Over my morning coffee and Globe & Mail review the following stories jumped out at me…

The Workplace is Broken by Rebecca Dube

Imagine a workplace with no rules. You can breeze in at noon and leave at 2, and no one gives you the stink-eye. Want to see a movie on Monday afternoon, or spend Tuesday morning at your kid’s school? No problem. The only thing that matters in this workplace is that you get the job done.

It sounds impossibly idealistic. But it’s really happening for 3,000 employees in the corporate offices of Richfield, Minn.-based Best Buy.

Two human-resources professionals, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, created what they call the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE. They’re trying to spread the idea with their new book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, published last week. In a nutshell, they want to abolish the notion of a 40-hour (or 50, 60 or god help us, 70-hour) workweek.

“People can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as their work gets done,” they write. “You get paid for a chunk of work, not for a chunk of time.”

Shortage of Skilled Tradespeople Near Crisis by Mike Holmes

It’s not an overstatement to say we are facing a crisis. Most of Canada’s skilled trades workers are expected to retire in the next 10 years, and not enough young people are entering these professions to make up for that.

In addition, tech programs are being cut, and schools have dropped shop classes and diverted money to other things.

Some of the tech courses that still exist are not even at capacity because our society doesn’t encourage kids to study a trade. For years, it’s been seen as less desirable to study a skilled trade, and parents, teachers and school guidance counsellors have encouraged kids to go to college or university instead.

But the fact is one out of every 16 Canadian workers earns a living in construction, and they do more than $150-billion worth of work every year. There are lots of jobs, and many skilled tradespeople make six-figure incomes with benefits.