,” Kaplan writes, “there’s a concept called ‘belonging uncertainty’: If you’re in an environment where you’re not sure that you belong—for example, if you’re a woman working in capital markets—you’re constantly looking for signals that you do belong.”
You can read more from Kaplan’s interviews on workplace gender equality here.
20-Years-Old, 20 Percent Down On A House. It’s Possible – The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail recently dug into the housing market, citing the story of a 20-year-old man who saved enough money to buy himself a house; a modern rarity. The man is an exception in the Canadian market, where the average price of a home is $475,000 CAD, and obtaining a mortgage is increasingly difficult. Moshe Milevsky, Finance Professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business, weighed in on Gen Y’s housing issues.
“People have to twist themselves into a pretzel to get themselves into houses,” Milevsky says. The article recommends utilizing options like the Home Buyers’ Plan, which lets buyers withdraw a certain amount from their registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) with 15 years to repay it.
Check out the rest of the article here.
Ivey Launches New Academy, and More – Toronto News
Toronto’s business schools have seen exciting developments this week. We’ve laid out the highlights below.
Ivey Launches Full-Service Academy to Boost Business Education – Financial Post
Western University Canada’s Ivey School of Business recently launched The Ivey Academy, which, according to News@Ivey, “blends top-ranked university-based executive education with strategic design, talent assessment and leadership coaching to create the first of its kind executive education experience in Canada.” Some features of the academy include: Instructional design and advisory services, talent assessments, and leadership coaches.
Mark Healey, Executive Director of the Ivey Academy, says:
“There’s been a gap in Canada’s learning and development market, with companies typically engaging multiple vendors to deliver competency assessments, learning modules, training content and executive coaching. Combining all aspets of learning with independent expertise across the development journey, we are able to deliver sustained behavior change, not just knowledge transfer, and stronger retention and succession pipelines for organizations.”
You can learn more about the recently launched The Ivey Academy here.
Why Likeability Gets You Hired and Promoted – The Globe and Mail
Dan Richards, Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and author of Getting Clients, Keeping Clients, recently wrote a piece for The Globe and Mail in which he discussed what qualities employers respond to.
First, Richards listed off the more standard characteristics employers appreciate, “the demonstrated ability to produce results, a strong work ethic and being a team player,” but he went on to discuss a trait people rarely list on their resumes: likeability.
Richards cites a study, which finds that when candidates are comparable in every objective area, the more likeable one will get the job a staggering 90 percent of the time. According to The Likeability Factor, it is a skill, and can improve with attention to: “Being seen as friendly, connecting over shared interests, demonstrating empathy, and being genuine.”
You can read more from Richards’ Globe and Mail entry here.
The Top 10 Women in L&D, Serious Games and Virtual Reality – LinkedIn
Dr. Deborah Fels, Professor at the Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management, was named one of the top 10 women in gaming, according to David Chadross, Ph.D. Fels has helped make strides in terms of accessibility of media and technology, including co-creating TerpTube, “a signed language mentoring management system.”
Chadross says:
“Deb runs entirely gamified courses and has done more work in the field of user experience then anyone I have met.”
The article also mentions fellow Ryerson professor, Naza Djafarova, Director of Digital Learning. Fels praises her increasing the revenue of her apartment my $3 million in just a year, spearheading the first large scale conference on serious games.
You can check out the rest of the list here.
