adplus-dvertising
Connect with us

Business

Pandemic gloom has more Canadians turning to greeting card joy this holiday season – CBC.ca

Published

 on


Canadians are turning to holiday cards to spread some much-needed joy this year. In some cases, the personal touch of handmade cards is even helping to bridge the physical distance keeping so many people apart because of COVID-19.

The pandemic has brought incalculable sadness to many Canadian families, but for Niki Hawel, who lives in London, about 190 kilometres southwest of Toronto, the plight of seniors in long-term care homes was closest to her heart in the early days of the pandemic.

Those facilities bore the brunt of the early deaths, and precautions taken ever since have added to the sense of isolation in some of them.

“I thought about one of my grandparents being in a home and feeling like they were alone,” she told the CBC in an interview. “I couldn’t really process that.”

Which is why she hatched a plan to show residents of such homes that they were not alone in the best way available to her at the time: greeting cards.

The project first started with her and her daughter making cards for residents of long-term care homes in the London area, but as word of the project spread, more volunteers signed up. It has since grown to become something she calls the Smiling Seniors Project and has an ambitious goal: 2,000 greeting cards sent this holiday season.

“It seems like something that’s so small, but to them, it’s everything,” she said. “I didn’t want anybody thinking that they were just forgotten about.”

Sales boom

The U.S.-based Greeting Card Association told CBC News that it’s hard to get a handle on overall sales numbers this year because retail shutdowns are clearly having an impact, but the group that speaks on behalf of the greeting card industry says that cards aimed at expressing the sentiment that the sender is “thinking of you” are “up significantly” this year, and there are indeed “unprecedented increases in online purchases.”

“We are seeing earlier purchases of Christmas cards this year, and are optimistic that it will be a strong season, but it’s still too early to make that conclusion,” the GCA’s executive director Nora Weiser said in an emailed statement.

“The trend the last few years has been to purchase cards later, so the early strong sales this year bode well.”

Jon Hamilton, a spokesperson with Canada Post, says the letter carrier’s overall transaction volume is up by about 40 per cent this year, and a big part of that is cards.

“We know anecdotally this may be the year that everyone actually sent off those Christmas cards they buy every year and never quite get to, because they’re not going to make those in-person connections,” he said in an interview.

Small business owner Amy Kwong typically sells most of her cards wholesale to other retailers, but this year she’s seen an uptick of sales to consumers, mostly from online orders. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

The vast majority of Hawel’s cards are homemade. But the need to reach out via a greeting card is driving a sales boom in the store-bought variety, too. Amy Kwong owns a card and collectible store in Toronto. The physical location is called I Have A Crush On You and is in the trendy Liberty Village area of the city.

Her greeting card business has changed this year. She normally sells mostly wholesale orders to other stores, but she’s noticed a growing business selling online this year to individuals via her web portal, Smitten Kitten.

The dark days of March and April were hard on her business just as they were on many others, but she says business has picked up since then as people wanted to find new ways to reach out to loved ones they couldn’t see face to face.

“A lot of our stores cancelled their orders, but come September, October, November, sales picked up again so Christmas wasn’t cancelled,” she said. “So that was good.”

Kwong’s seeing the biggest sales from one type of card: those with dark humour that poke fun at the world’s plight in the pandemic.

“The cards that we design are more lighthearted,” she said. “I think maybe they want to send something that will get a giggle out of their friends — and her top seller contains a lot of words that aren’t fit to print on this website.

“It sort of reflects the, you know, the pandemic that we’re going through.”

Other card sellers are seeing a similar uptick. E-commerce website Etsy sells handmade artisanal items on behalf of local vendors and it says searches for greeting cards on its platform have almost doubled this holiday season.

Etsy card seller Emily Schirmer shows off two of her hottest sellers this holiday season. (Pierre-Paul Couture/CBC)

Montrealer Emily Schirmer is seeing that firsthand. She temporarily lost her day job in the spring when the pandemic first hit, which gave her more time to work on her Etsy store that was never really a major source of income for her before. “I had all this time so I started making illustrations and I made them into cards, she said.

“I started getting more sales and it just kind of took off during quarantine this year,” said Schirmer. 

One of Schirmer’s most-popular cards riffs on an incident that most Canadians remember well: Justin Trudeau’s “speaking moistly” slip of the tongue in April.

WATCH | Trudeau’s viral ‘speaking moistly’ moment

While he points out that he’s not a medical expert, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he understands that masks can help protect people from “breathing or speaking moistly” on others. 1:15

She made a card about it, and her business blew up.

“The caption is, ‘I got you this card so I wouldn’t have to speak moistly on you,'” she said. “That was the card that really took off.”

Her sales have grown from about one a month before the pandemic to about 40 a day now. She had 27 orders total prior to this year, but is now up to 1,700.

While the pandemic has been tough on everyone, she says, she’s glad she’s been able to spread a little joy, and turn a passion project into a job for her, personally.

“I really wanted to do something that was very lighthearted and kind of added a little bit of humour to kind of lift people’s spirits a little bit,” she said.

While her Trudeau card was what got the ball rolling for her business, her top seller captures the spirit of this holiday season aptly.

“It says: ‘That’s a wrap 2020,’ and it’s a picture of a toilet paper roll with a bow on it.”

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

Business

The #1 Skill I Look For When Hiring

Published

 on

File this column under “for what it’s worth.”

“Communication is one of the most important skills you require for a successful life.” — Catherine Pulsifer, author.

I’m one hundred percent in agreement with Pulsifer, which is why my evaluation of candidates begins with their writing skills. If a candidate’s writing skills and verbal communication skills, which I’ll assess when interviewing, aren’t well above average, I’ll pass on them regardless of their skills and experience.

 

Why?

 

Because business is fundamentally about getting other people to do things—getting employees to be productive, getting customers to buy your products or services, and getting vendors to agree to a counteroffer price. In business, as in life in general, you can’t make anything happen without effective communication; this is especially true when job searching when your writing is often an employer’s first impression of you.

 

Think of all the writing you engage in during a job search (resumes, cover letters, emails, texts) and all your other writing (LinkedIn profile, as well as posts and comments, blogs, articles, tweets, etc.) employers will read when they Google you to determine if you’re interview-worthy.

 

With so much of our communication today taking place via writing (email, text, collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, ClickUp, WhatsApp and Rocket.Chat), the importance of proficient writing skills can’t be overstated.

 

When assessing a candidate’s writing skills, you probably think I’m looking for grammar and spelling errors. Although error-free writing is important—it shows professionalism and attention to detail—it’s not the primary reason I look at a candidate’s writing skills.

 

The way someone writes reveals how they think.

 

  • Clear writing = Clear thinking
  • Structured paragraphs = Structured mind
  • Impactful sentences = Impactful ideas

 

Effective writing isn’t about using sophisticated vocabulary. Hemingway demonstrated that deceptively simple, stripped-down prose can captivate readers. Effective writing takes intricate thoughts and presents them in a way that makes the reader think, “Damn! Why didn’t I see it that way?” A good writer is a dead giveaway for a good thinker. More than ever, the business world needs “good thinkers.”

 

Therefore, when I come across a candidate who’s a good writer, hence a good thinker, I know they’re likely to be able to write:

 

  • Emails that don’t get deleted immediately and are responded to
  • Simple, concise, and unambiguous instructions
  • Pitches that are likely to get read
  • Social media content that stops thumbs
  • Human-sounding website copy
  • Persuasively, while attuned to the reader’s possible sensitivities

 

Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: AI, which job seekers are using en masse. Earlier this year, I wrote that AI’s ability to hyper-increase an employee’s productivity—AI is still in its infancy; we’ve seen nothing yet—in certain professions, such as writing, sales and marketing, computer programming, office and admin, and customer service, makes it a “fewer employees needed” tool, which understandably greatly appeals to employers. In my opinion, the recent layoffs aren’t related to the economy; they’re due to employers adopting AI. Additionally, companies are trying to balance investing in AI with cost-cutting measures. CEOs who’ve previously said, “Our people are everything,” have arguably created today’s job market by obsessively focusing on AI to gain competitive advantages and reduce their largest expense, their payroll.

 

It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that most AI usage involves generating written content, content that’s obvious to me, and likely to you as well, to have been written by AI. However, here’s the twist: I don’t particularly care.

 

Why?

 

Because the fundamental skill I’m looking for is the ability to organize thoughts and communicate effectively. What I care about is whether the candidate can take AI-generated content and transform it into something uniquely valuable. If they can, they’re demonstrating the skills of being a good thinker and communicator. It’s like being a great DJ; anyone can push play, but it takes skill to read a room and mix music that gets people pumped.

 

Using AI requires prompting effectively, which requires good writing skills to write clear and precise instructions that guide the AI to produce desired outcomes. Prompting AI effectively requires understanding structure, flow and impact. You need to know how to shape raw information, such as milestones throughout your career when you achieved quantitative results, into a compelling narrative.

So, what’s the best way to gain and enhance your writing skills? As with any skill, you’ve got to work at it.

Two rules guide my writing:

 

  • Use strong verbs and nouns instead of relying on adverbs, such as “She dashed to the store.” instead of “She ran quickly to the store.” or “He whispered to the child.” instead of “He spoke softly to the child.”
  • Avoid using long words when a shorter one will do, such as “use” instead of “utilize” or “ask” instead of “inquire.” As attention spans get shorter, I aim for clarity, simplicity and, most importantly, brevity in my writing.

 

Don’t just string words together; learn to organize your thoughts, think critically, and communicate clearly. Solid writing skills will significantly set you apart from your competition, giving you an advantage in your job search and career.

_____________________________________________________________________

 

Nick Kossovan, a well-seasoned veteran of the corporate landscape, offers “unsweetened” job search advice. You can send Nick your questions to artoffindingwork@gmail.com.

Continue Reading

Business

Politics likely pushed Air Canada toward deal with ‘unheard of’ gains for pilots

Published

 on

 

MONTREAL – Politics, public opinion and salary hikes south of the border helped push Air Canada toward a deal that secures major pay gains for pilots, experts say.

Hammered out over the weekend, the would-be agreement includes a cumulative wage hike of nearly 42 per cent over four years — an enormous bump by historical standards — according to one source who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The previous 10-year contract granted increases of just two per cent annually.

The federal government’s stated unwillingness to step in paved the way for a deal, noted John Gradek, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made it plain the two sides should hash one out themselves.

“Public opinion basically pressed the federal cabinet, including the prime minister, to keep their hands clear of negotiations and looking at imposing a settlement,” said Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University.

After late-night talks at a hotel near Toronto’s Pearson airport, the country’s biggest airline and the union representing 5,200-plus aviators announced early Sunday morning they had reached a tentative agreement, averting a strike that would have grounded flights and affected some 110,000 passengers daily.

The relative precariousness of the Liberal minority government as well as a push to appear more pro-labour underlay the prime minister’s hands-off approach to the negotiations.

Trudeau said Friday the government would not step in to fix the impasse — unlike during a massive railway work stoppage last month and a strike by WestJet mechanics over the Canada Day long weekend that workers claimed road roughshod over their constitutional right to collective bargaining. Trudeau said the government respects the right to strike and would only intervene if it became apparent no negotiated deal was possible.

“They felt that they really didn’t want to try for a third attempt at intervention and basically said, ‘Let’s let the airline decide how they want to deal with this one,'” said Gradek.

“Air Canada ran out of support as the week wore on, and by the time they got to Friday night, Saturday morning, there was nothing left for them to do but to basically try to get a deal set up and accepted by ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association).”

Trudeau’s government was also unlikely to consider back-to-work legislation after the NDP tore up its agreement to support the Liberal minority in Parliament, Gradek said. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party has traditionally toed a more pro-business line, also said last week that Tories “stand with the pilots” and swore off “pre-empting” the negotiations.

Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau had asked Ottawa on Thursday to impose binding arbitration pre-emptively — “before any travel disruption starts” — if talks failed. Backed by business leaders, he’d hoped for an effective repeat of the Conservatives’ move to head off a strike in 2012 by legislating Air Canada pilots and ground crew to stick to their posts before any work stoppage could start.

The request may have fallen flat, however. Gradek said he believes there was less anxiety over the fallout from an airline strike than from the countrywide railway shutdown.

He also speculated that public frustration over thousands of cancelled flights would have flowed toward Air Canada rather than Ottawa, prompting the carrier to concede to a deal yielding “unheard of” gains for employees.

“It really was a total collapse of the Air Canada bargaining position,” he said.

Pilots are slated to vote in the coming weeks on the four-year contract.

Last year, pilots at Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines secured agreements that included four-year pay boosts ranging from 34 per cent to 40 per cent, ramping up pressure on other carriers to raise wages.

After more than a year of bargaining, Air Canada put forward an offer in August centred around a 30 per cent wage hike over four years.

But the final deal, should union members approve it, grants a 26 per cent increase in the first year alone, retroactive to September 2023, according to the source. Three wage bumps of four per cent would follow in 2024 through 2026.

Passengers may wind up shouldering some of that financial load, one expert noted.

“At the end of the day, it’s all us consumers who are paying,” said Barry Prentice, who heads the University of Manitoba’s transport institute.

Higher fares may be mitigated by the persistence of budget carrier Flair Airlines and the rapid expansion of Porter Airlines — a growing Air Canada rival — as well as waning demand for leisure trips. Corporate travel also remains below pre-COVID-19 levels.

Air Canada said Sunday the tentative contract “recognizes the contributions and professionalism of Air Canada’s pilot group, while providing a framework for the future growth of the airline.”

The union issued a statement saying that, if ratified, the agreement will generate about $1.9 billion of additional value for Air Canada pilots over the course of the deal.

Meanwhile, labour tension with cabin crew looms on the horizon. Air Canada is poised to kick off negotiations with the union representing more than 10,000 flight attendants this year before the contract expires on March 31.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:AC)

Source link

Continue Reading

Business

Federal $500M bailout for Muskrat Falls power delays to keep N.S. rate hikes in check

Published

 on

 

HALIFAX – Ottawa is negotiating a $500-million bailout for Nova Scotia’s privately owned electric utility, saying the money will be used to prevent a big spike in electricity rates.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson made the announcement today in Halifax, saying Nova Scotia Power Inc. needs the money to cover higher costs resulting from the delayed delivery of electricity from the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric plant in Labrador.

Wilkinson says that without the money, the subsidiary of Emera Inc. would have had to increase rates by 19 per cent over “the short term.”

Nova Scotia Power CEO Peter Gregg says the deal, once approved by the province’s energy regulator, will keep rate increases limited “to be around the rate of inflation,” as costs are spread over a number of years.

The utility helped pay for construction of an underwater transmission link between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, but the Muskrat Falls project has not been consistent in delivering electricity over the past five years.

Those delays forced Nova Scotia Power to spend more on generating its own electricity.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending