Community Employment Resource Centre
What’s
inside?
·
Contingent Workers – Who are they?
·
Promote Your Personal Growth and Motivation
·
And the Winners are …
·
CERC Staff Can Help
·
Quote of the Month
·
Patience Pays Off
Contingent Workers – Who
are they?
Many Canadians are in employment situations that differ
from the traditional model of a stable, full-time job: one in which a person works for only one
employer, is employed for a full year, full time on the employer’s premises,
has extensive benefits and entitlements, and expects to be employed
indefinitely.
Contingent workers: who are they? Virtually anyone who does not have a full-time job with security
and benefits – temporary, part-time, on-call, contract, seasonal workers,
day-labourers, multiple-job holders, self-employed, are defined as “contingent”
and a growing segment of our economy.
Contingentwork.on.ca has been created to support workers
whose jobs are uncertain or contingent.
The website has information and resources on various categories,
including:
· Your rights at work
· Problems at work: what to do
· Equity/diversity issues
· Concerned about health and
safety?
· Personal strategies
· Who is organizing/what are they
doing
· Workplace best practices
· Job search/training
· Research library
In the Reading Room you’ll find information on
contingent work and related social policy materials such as articles, reports,
research/ information, speeches/presentations, and related website links.
What’s New features
events (meetings, workshops, conferences, etc…), press releases and job
postings from across Ontario of interest to contingent workers and their
supporters.
Who’s Who is a
directory of organizations and people supporting contingent workers.
The Contingent Work website is
funded by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and Human
Resources Development Canada.
Promote Your Personal
Growth and Motivation
By Susan M. Heathfield of
Are you feeling blah
about your work and life? Does the experience of boredom make you unmotivated
and unexcited? Are you having a mid-life crisis? You can promote your own
personal growth, motivation and career development to overcome this inertia.
Here are ideas and tools that will help you explore personal growth, set new
goals, choose motivation and get your life and work back on a course that
excites, motivates and fills your life with joy. My recent article, Create
the Life You Want With a Mid-Career Crisis, sparked a number of reader
comments about a mid-life crisis, in general, not just about their careers.
One person, in
particular, said "I am bored, bored, bored with everything in my life - my
friends, my job, my family and how I spend my time. I don't feel any excitement
and I'm not looking forward to anything in particular." These thoughts are
for you. You can make this a searching time or you can do silly things. Mid-life
crises, whether you are thirty, fifty or sixty-five years old, can be a time of
awakening, self-actualization and new direction.
Guided Thinking Exercises
Take some time to do
these exercises. The time invested will enable you to focus on the positive and
the possible for your life. I recommended the first two exercises for your
career crisis and I also recommend them for your personal growth. The rest are
new.
·
List
everything you’d like to do in your lifetime. These lists can run several
hundred items. Your chosen lifestyle must allow the accomplishment of these
dreams.
·
Write down
your ten favorite activities, the ones without which your life would feel
empty. (Mine included reading, writing, creating new recipes, traveling,
walking and more.) No life choice is suitable unless you get to do your
favorite activities at least weekly, and preferably, daily.
·
Think of a
time when you felt more positively about your life. What has changed between
then and now? List everything that is different. Perhaps you will gain insight
into what is causing your current dissatisfaction. Then, you can change the
issues causing unhappiness.
·
If you are
like many of us, you rarely take time to be alone with yourself. In fact, many
people avoid this time and prefer to fill every minute of the day with
activity. Schedule quiet, thinking time for yourself every single day. Spend
time alone with yourself doing nothing. Some people call this meditation;
others practice yoga. The key is to spend time in your head going gently wherever
your thoughts take you. If those thoughts turn negative, change the subject.
Take Action Exercises
You’ll want to do these
daily as you explore what makes you happy.
·
You have listed your favorite activities
and the hundreds of items you’d like to do in your lifetime. Begin. Add one
each day to your schedule. Minimally, do all ten activities you love in a week.
·
Write a journal that tracks your thoughts,
the new ideas you are generating and the added life activities you schedule
every day.
·
See a friend at least twice a month for
conversation and to maintain the supportive and caring relationship.
·
Eat a balanced diet, get daily exercise,
even if only for ten minutes, and sleep on a regular, refreshing schedule.
And the Winners are…
The winners of our
wellness packages are:
Carolyn Cook & Christine Croke
of Cobourg
Terry Brennan & Vikki Brannan
of Port Hope
Congratulations to our winners!
Next Wellness draws:
August 6th
& 20th
CERC Staff Can Help
CERC staff are always available to help you with your job search.
· Resume writing – we’ll proofread your resume for you and give you some helpful hints about how to make it a good one
· Cover Letter writing – we can help you put together a fantastic cover letter. We have lots of great resource materials for your use.
· Mock interviews - got an interview? Worried about it? We can conduct a mock or practice interview with you so you will feel better prepared for the real thing!
· Internet job searching – we can assist you with finding job searching websites
Feel free to ask any CERC staff member for assistance while you are looking for work. We’re here for you.
Quote of the Month
“There’s
something rare, something finer by far, something more scarce than
ability. It is the ability to recognize
the ability.”
~ Elbert Hubbard
Patience Pays Off ~ By Barb Walker
Barb Walker is a client at CERC and offers this message to fellow job seekers.
“Finally employed! I never thought I’d say these words, especially since I moved to this small town.
To begin, I would like to give a big heartfelt thank you to Heather (a former long-time employee at CERC), who helped me to this point. Although I have been job searching for a number of months, I recently was hired on the spot after my last job interview. Now I have satisfying work and I’m surrounded by co-workers I really like.
Patience and Persistence! Two most important words when doing a job search. It’s taken me four years of job searching to finally get this job and although it’s a lot of hard work, my co-workers make it easy for me to come to work with a smile. I’m being challenged to the maximum as they need me to learn quickly everything there is to know about being a supervisor.
Persistence comes in the form of never giving up. One door closes – another one opens.
Trust in yourself and look at what you would be interested in doing as a job. I’ve been told by various people that I am too picky when it comes to job searching, but I always stood strong in the knowledge of where I wanted to work and now I have a job that I enjoy!”
Way to go Barb!
Congratulations from the Community Employment Resource Centre!