Business and Community
Communities Offer Help for the Business Sector
Simon Fraser University
Many small and medium size businesses follow their business plans, mainly concentrating on their products, customers and their vision for success. However, businesses often overlook or underestimate the importance of the community they operate in. Organizations seem to operate in a silo, missing the important resources communities have to offer.
Communities form around geographic locations and they usually have shared values, culture and trends
There are some easy ways to get to know and understand your community better. You can start by connecting with your local Board of Trade and the Chamber of Commerce. Ensure you interact and network with other businesses to find out the trends, opportunities and challenges. This shared interest networking will help your business.
Connect with the local educational institutions
Schools can provide qualified potential employees, which are already members of your community and have a good understanding of its trends and characteristics. By being informed and understanding the specific environment your business operates in, you will be able to be more proactive, better serve your customers and consequently have more opportunity for business growth into the future.
Nicoleta Ratiu, SFU Business Graduate and Tomorrow’s Workplace contributor
Apply Now: Be Chosen for Tomorrows Workplace Business Consulting worth $30,000
Apply for $30,000 of free business consulting
The business candidates chosen for Tomorrow’s Workplace project receive an extensive portfollio of business consulting with a value of approximately $30,000. To be considered for the project you must supply a written submission that should not take more than 30 minutes to complete.
All entries must be received by Jan 18, 2010.
Read more about the success of the project with initial candidates:
Analyitic Systems and Full Line Specialties.
The application process is straightforward.
STEP 1
Compose an email with the following components:
1. Your name, Business Name, Website Address, email address for contact, and phone number of contact person.
2. Tell us how many employees you currently employ. (Eligible candidates must have 11+full-time employees)
3, Write a paragraph or two about what your business provides, how long you have been in business, what are your basic strenghs and where you believe you need help to grow your business.
4. Tell us why you would like to be selected. How would you hope to benefit and what changes would you expect to see in your business operation?
All information submitted will be held in the strictest of confidence, and with all legal privacy mandates. Only staff members on the Tomorrow’s Workplace team will have any access to the material provided.
STEP 2
Send your information to: Gayle Hadfield; Project Manager @ gayleh@telus.net
STEP 3
Each applicant will be contacted either by email or telephone within 48 hours.
Thank you for your interest.
Discover Tomorrow’s Workplace
The Purpose of Tomorrow’s Workplace Project
Tomorrow’s Workplace Needs a Workforce
Immigration to Fuel the Next Workforce in North America
Entrepreneur magazine posted a very insightful article in the summer of 2008 entitled: Tomorrow’s workforce: the needs for immigrant workers and strategies to retain them.
Hardest hit, according to Bao Q. Nguyen, will be “aerospace and defense, utilities, health care, insurance and financial services, and public education.”
While this article refers to the US, Canadian businesses should take heed.
Bye Bye Boomers 
By 2010, 40% of the population in the US will have reached 55. The baby boomer generation is aging, and with that maturity and experience, comes retirement and physical limitations.
What can you do to prepare your business for the future? One clear answer forwarded by the experts is immigration, and immigration, by nature, brings diversity in the workplace.
How we do business, how we relate in our work environment, and how we accomplish our goals will change dramatically in the coming decades.
Once driven by western values and capitalistic ideals, our workforce will become highly integrated with not only the physical bodies, but the cultural needs and social priorities of our new workforce.
Whether we like it or not, our thinking as employers will be forced to change, or we won’t be in business.
We would appreciate your comments. How is your company adapting to the workforce changes? What is the impact? Where are you “stumped”?
Harmony Thiessen
Diversity In The Workplace – Pt. 1
Part 1 of the Series: DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE
True diversity goes a step further to include differences that aren’t visible to the eye — differences in the ways people approach their jobs. (R.Mourtada)
Tomorrow’s Workplace encourages “diversity in the workplace,” and yet without definition, that could mean anything from providing vegetarian meals in the cafeteria to hiring people from Atlantic Canada in BC employment. What is the reference point when we refer to diversity in the workplace, and how do we find common ground?
We begin with a article written by RASHA MOURTADA first published in the Globe and Mail in March of 2007. In March 2009, the article, as presented here was updated.
VISIT THE ARTICLE – CLICK HERE.
Your comments are useful in our collaborative education on the subject. Please feel free to do so below.
Building Success With the Help of Tomorrow’s Workplace
Full Line Specialties
Business manager and entrepreneur, Ken Ehman carried a career in textiles into a specialty products company in 1996. Many businesses now turn to them to market and promote their businesses, as well as to say thanks to staff and customers with customized products ranging from the traditional pens, mugs and golf balls to polo shirts, leather jackets and high end appreciation commodities. These include high tech gadgetry with a company’s logo and slogan elegantly embosses, displayed, embroidered or otherwise displayed on virtually any product imaginable.
Sam Singh, Ehman’s Partner and Sales Manager become involved after working in his family’s business, which was a supplier to Ehman’s. The two hit it off and a successful company has been the result. Currently Full Line employs about 14 people, most in the sales end of the operation.
Although the company is flourishing, both men realized that they needed to develop some formal aspects to their business including a road map (a mission and a vision statement). Working in a business, the fun part was dealing with people and satisfying their needs for product, while the paperwork, being something that had to be done, often was the last thing anyone wanted to do.
When the “Tomorrow’s Workplace” project came along, looking for companies to participate in helping them develop a system of protocols to be applied in the business world when the project is completed, they embraced it.
Singh and Ehman spoke with Editor Ray Hudson about their business and the impact of theprogram on their operations:
What do you find so attractive about this business?
KE: It changes every day. And we get really neat gadgets to look at. We’re the first ones to see the fashion trends, the new styles for next year, as well as the pricing for next year, and we really get a charge out of that. The other side of the coin is that we’re always selling products to people that need them for events, and to see the look on their faces when they get that stuff and show their appreciation for the products. We really get charge out of that.
SS: Talking to big corporations and finding solutions to their purchasing needs, such as setting up an online merchandise store for the company to select from. It’s more solution oriented than asking if they’d like to buy a pen. Then when you’ve done a good job and you see the smile of appreciation on the customer’s face, that’s the emotional payback.
We’ve just come through a brutal economic downturn, how did things work out for you?
KE: Sales have been down probably around 20%. I think our industry is down a lot more than that so I think we’re going in the right direction and we’re a little bit ahead of the curve. Part of our strength is that we aligned ourselves with good vendors, and we started selling brand name products so if people are looking for Adidas, or Nike or Greg Norman, we’re the ones they come to. Companies are still buying although a lot more carefully. It’s the very small companies that have really cut back through this period.
SS: I find that customers are going to the lower cost items so instead of spending $1000 on leather coats, they’ll spend the same amount of money on say coffee mugs and hit a lot more people.
How did you become involved with the Tomorrow’s Workplace (TW) project and how has it been?
KE: We became involved through the Surrey Board of Trade, and the TW people looked at our company and thought Full Line could use their services. What they’ve done is helped us to even further streamline our mission and our vision, where we want to be and where we want to go. Being a small company we’ve been running helter-skelter and didn’t take the time to sit down and develop our own mission statement.
The people in the project have helped us develop our mission statement, and are working with us on our business plan and working with us on the human resources side. As we’ve grown, and have employees now, and we have to make sure that they’re happy, so the project helps us develop our plans to ensure that. Working with the consultants, Lynn, Gail, and Tomas has been very good for us.
It has been a little stressful for us because we still have to run our business and we’re coming into our busy period and it does take time to be organized.
SS: We’ve always talked about the need of mission statement. It’s always been on the radar and we recognize that it’s important. The TW consultants made us realize that it’s not just important, it’s urgent. They’ve helped us through the process of creating the road maps to achieving these things. They’re more than just slogans as we’ve found out.
In the next phase of Tomorrow’s Workplace almost ready to begin, they’re going to put three more businesses into the process, what would you say to those operators?
KE: I highly recommend that anybody that has the opportunity to be involved with TW, do it! It brings your business focus into line. It forces you to do things that you’ve put off, and let’s face it we’re both sales guys and we tend to put this stuff of to “later” and it doesn’t get done otherwise. Also, do it for your staff, that’s where it really pays dividends.
This article is a reprint and used by permission from the August 2009 issue of the Business In Surrey, monthly publication of the Surrey Board of Trade .
Tomorrow’s Workplace – A Collection of Views
Article Summary
Here are some of the pertinent articles written lately on the topic we hold dear here at Tomorrow’s Workplace.net: The Workplace of Tomorrow.
Click on any link you choose. Consider leaving a comment after what you read. Comments encourage dialogue, and show appreciation to the author. In the blogging world, just a “thank you for the article” is appreciated and considered polite.
Enjoy@
Imagine Tomorrow’s Workplace– Lynn Corrigan – A vision of the future workplace.
Jobs of the Future– Joan Runnheim Olson – How to land a job in the changing workplace.
Gen Y – Changing the World One Team at a Time – Kelly Sharp – The newer employees work differently and will provide a new set of efficiencies.
Hispanics in the Workplace – Appreciating the Role of the Hispanic Supervisor –Issac Botbol- How immigrant cultures can affect the workplace.
If you find a great article related to Tomorrow’s Workplace please comment below with a link to the article. We will be sure it get’s posted for all to see.
Changing Demographics Impacting Tomorrow’s Workplace
Changing Demographics Will Impact Tomorrow’s Workplace in BC
Sohee Ahn
Staffing issues will be challenging for BC business in the coming decades warned Ahn: BC Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour, George Khoury: Alliance Sector Councils, and Rita Hernandez: Immigrant Employment Council of BC.
Strategic thinking and planning is key, and collaboration between government, the business community and service providers is the only way to insure future growth for the workplace.
Alisa Choi Darcy from Quote End Quote:Cross Cultural Strategy was passionate in her call to businesses to reach out to ethnic communities for both customers and staff in order to make their diversity values credible. “Cultural integration is absolutely necessary to the future success of the workplace” said Choi.
MC, Mary Jane Stenberg, Acting President of the Surrey Board of Trade.
Dr. Ginger Grant’s presentation presented a metaphor for change and the way it creates emotional reactions. William Gruber of the BC Hydro Multicultural Society shared what Hydro has done and is doing to create a true multicultural workplace.
Lively discussions in breakout sessions surfaced themes and challenges for future development. Donna McFadden, Tomorrow’s Workplace Project Manager, urged participants to use the conference as a beginning of a new relationship allowing employers and service providers to work collaboratively toward a successful workplace.
Bill Beatty, Project Director, SUCCESS Business & Economic Development Division, underlined the importance of the learning outcomes that have come from the first phase of the project.
Sam Sing Full Line Specialties (Left)
Highlighting the conference were businesses owners Jim Hargrove of Analytic Systems and Ken Ehman of Full Line Specialties, actual project participants, who talked about project impact on their businesses and on their thinking.
Did you attend the conference? We would appreciate your comments: what you learned, what you experienced, who you met, future goals based on the conference concepts? Do you have suggestions to offer? Use the comment box below.
Are you new to the blogging experience? Not sure how to comment? Read Here.
Related Material:
Sohee Ahn Presentation Notes Oct 22, 09
George Khoury Presentation Notes Oct 22, 09
Rita Hernadez Presentation Notes Oct 22, 09
Tomorrow’s Workplace Conference October 22, 2009
Who Will You Hire in 2015?
The workplace in BC is progressively changing. Baby Boomers are gradually leaving the scene and the number of skilled workers in Canada is decreasing.
Businesses will be forced to adjust. Learn now how your business can prepare for the future. Join us for a morning conference with useful educational and networking opportunities.
The Surrey Board of Trade, partnered with S.U.C.C.E.S.S. is presenting the Tomorrow’s Workplace Conference at the Eaglequest Golf Course at Coyote Creek, Surrey BC. Speakers include: Sohee Ahn: Director of Labour Market Initiatives BC Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development, and George Khoury, The Alliance of Sector Councils. Panelists include Jim Hargave: Analytic Systems, Ken Ehman: Full Line Specialties Ltd, Alisa Choi Darcey: Quote End Quote, William Gruber: Vice Chair, BC Hydro Employee’s Multicultural Society, and Dr. Ginger Grant: Managing Partner, Creativity in Business Canada, Inc. Interactive Workshop conducted by Donna McFadden, Project Manager of Tomorrow’s Workplace. Mary Jane Stenberg, Executive Director, External Relations, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, will serve as Master of Ceremonies for the day.
The focus of the conference is to network business, government and service providers to consider the future employment needs in BC, and acknowledging the need for strategic planning and cooperatives initiatives.
TOMORROW’S WORKPLACE CONFERENCE 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
8:00am to 11:30 am
Eaglequest Golf Course at Coyote Creek (7778-152 Street)
How To Apply For $30,000 of Free Business Coaching
Your Business Could Be Selected!
Apply for $30,000 of free business consulting
You must apply to be considered.
The application process is straightforward and should not take more than 20 minutes to complete.
STEP 1
Scroll down this page until you see Speak Your Mind.
STEP 2
Fill in your name, your email and your business website address.
STEP 3
In the box below your information tell us the following:
a. Write about your business- what you provide, how long you have been in business etc, how many you presently employ.
b. Tell us why you want to be chosen, what challenges you are facing in your business, and how the project may benefit you.
c. Tell us how you would expect the professional business consulting could benefit to your business.
Your comments WILL NOT BE PUBLIC, and will be viewed only by our internal staff.
