Business – Gjertsen [dot] ca

A Side Hustle Economy?

Rob Gjertsen — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 00:47:27 +0000

Read Time:1 Minute, 19 Second

It should be fitting that in a supposed side hustle/side-gig economy, that I sit down to blog about just that…

I read a very interesting article recently, the link to which I have since lost track of, where the author discussed how we are globally moving into what they referred to as a side hustle economy, in which much of the population have a side-gig. Or in some cases, they work multiple side-gigs as their whole employment.

While I think there could be a valid argument for some of this, I think the premise that the economy as a whole is going that direction would be a bit misleading. I think the percentage of people with work that is external to their primary employment, is becoming much more prominent, which is something we can see is very prevalent with the advent and wide use of the internet and personal computers. The increased availability of technology and it’s ease of use has made this easier for those who might be interested.

Years ago I used to have my own company on the side, which through an extensive change of events inadvertently lead me to where I work today at SilverPoint.

Business ownership is not for everyone, and it is something that one should put extensive thought and planning into prior to taking the jump. I recommend anyone looking to do so, to seek good professional legal and accounting advice during your initial planning stages.

At the same time, it can be very rewarding and fulfilling given the right environment and balance.

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Ethical and Legal Implications: Controlling Workplace Speech

Rob Gjertsen — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 13:00:28 +0000

Read Time:12 Minute, 9 Second

I want to start this article, by saying this article contains only my personal opinions. I am not qualified to provide legal advise, and highly advise you not to take this as such. If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty aspects of the legal aspect of what I go into here, I recommend you seek legal counsel. Yes, I am discussing the legal aspect of this sugject, but my lawyer made me put this here.

I feel the title of this blog topic is justifiably long. This topic is so deep, emotional, impactful, potentially controversial, and important that I don’t feel the title does the subject itself any level of justice. I’m going to need to re-edit the beginning of this paragraph about 30 times, I’m sure (currently 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 times, and counting).

How do I begin?

We had a potentially conversational subject come up recently in my workplace, which started as a discussion surrounding an article about encryption (a topic in and of itself, that is very deep and potentially controversial – Hi Australia!), which spun into various directions. Some of the directions the conversation led into, I personally felt was unconstructive and inconsiderate, an opinion which I voiced. While I was opposed to the platform with which they communicated the subject, it was the manner with which their opinions were expressed I made direct comment towards.

It was this conversation which then sparked a further conversation about what a business can or cannot (possibly should or should not), indicate to it’s employees what they can and/or cannot (possibly should or should not) say/talk about. This further conversation resulted in me finishing the day pensively at my desk as my laptop rebooted for an update, thinking to myself and asking myself what I felt about all of it. I left the office that evening debating within myself over some of the following questions.

What are my own opinions and/or values on the subject?
What are the legal implications (or limitations) of such action/in-action?
What are the ethical implications of such action/in-action?
What are the resulting implications upon our practiced values with such action/inaction?

My Opinions…

So, I will (long-windedly) start this blog posting, with a disclosure that my stance on these subjects during the conversations had, and as I’m beginning to write this blog, are as follows:

I believe it is / should be within our rights as managers or owners, to outline how it is we expect ourselves and our staff to communicate with others. I believe this comes down to the standards of behaviour and decorum that we set forth within our organisations. Our office is a place of work as well as that of our profession, and should be treated as such and in a professional manner. Be it while communicating via email, instant message, on the phone, by text, or in person, I believe the medium does not change how these behaviours should be practiced.
I believe it is within our rights as managers or owners, to dictate within our organisation that certain subjects should be considered to be out of bounds. While I believe it is our right, I do question whether this to be in the best interest of the organisation and whether I support this practice as a whole.
Another point I feel appropriate to outline at this time, is I am approaching this discussion from an aspect of a privately held company. I am not looking at this from a perspective a public-sector, civil-servant, or other type of environment. I only have so much time people, and this blog posting is really about the cathartic relief it brings me, and the two people who actually read this (one of them, being myself).

Legal Implications…

So let’s continue this (one-sided) conversation with me typing and nobody reading, and let’s start pulling back the layers of the onion.

To begin with, I live in Canada. We do not have ‘Freedom of Speech’ rights as outlined within a First Amendment like our American neighbours to the south. Instead, we are governed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 2 of this Charter, outlines the Fundamental Freedoms which we as Canadian Citizens can enjoy, which are: freedom of conscience and religion; freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; freedom of peaceful assembly; and freedom of association. Obviously for the sake of this post, we are focusing on the freedom part including expression.

However, there are limits to this freedom.

While protecting our Freedom of Expression, the Charter itself permits enforceable limits. Hate speech, obscenity, and defamation are commonly restricted categories of speech in Canada.

So, as I started to peel back the layers of this question as I see it in my mind, my attention turned heavily as to whether this right to Freedom of Expression applied to one’s workplace. Section 2(b) of the Charter, outlines that since state action is required to have the Charter apply to the situation, Section 2(b) protection would not apply to Private property. It is also interesting to note, that the application of Charter is not automatic by the mere fact that the location in question comes within government ownership. There is a further requirement to determine the type of property it is, which falls into a whole other rabbit hole of case law, I don’t feel the need to reference.

One paragraph of Section 2(b) which I found very interesting, while not necessarily directly supporting or refute the arguement, was as follows.

Other relevant questions that that may guide the analysis of whether expression in a particular location is protected under 2(b) are: whether the space is one in which free expression has traditionally occurred; whether the space is in fact essentially private, despite being government-owned, or public; whether the function of the space is compatible with open public expression, or whether the activity is one that requires privacy and limited access; whether an open right to intrude and present one’s message by word or action would be consistent with what is done in the space, or whether it would hamper the activity (Montréal (City), paragraph 76). There is some flexibility in the analysis and allowing public expression in a particular government-property location does not commit the government to such use indefinitely (GVTA, paragraph 44).

So from a Federal perspective, the legal freedom we receive from the Charter of Rights as I interpret them here, would not apply. Next I turned my review, towards Worksafe BC, and the Workplace Rights we have here in British Columbia (I’m sorry other Provinces / Territories, I have only so much time).

The closest thing I could find that would approach piercing this subject is the BC Human Rights Code, specifically Section 7:

Discriminatory publication
7 (1) A person must not publish, issue or display, or cause to be published, issued or displayed, any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that
(a)indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate against a person or a group or class of persons, or
(b)is likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred or contempt because of the race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or age of that person or that group or class of persons.
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply to a private communication, a communication intended to be private or a communication related to an activity otherwise permitted by this Code.

Upon reviewing our Human Rights Code, I feel I have drawn upon a sufficient enough base of materials, to draw a reasonable conclusion to the second question I asked above, (What are the legal implications (or limitations) of such action/in-action?), which to conclude I believe the answer to be none. I believe with more confidence now than before, when I say a workplace is within its legal right to restrict the topics which are/are not discussed within the confines of its own entity, and/or the manner with which they are discussed.

Ethical Implications…

Question 3 I ask above (What are the ethical implications of such action/in-action?) is one that is obviously going to evoke individually biased opinions in each of us, and rightly so.

I like to think I was raised to have stong morals and ethics, and I believe I have maintained them, even in situations where it would have been easier not to. At it’s core as we know, ethics is not always a straight forward subject (in my opinion).

For someone who is obviously strongly opinionated (newsflash) breaking something like this question down to it’s ethical implications and stepping apart from one’s values or opinions is not an easy thing to do. This seperation has been one that I have struggled with as I have written this piece, and even as I am typing this paragraph I continue to do so.

If I approach this specific section as an ethical dilemma, which I suppose in many ways it could be considered to be one, that would indicate that either option would be morally imperative.

I confess, this is the section of this blog article where I have been struck the longest. So far, I’ve been sitting on the next paragraph for a couple months now actually. I find the field of ethics intriguingly oxymoronic, as with many things, if you take a scenario and present the ethical question with a different philisophical viewpoint, you can of course tailor the arguement in your favour. Who know, maybe I’ve done that in this article. But then again, would that be thical…???

If I am to present an impartial discussion here, asking the question of ethics itself is questionable in this case I feel. If I were to approach the ethical consideration from an utilitarianism perspective, one would see the very contrasting perspective when compared to an egoistic approach for example.

For the sake of this section, my sanity, and the absurdity that was my initial thought to break this into a multi-part article, I think the most balanced and non self serving approach to the question, would be to look at this much like the Greek philosophers Plato or Aristotle would have, and consider the Common Good Approach, as I think the tendency towards respect and compassion here is what is needed.

When we define the ethical question as that which is around respect and compassion, I feel my position for controlling Work Place speech is justified and doesn’t conflict with my ethical position on the matter. Remember, my issue taken was not the topic being discussed. The problem I had was the platform which was being used (a company-wide chat group) and the fact that the communication could easily be considered to be destructive and not constructive. While I do know some organizations that restrict subject matter that can be discussed (politics and religion being two obvious hotbeds), that is not a step which I feel is in the best interest of our company, and it was not the road I was travelling in my journey that day, or since.

So if I were to summarize the ethical question at hand (What are the ethical implications of such action/in-action?), when approaching this in a balanced and constructive manner, I feel the approach I chose is an ethical one. Obviously is one is looking at it from a different ethical approach, the outcome or opinion might be different. But I’m writing this, and not them..

The Impact on our Values…

In writing this section on Values, I came to the realization of a few things:

We have done a terrible job within our organization of communicating our Mission and Core Values both internally and externally.

I’m going to work to fix that in the coming months, and try to ensure we keep them at the forefront of how we execute on a daily basis. I hope that in doing so, it has a positive influence on the company as a whole, as well as my coworkers.
While in some ways the most important section, this is probably one of the easiest sections of this entire blog article for me to write.
I feel justified in support of my opinion regarding my stance as originally outlined, given I feel I am not sacrificing any of my values, or the organisation value in that action.

In my work with an industry peer group, we need to publish work articulating and communicating our personal and business values.

When looking over the impact on values below, the position of justification I am taking, is related to my original stance above. I was against the medium with which the discussion was being had, and the manner with which it was had (being destructive, and not constructive).

Impact on Personal Values

Value	Supported or Sacrificed
Family First	Indifferent / Non-Direct Impact
Equality and Respect	Supported
Leadership by Example	Indifferent / Non-Direct Impact
Integrity Above All Else	Supported

Impact upon Business Core Values

Value	Supported or Sacrificed
Leadership	Indifferent
Respect	Supported
Integrity	Supported
Responsibility	Indifferent
Empathy	Supported

My Final Say…

I’m going to close this expression of through, with stating something that I feel is obvious, but given how things can be taken out of context at times, or that an opinion can be taken as fact, I’m going to state the obvious. I am not a lawyer, I am not qualified to provide a legal opinion, and I am certainly no expert on the subject of ethics. If you are looking to create a policy or mandate for your own organisation, while I am very much flattered and would welcome a conversation, I would encourage you to seek legal counsel to protect yourself and organisation, if nothing else.

My hope with publishing this is to make us think about how we communicate, the implications behind the platforms we use to do so, and the manner with which we express said communication. If by the end of this you have actually read through it all, you have not fallen asleep, and maybe you’ve sat back and considered something like this in your life or you have brought up something similar for a discussion of your own, then I think I have accomplished what I was hoping to achieve in writing this.

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Is Indeed and others like it, becoming the Tinder of Job Searching?

Rob Gjertsen — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 13:00:19 +0000

Read Time:2 Minute, 30 Second

I took a call from a recruiter last week, which really got me thinking about job applicants and the job market through which they navigate today. There are many ‘professional interviewers’ out there, and with the combination of the instant gratification mentality we see so much in the world, I’m starting to see and hear it creep into the workplace. In speaking with my peers in the industry, there are many applications and workers, who want everything now. They want the title, they want the benefits, and they want the pay, before they walk through the door.

As a job applicant, I get it. You’re swinging for the best hit you can get, but as an employer this is a hard gamble. It can take employers weeks or months (hopefully not years) to know if that newest addition to the team is capable of doing the job at hand.

As an employer, I also get it. You aren’t sure if this person is a fit for your culture or if they can do the job as good and Susan did. You never had to worry about the orders being processed properly, and maybe you started taking her for granted.

But then again, sometimes we can forget that as a new employee it can take weeks or months (hopefully not years) to know if you fit in this new environment you have joined. It takes time to figure if you belong, and if you feel appreciated, and a really long time to get comfortable with Dan in Customer Service and his issues with personal hygiene and poor taste in music.

When looking over our own job posting as if I were an applicant, an when looking across others, I under the job application fatigue I think many hopeful applicants can develop. Swipe Right if you think you qualify and have a good attitude? Do we need a Tinder-like application for job hunting…??? Should job hunting, and job posting, be more like writing a biography and more like creating a dating profile? Given some of the resumes I have read over the years, I wonder if this method would be an improvement.

Now, I say much of this tongue-in-cheek, but maybe there’s some actual sanity to this madness I speak of.

Many people out there leverage dating sites and the algorithms they incorporate into their match-making to find a potential date, boy/girl-friend, wife/husband, or a one-night stand. If these algorithms are something we are using for something that would seemingly be such an important process/choice in our life (or maybe just that night), would they be good enough for us to leverage for our process of seeking career opportunities?

Or do we simply value our choice in partners that much less / more, than our own career options…???

What would happen if we approach our careers choices like we do our relationships?

Are we doing that already..??

Maybe there’s an app for that…

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Tech Insight: To Backup or To Archive? That Is The Question…

Rob Gjertsen — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 13:00:23 +0000

Read Time:7 Minute, 10 Second

ENTER HAMLET
Hamlet: To be, or not to be, that is the question.

That is the famous lines so much of the population of this world know, about half-way through William Shakespeares play Hamlet.

Hamlet worried about whether to be or not to be. You may be more preoccupied with whether backup or archiving is better for protecting your data, or you may not (I feel like the second of those options, is often the case). You (hopefully) know you need to secure your data, but how? This blog post examines some of the different benefits of both options.

For hundreds of years, businesses have kept important information on paper. They stored important records and notes in nearby filing cabinets for easy access. Sometimes the papers are in the correct folders, sometimes they aren’t (an experience we have all suffered I feel). Sometimes, the folders themselves decide they want to go to Mexico, and make you question whether your parent taught you the correct order of the alphabet. But I digress…

When there are too many files to close the cabinet drawers properly, and I you have sworn ~~too many~~ enough times when trying to yank one out, someone would do a big cleanout. Older, important documents would get boxes for the basement or another storage area. They might still be needed for tax purposes, compliance requirements, or other reasons. But you didn’t need those files readily accessible any longer.

A similar scenario is true of digital records and data. You can backup it up to recover from hardware failure, cyberattack, ransomware, or a disaster event. Or you might choose to archive the data for space management and long-term retrieval needs.

Deciding Between Backup and Archive

When it comes to the right form of data storage, you’ll need to weight the following:

the period of time you need to keep the data
what protection from loss or illicit access your method provides
whether the data can be easily restored or retrieved
how accessible, searchable, and quickly available the data will be
any industry or compliance standards that need to be met

A backup is a copy of your current data. On a regular basis, you’ll make a copy of the data to provide you with a starting point in the event of a disaster, be it malicious or not in nature. You’ll decide how often to backup said data based upon how often the data changes and the important of data currency for yourself, or your business.

Backing up data, an operating system, or application files doesn’t delete the originals. However, your older backup may be deleted when you make the new copy depending on the system and configuration of your backup itself. If it doesn’t destroy the previous copy, it can allow users to go back and review / recovery earlier versions of said data. Make sure you know the impact of your backups, and how they work. If you have a bad assumption on how they work, you may make bad decisions on whether they can help you recover form a loss or not.

It’s not a bad idea to have several backups. In a previous post (Tech Insight: Facebook is for Sharing, Not Storing), I mentioned a ‘3-2-1’ backup strategy. With this method, you have 3 copies of your data, and have a higher tolerance for failure than a less robust method.

Archiving puts a copy of business data into long-term storage. This is the data equivalent of moving that box of files to the basement. In many cases, the archived version becomes the only available copy of that data.

The archives’ permanent record of data may prove useful in future legal disputes. Archived data is often tagged to enable for a streamlined search down the road. Moving information to archive can only improve processing speed and storage capacity of your production computer systems.

While a backup may be overwritten, archived data is generally not altered or deleted (in fact I would argue that it shouldn’t be possible, or at the very least it shouldn’t be part of the standard process). In fact, it’s often physically disconnected from the computer or network. So, you’ll turn to a backup to restore your data if necessary, and to archives to retrieve information data.

Key Takeway

Both backups and archives can prove useful. It’s not going to happen every day, but entire digital archives can be lost if a server drowns in a flash flood. All the paper backups can be burnt to cinders in an electrical fire. That external hard drive could be stolen or crushed by falling debris in a hurricane.

It’s always best to avoid having a single point of failure. Both backing up and archiving data is a smart precaution. Ensuring continuity by preparing for the worst.

My Final Thoughts

I know all too well how easy it is to be complacent with your backups, I see it happen all the time. But I have also lived it, and wrote about it in the article I Told My Pregnant Wife, I Lost The Photos here on my blog.

I obviously have a unique, and very extensive history of experiencing the impact that data loss can have upon individuals and businesses, thankfully. I have seen it put companies out of business, and put incredible strain on relationships. It’s because of my experiences that I consider data and its preservation priceless, and it’s why personally, I have a 6-layered approach to protecting my data:

Original Source (My Laptop)
If my laptop dies, I know that through my iCloud and SilverSync backups (see Item 2 below), I can go to any Apple Store, and be back up (pun intended?) and running fully functional with all my files and applications within just a couple hours. And yes, I have done this as a full test before, and while I did sweat a little, it worked perfectly.
Initial Backup: iCloud (Personal) and SilverSync (Business)
I know that if I delete or lose a file somehow, I can recover them easily. iCloud is limited in it’s ability for this, however SilverSync (offered by our good friends over at SilverPoint System Ltd.) allows for versioning, and reverting back to previous copies of files as needed back to the original. It’s also Canadian based, so none of your data is kept outside of Canada (a requirement for businesses going to electronic storage, that is often overlooked).
Encrypted Local Backup: Airport Time Capsule (Entire Laptop)
This is my second line of defence for file-level recovery and restoration for any of my personal data. It works well, and I wish Apple had not stopped selling these because (in my opinion) as a personal backup solution they are great. Plus, they provide double-duty as an Access Point (yes, they are monstrous).
Encrypted Local Archives: Network Attached Storage (Personal)
I take snapshots of all my personal data at periodic points in time, and archive them on my Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. These snapshots provide me a recovery point, that should my first 3 levels of protection fail to allow me to recover something, I can always revert back to these archives as a failsafe.
Backup of NAS Archives: Cloud Storage Provider
Three of the first four methods above are susceptible to failure should we have a disaster in our home. The iCloud and SilverSync backups are independent of both my home, our offices, and our local datacenter. But things do happen, and my ultimate failsafe to cover me against an issue with iCloud, SilverSync, and a facility failure is my Archived Cloud Storage (it costs me less than $10 / month currently). It would take a while to pull down an archive, and restore it to a system, but it’s doable in my most extreme circumstance.

Honestly, if this is how I’m restoring data, I have other more pressing matters to be upset about, I’m sure. Either that, or I really have fled to Mexico…

So for anyone who has made it all the way to the end of this article, congratulations. You are the only person who has.

But in all seriousness, I hope all of these topics I have mentioned lately make us all stop and think about our backup or archiving strategy, and if nothing else hopefully saves someone somewhere from losing data that is important to them.

Not sure how you should or want to proceed, or if your methodology is sufficient for your risk tollerence? Reach out to me via Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn and I’d be happy to discuss.

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Business – Gjertsen [dot] ca

A Side Hustle Economy?

Ethical and Legal Implications: Controlling Workplace Speech

My Opinions…

Legal Implications…

Ethical Implications…

The Impact on our Values…

My Final Say…

Is ​Indeed and others like it, becoming the Tinder of Job Searching?

Tech Insight: To Backup or To Archive? That Is The Question…

Deciding Between Backup and Archive

Key Takeway

My Final Thoughts

Is Indeed and others like it, becoming the Tinder of Job Searching?