Ottawa, Decem­ber 2012

This four-part spe­cial fea­ture casts a spot­light on the Cana­dian work­ing world and its ups and downs. Com­ments and ques­tions are always welcome!

You can read [Spe­cial Fea­ture – Part I] Work­ing in Canada: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly here and [Spe­cial Fea­ture – Part II] Work­ing in Canada: the Good here.

In “Work­ing in Canada: the Good”, I high­lighted a few perks of the North Amer­i­can work­place. But the Cana­dian way of life also has a num­ber of down­sides, which you should be aware of as an employee.

The “Cana­dian Expe­ri­ence” Catch 22

This is a clas­sic prob­lem for new­com­ers to Canada:  local employ­ers would rather hire a can­di­date with pre­vi­ous work expe­ri­ence in Canada; but of course you need to start some­where and find some­one will­ing to give you a chance.

The “Cana­dian expe­ri­ence” catch 22 can be incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing for new­com­ers eager to enter the job mar­ket. And you’d think in a coun­try where over 250,000 immi­grants land every year, employ­ers would be used to deal with for­eign degree, expe­ri­ence and credentials!

For­tu­nately, there are a num­ber of ways to tackle the issue. You can go through a staffing agency (they are some­time less picky than employ­ers), have your cre­den­tials assessed in Canada or vol­un­teer to gain expe­ri­ence. Mean­while, non-profit orga­ni­za­tions like Hire Immi­grants Ottawa work hard to increase the capac­ity of employ­ers to attract and inte­grate skilled immigrants.

Vaca­tion Time? Meh… Three-Day Week­ends More Like

Cana­di­ans do get more vaca­tion time than Amer­i­cans, but over­all, you do not get a lot of time off.

There are five nation­wide statu­tory hol­i­days in Canada, plus a few provin­cial and ter­ri­to­r­ial hol­i­days. These three– or four-day long week­ends are a nice break from a busy work sched­ule and most Cana­di­ans look for­ward to them and cel­e­brate them one way or another.

Each province has dif­fer­ent rules and reg­u­la­tions with regard to the amount of vaca­tion pay and time each per­son can take. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, employ­ers must grant at least two weeks of paid vaca­tion time (4% of wages) per twelve-month work­ing period. How­ever, keep in mind that employ­ers have the final say and can assign vaca­tion time for employ­ees. You may not be able to take your two weeks in a row and you may not be able to take time off dur­ing a busy period (i.e. around the end of the fis­cal year if you work for the gov­ern­ment, or dur­ing the hol­i­day times for cus­tomer ser­vice indus­try employees).

From my own expe­ri­ence, I notice Cana­di­ans don’t take a lot of hol­i­day time and when they do, they almost feel bad about it. Tak­ing a week off is often noticed and com­mented by co-workers, and get­ting per­mis­sion to take two weeks off is a real priv­i­lege. Tak­ing a day off here and there to have a three-day week­end is much more com­mon and socially accept­able. Unpaid time off is equally hard to take.

The lack of hol­i­day time can be tough for immi­grants who may want to visit home once in a while. You can’t really fly across the world for just five or six days!

Sick? Tough Luck but Come to Work Anyway

Sick days—or the lack thereof—are another down­side of the Cana­dian work­ing cul­ture. Paid sick leave is an optional ben­e­fit granted by some employ­ers but not all. For instance, when I was work­ing as a French teacher, I had four paid sick days to use in any twelve-month period. When I was work­ing for a Crown cor­po­ra­tion, we had no sick days but “per­sonal days”—basically, if you were sick, you had to take vaca­tion time.

As a result, a lot of peo­ple would rather show up at work sick than take a pre­cious paid sick day or worse, lose a day of pay. It doesn’t do much for pro­duc­tiv­ity in the long run and you can eas­ily catch the flu from your sick cubi­cle neigh­bour. That may be why every­one car­ries a bot­tle of hand san­i­tizer around these days!

A Flex­i­ble Work Schedule

If you are in an office envi­ron­ment, chances are you will work “9-to-5”. But if you work in the cus­tomer ser­vice indus­try, expect to work a very flex­i­ble sched­ule. Stores have long open­ing hours in Canada and they typ­i­cally open seven days a week. Call cen­tres have to deal with cus­tomers across time zones—and there are six pri­mary time zones in Canada, New­found­land, Atlantic, East­ern, Cen­tral, Moun­tain and the Pacific time zone.

Employ­ers also like to sched­ule employ­ees at the last minute. For instance, you may get your weekly work sched­ule on the Fri­day for the fol­low­ing week, mak­ing it hard to plan ahead for fam­ily life and time off.

Being Plugged All the Time

These days, it’s becom­ing harder and harder to unplug from the office. In my last two posi­tions, I was given a brand new shiny Black­Berry. “Yay, free phone and no strings attached!” you may think. Prob­lem was, I was pretty much always on call and I found it hard to unplug after the end of my work day. I was receiv­ing emails, requests and ques­tions 24/7 and peo­ple actu­ally expected me to answer them “because it just takes a minute to check your emails on your phone”. I never seemed to be able to put the Black­Berry down.

Employ­ees in the cus­tomer ser­vice indus­try may find them­selves “on call” as well. If their work­place is unex­pec­tantly busy, the man­ager may give you a call to come work on a day off.

So these are a few down­sides of typ­i­cal Cana­dian work­places. But the ugly part is com­ing up! Part VI – Work­ing in Canada: the Ugly will be pub­lished on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 4.