GO TO PAGE 156 FOR MORE TIPS AND INFORMATION
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Morning | Living Me To We
MORNING
Before You Go Go
8:45 a.m.
Telecommuting
To Leave or Not to Leave
ON THOSE MINUS 30 DEGREE Albertan winter days, Patricia Green is thankful she can work from home. The director of the Telus telecommuting program lives and often works from her house in St. Albert, a suburb of Edmonton. But then again, she could also be in Vancouver at a meeting or picking up her mail from her base office in Edmonton. In 2009, Telus rolled out the telework program to 18,000 staff members across Canada. Now, employees arrange schedules around life and work. For some, this could be as little as once a week in the office; others may follow a more traditional schedule. It saves energy (417, 216 kg of CO2 in its first year!) and all those daily human costs of commuting. For Patricia, there’s no more stressing about finishing work in time to make dinner for her two teenage boys. Now, returning to the 9-to-5 schedule would be the real grind.This is the first generation in history that doesn’t see showing up at the office as essential to our jobs. Everyone from Margaret Atwood to Alice Munro are using the aid of trusty devices, such as the so-called LongPen invention, to avoid climbing on yet another pollution-spewing airplane for a book tour. And today’s online tools, such as Skype and Google, make this set-up accessible to everyone. One caveat though before you go phoning it in: telecommuting isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Before you begin working in your pajamas, build a solid team base with face-to-face meetings, staff hang-outs and regular appearances at the office. This way you can have the best of both worlds: strong connections with your co-workers and a lighter carbon conscience.
THE NEW WORLD OF WORKGive your time management skills a work out in your home office.Make your house workspace distraction-free, clear of cell phones, pets and kids.Prepare lunches the night before, the same way you would going into the office, so you don’t waste time prepping meals.Create time to meet informally with colleagues and build strong work relationships.When in the office, make the most of your presence by touching base with all team members.With an intense deadline looming, put a work-from-home arrangement on hold and assist your team.
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Living Me To We | Morning
MORNING
Before You Go Go
8:45 a.m.
THE WORK-FROM-HOME BALANCE
prosA worldwide survey found that 80% of teleworkers were as or more productive than their office counterparts.33% of Canadians would take a work-from-home arrangement over a raise!Telework can be an option for those on maternity leave, a differently abled employee or one forced to relocate.
consWorking from home can increase feelings of isolation, while face-to-face interactions strengthen team member bonds.Studies show that non-teleworkers can feel a diminished sense of camaraderie with their telecommuting co-workers.
DID YOU KNOW...?
IF ONE MILLION CANADIANS WORKED FROM HOME JUST ONE DAY A YEAR, WE WOULD SAVE 250 MILLION KILOGRAMS OF CO2 EMISSIONS AND 100 MILLION LITRES OF FUEL.
GO TO PAGE 156 FOR MORE TIPS AND INFORMATION
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Morning | Living Me To We
GET TO KNOW
THE TELECOMMUTING WRITER
Margaret Atwood
The novels of Canada’s most famous literary talent often paint a dire portrait of the planet years in the future and maimed beyond recognition. Margaret Atwood doesn’t have it in for the environment. Her “speculative fiction” genre novels come out of a love for the environment and serve as a warning to change our ways. By reducing her own travels, carbon-offsetting when she can and using telecommuting tools, Margaret lives that lesson daily.
THE MOMENT: “He [my father] was a forest entomologist. They were avid gardeners all their lives, they had a city garden and a country garden. They grew a lot of vegetables. I remember in the Depression and the war, a lot of people grew a lot of vegetables.”THE MISSION: “I carbon offset. But there are mixed views about that. But again, the travel is actually quite small. If you carbon offset and also do extra insulation on your house, you’re probably a bit ahead of the game.”THE HABIT: “If you take a small child, and I mean under two, out into nature, you will see instant interaction. They’re much less bored when they’re outside. And plastic gizmos are really no substitute unless you bring a child up entirely surrounded by plastic gizmos and they don’t have any chance to turn on their epigenetic biophila switch. Just as if you bring a child up completely isolated from language, they won’t be able to talk because it goes by developmental stages. So the biophilia switch is turned on early in life, or it’s not. Maybe you have a mommy who says, ‘Eww, dirty. Don’t touch that. Come inside it’s safer there.’ Maybe you have that, and get really scared of being outside. But that’s not a natural thing for people. It’s much more natural for them to be comfortable outside.”
MIDDLE: GRAEME GIBSON, BOTTOM: GRAEME GIBSON, NEXT PAGE: GEORGE WHITESIDE
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Living Me To We | Morning
“People talk about the environment as if it’s something separate from them. But actually, you are a part of the environment.”
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Morning | Living Me To We
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OFFICE
POLITICS
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Office Politics
9:05 a.m.
Loving Alt Transportation
Think Outside the Car
THIS IS THE STORY OF A MODERN MAN and his car-sharing membership. George Dizvolitsis lives in a condo with his wife. Both work downtown, take public transit, and walk during the summer. But their epic journeys to visit family in the suburbs or trek to get groceries were wearing them down. They tried to be as completely car-free as possible and yet they still couldn’t pull it off. They struggled with a solution and then discovered a car-share program in the parking lot of their building and signed up.Before we met George we expected a sandal-wearing, granola-eating renegade. Instead, he was the perfect picture of an everyday dude, gym bag over one shoulder and a baseball cap on his head. The green benefits were nice, he explained, but the real motivation was dollars