Culture Shock in the workplace...

Okay, so the last blog gave information regarding the big picture of my job and I asked you to imagine coming into a role where you knew there were new systems to learn, no one to teach you your role – no breadcrumb trail to follow, and few people to ask for guidance. That's basically the jist of it.

Putting drama aside…on the micro end of things I have a rather large (cubicle?) area with two windows – lots of counter / desk space right outside the Director’s and Manager of Fuel Operation’s offices. So even though there is nothing too outrageous about that setting, it is still very different from the Employment Specialist & Career Counsellor roles I’ve held for the past 15 years. What IS different and quite amusing (to me) about these topsy turvy changes include the following:

Constant interruptions to no interruptions: this took a little while to get used to and at first I couldn’t even figure out what was missing, or what felt absent in my day to day routine. Employment Services environments – particularly the Resource and Information area – is designed to assist job seekers in whatever fashion they require, on an ‘as and when’ needed basis, thus setting the stage for potential interruptions. So while you weren’t always stopping and restarting whatever task you were involved in, there was always the potential for an interruption to occur at any time, to the extent you knew it best to not get involved in anything that required a significant degree of concentration. At the opposite end of the spectrum you will now find me immersed in a task for minutes or hours without any interruption; in fact a phone rang yesterday which I tuned out as belonging to the Director until my ears finally discerned that the ringing was actually close by….and, as you are probably now able to guess, it was my phone that was ringing…..whew, that’s the 2^nd time in 3 months….

Silence.....to have or not to have...

Noise to almost complete silence: at first I thought I was going to go mildly crazy due to an abnormal amount of silence in the workplace, which no one has probably ever said before. But really, this was one of the hardest adjustments for me to make, or rather not make, as I e­­nded up bringing a radio to work: I play it very low as I’m still not certain if the absolute quiet is a preference, or a reality no one thought to challenge or change. And, it might only be my area on the 2^nd floor that is experiencing this omnipresent silence, but as said, this is how I felt the first few weeks. Now, I am picking up some sounds that have probably been there all along and are quite funny, but also a little on the noisy side. The Director, bless his heart, likes to bang things, and I want to confirm that there is no disrespect intended in telling this of him, however, by the way he bangs at his keyboard you would think he is constantly angry, which he is not! And when using the land line office phone, he does not use the release, or end call button, or use a finger to press down on the disconnect upon which rests the handset, but instead bangs the handset into the cradle area (numerous times) until the dial tone reappears.....

100% accessible to 0% accessible: until mid-November I was directly situated in the midst of an Employment Resource Centre that allowed access to me from start to finish of my day; currently I’m behind 5 foot high baffle boards that create a cubicle style work area. What I’m not used to is that I’m not visible to anyone but the Director and Manager which can make it feel closed off – almost excluded – from the rest of the world. And, sometimes I get caught in that dilemma of ‘do I or don’t I’ that occurs when someone walks into the area, peeks into the Director and Managers office, sees they’re not there (but doesn’t see me), then tries to start up conversations with people way down the hall about where they are, or make other comments not realizing someone is within earshot of them. I still haven’t decided what my action should be….to date, I’ve not made any effort to make myself visible…..probably it will depend on whether I want the interruption, or not!!

100% customer service to 0% involvement with anyone:  on the heels of the previous point the last 15 years revolved around direct, and numerous contact with clients, and, because of government funding it was necessary to continuously provide extensive client service feedback. My current position, however, does not involve customers or clients, or consumers, or candidates etc., and therefore does not require any form of customer feedback. So while I certainly understand the concept of petitioning information regarding the service you provide, I am so glad this no longer applies to me as I found the process extremely annoying…there, I said it!!

Team vs The Collective: these concepts are certainly valid to my perception only and a little trickier to report on. However, I’m not sure if ‘Team’ is a word or concept I’ve heard used with the Government of the Northwest Territories, yet, perhaps there is an implicit understanding this exists. Regardless, I want to lean towards the position that due to its absence from any type of reference, the term does not quite belong here. When ‘Team’ made its entry into the workplace in the 90’s (?) (and apparently is a Baby Boomer characteristic and attitude) assorted adjuncts entered with it such as Team events, Team building exercises, Team meetings, Team objectives and the like. Certainly, if you worked in a Team environment, you, without question, knew it. So, what ‘environment’ do I now find myself in? Well, we certainly don’t have any Team building events and the like so there’s that to reference. And why am I pondering this when I’d safely guess there’s absolutely no one else even thinking about this? Well, you know, I noticed the difference and just had to remark on it. So, I’m going with Collective environment which denotes ‘a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective’ – Wikipedia; And since this has turned into a revelation of sorts, I will announce I’m quite happy about leaving the team building events, exercises and mindset behind and leave it at that…

Coverage: In a customer service environment you can’t close the doors and have everyone take their lunch at the same time – you are open for all of the hours you've designated you'll be available. As such, your team becomes very aware of each others' schedules and absences and works to ensure coverage is met at all times during the business day. This can be somewhat restrictive and certainly problematic if you’re short staffed. Currently, we can all take our lunches at the same time and all leave the building at the same time, or have a shorter lunch and leave earlier, which prompts me to say how much I love this job!!

Meetings: okay, here I’m referring to Health and Safety specific and I find this quite funny; typical to H&S content in the south (ie. Ontario) content would revolve around fire drills, exercise, stress, physical – heart health etc; whereas at our last H&S meeting the content revolved around bear attacks / safety; one vs two engine planes, wild dogs in remote locations, taking sleeping bags when travelling to remote locations due to ‘bed-varmints’ and replacing the tracker devices staff have when they are on travel duty (remote locations) – sometimes I feel a million miles away from Barrie, Ontario.

Gender: coming from a female dominated workplace at Northern Lights Canada – Barrie, to a 60-40 male to female ratio – is this what the quiet is based on?? jk…jk…jk.

Kitchen:  while some similarities exist the main difference is that in my current workplace, for whatever reason, no one brings in treats; this is so great particularly when I’m constantly striving towards healthful eating only to have the frequent temptation of Timbits and Chocolate Zucchini loaf from previous workplaces – please do not misread this statement – I love treats – yummy as they all are – I just know that temptations and I are constantly battling it out….and it is so much easier when they’re not available….PS, haven’t even been to the one and only Tim Horton’s, and it’s close by too!!

So……what DO I do up here?

On the heels of what Yellowknife is like for us up here comes the question about the actual position I hold, and how it relates to previous work?

When I applied to this job – Information Coordinator, I can assure you that what I read in the job description and what it actually is, reveals some distinct differences. Though I’m inclined to believe my perception at the time of applying was filled with hope and inspiration and the huge desire to make a change in my life and, therefore prompted me to see the role a certain way, I also believe that job ads, as thorough as they sometimes are, tend to be a muddle of words verging on gobbilty gook. Therefore, it’s difficult to imagine that I would have been able to see the ‘real’ job between the lines of the crafted description. With no intent to convey any dissatisfaction with the reality of the job – plain and simple it is different from what I expected and time will inevitably reveal the entire magnitude of relevant tasks and duties.

Specifically, my role lies within the Petroleum Products Division (PPD) of the Department of Public Works and Services, Government of the Northwest Territories. PPD sells select petroleum products to businesses, residents, and government departments in 16 NWT communities where there is no private sector supplier. We are also responsible for purchasing these petroleum products and arranging for transportation of the products to those communities, as well as for sales, inventory management, and other related functions.  Transportation to communities is provided on a contract basis and consists of barge, and truck transportation: the two most common products sold by the division are home heating fuel and gasoline. The primary feature that makes PPD’s environment different from many other petroleum product distribution companies is the location; PPD operates in geographically dispersed, environmentally hostile, sparsely populated locations that may not be year round accessible.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words…..here is the actual building that houses the Public Works and Services department - my division is on the 2^nd floor.

Back to point – what do I do? Well, as we have been living in an information age for some time now, my role is to manage some (or most) of that information as it pertains to the Petroleum Products Division. When I came into the position in November, the government had converted their electronic records management to a new system. While it would be safe to assume they had been using a standardized system previously, it doesn’t appear it was as efficient and procedural as it should have been given many comparables across Canada that have been doing so for quite some time. Needless to say it was recognized that in effort to account for record management integrity, it was time to move towards complete immersion in that task – no matter how painful that might be.

Basically, the role currently involves managing paper files and electronic files and making sure they have been classified according to the Administrative and Operational Filing Structure and that they are filed correctly within the electronic filing system (which is huge). Working with active and non-active records and transferring to a Records Centre takes up most of my time. Additionally, I support the division with meetings and correspondence and contract editing etc. In the near future we will endeavour a website overhaul which will be a project I will manage. Though it is 100% different and requires major adaptation from the recent past, I do enjoy the variations – some subtle, others not so much and have determined that next weeks’ blog will be a more suitable place to explore those variations further. Until then, enjoy your work week - however that looks.

Yellowknife.....Somba K'e.......'place of money'....

I’m occasionally asked by friends and family back home (Ontario), to describe Yellowknife in terms of size, what it looks like and who lives there, among other queries of interest (and sometimes concern) ……I get it, I had to do some extensive research myself before making that big decision to relocate, and even then, it’s never quite the same as experiencing it firsthand to describe the reality of a place.

The short description from the City of Yellowknife’s 2013 Tourism Guide is as follows:

‘Yellowknife is a hub of activity and adventure, a mix of history and modernity. The gateway to the Canadian North, for more than half a century the city was home to two gold mines. Today, it’s the centre of Canada’s diamond industry, serving three operating mines and gearing up for a fourth in the near future. Small wonder, then, that in the Tlicho aboriginal language, Yellowknife is called “Somba K’e,” or place of money. More than 20,000 people live here, a hardy, cosmopolitan group of Canadians of all stripes. Northern aboriginals such as the Dene, Inuit and Métis share the city with long-time non-aboriginal pioneers, southern transplants and immigrants from around the world.’

Yellowknife downtown

Collingwood Aerial View

Most of us have some trouble getting our head around the population size, trying to summon up a comparison with other locales that we know. What is not typical about Yellowknife, considering its size to various counterparts across the country, is that it has quite a few ‘high rise’ buildings which, psychologically, makes one think it’s a larger city than it is. For example, it is close in size to Collingwood, Huntsville, Owen Sound and Brockville, yet as the picture of Collingwood shows,

the ‘height’ of the city is in no way similar. I could research this further and try to find out what the reasons are for building up, instead of out, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the Canadian Shield (which was scoured down to rock during the last ice age) upon which it rests.

Okay, so other than high rise office and apartment buildings what does it look like? I think I’ll save commercial sights and sites for a future writing. In the meantime, from a residential standpoint, and without applying research information, we’ve observed a high number of trailer homes in various parts of the city. This probably made a lot of sense during certain growth periods when it was more realistic to transport a mobile home here than to haul up the material, and find enough builders to accommodate the residential needs. However, there is significant diversity when it comes to living accommodations, from house boats to housing co-ops to the half million townhome and 1+million home. And there are a lot of apartment complexes in all areas of the city. In terms of new commercial and residential growth, explosives are used to transform the rocky terrain into a manageable building site. Someone recently expressed his dismay at the new home building going on in anticipation of further growth / influx of newcomers to the city – he didn’t share the developers / city planners’ viewpoint, apparently.

 

Who’s here?

• The median age of the population is 32.6 years, lower than the national median age of 40.6 years.
• 34.2% of Yellowknife’s population is single (never married or common law etc), compared to the national average of 28%.
• And despite the idea that many people have about the ratio between Males and Females (ie that there are more men here than women), there are a similar percentage between the genders.
• Ethnicity demographics state ‘White’ makes up for 67.9% of the population followed by ‘Aboriginal’ at 22.2% and ‘Visible Minority’ at 9.9%.  
• English is spoken by 79.6% of the population; French by 4.3% and ‘non-official’ accounts for 14.7% - this breaks down further with Filipino cited as the largest non-official language at 17.3%

Yellowknife has a subarctic climate and averages less than 300 mm (12 in) of precipitation annually, as the city lies in the rain shadow of mountain ranges to the west. Thanks to its location on Great Slave Lake, Yellowknife has a frost-free growing season that averages slightly over 100 days. Most of the limited precipitation falls between June and October, with April being the driest month of the year and August being the wettest. Snow that falls in winter accumulates on the ground until the spring thaw.

The surrounding landscape is very rocky and slightly rolling, with many small lakes in addition to the larger Great Slave Lake. Trees such as spruce and birch are abundant in the area, as are smaller bushes, but there are also many areas of relatively bare rock with lichen. Yellowknife's high latitude causes a large variation between day and night. Daylight hours range from five hours of daylight in December to twenty hours in June. Twilight lasts all night from late May to early July. (see Mr. Sun.... blog for more information about hours of light - 02Feb14)

Last, but not least......the weather

Environment Canada - Yellowknife tops many winter weather lists, including coldest year round, longest snow cover, most cold days and most extreme wind chill. With average winter temperatures of -28.9 degrees, Yellowknife holds lots of cold weather records, including extreme wind chill.

The coldest temperature recorded in the N.W.T. capital with the wind? -63.99

But Yellowknife is not all about cold. The city comes out on top in the warmer months as well.

“You have the sunniest summers and the sunniest springs,” Phillips, of Environment Canada says. “That's something that should be on your bumper stickers.”

In the spring, Yellowknife sees almost 100 more hours of sun than the second place city, Winnipeg.

 

Yellowknife the coldest, sunniest city in Canada

                                      

Tourists in Yellowknife brave -40 C and ice fog on New Year's Day to get a view of Great Slave Lake from Pilot's Monument in Old Town. Environment Canada calls the city the Coldest Capital in Canada. (Sara Minogue/CBC)