For cities, cultural life is a powerful driver of development. Here are the winning elements of an infrastructure overhaul.
Culture is an essential part of every community and a powerful engine for community development. It is simultaneously a vector of social transformation, economic growth, territorial development and improvement of citizens’ quality of life.
Culture increases the feeling of belonging to a community and acts as an attraction factor for a territory. For all these reasons, ensuring the cultural vitality of our municipalities is essential.
To achieve this, it is important to have cultural infrastructures that are continually evolving. Building public libraries, performance halls and exhibition centres means providing meeting places for artists, cultural organizations, citizens and visitors. But it also means enhancing our heritage treasures and giving our cities a strong identity.
In a context of obsolete municipal buildings, increased interregional migration and widening demographic gaps, many cities must rethink their cultural infrastructures.
Four issues worth highlighting
When developing cultural infrastructure projects, consider four main issues.
Culture
To assess the necessity of a cultural infrastructure project, you must first understand the local context it will evolve in and conduct a diagnosis to identify the community’s real needs.
You can do this through cultural mapping and public consultations. It is important to ensure that the project you want to develop reflects a common vision and complements the existing cultural offering.
This is all the more necessary since, in some cases, you need to consider taking the lead to design an innovative project from scratch.
Territory
To successfully integrate into its environment, a cultural infrastructure must be coherent and relevant to the territory where it is to be built.
A project’s coherence requires an architecture that respects and enhances the natural environment, heritage context and urban planning. Its relevance is defined by its integration into the social and urban fabric.
Economics
A cultural infrastructure project must be grounded in the economic context. In a precarious economic situation, it is often difficult to move forward: construction costs soar, funding becomes difficult to secure and public opinion is often critical.
At the same time, cultural infrastructure can have the power to function as an engine for economic revitalisation and constitute an opportunity rather than a constraint.
Quality of life
The success of a cultural project depends on a community’s engagement. The social acceptability of a project is usually achieved when you have considered the three previous issues. However, social acceptability increases when you take time to consult a wide range of actors and sectors in addition to the cultural sector.
Ultimately, a project’s benefits will speak to its viability. Visiting a cultural facility is a way for people to exercise their cultural citizenship, broaden their minds, improve their quality of life and increase their sense of belonging to their municipality.
Four conditions for success
Based on our experience with many different approaches and by analyzing the successes and failures of other projects, we have identified four elements that contribute to success.
An innovative project
A cultural infrastructure project must of course meet a need and create value. But above all, it must be inspiring and express a desire for novelty. Its innovative nature must inspire a community to dream. People are only too keen to support an ambitious vision!
A multi-issue solution
Cultural infrastructure projects are typically led by cultural professionals who have a well-defined objective. But to convince a community, stakeholders and elected officials, these projects must simultaneously address several needs, including social, urban or economic revitalisation issues. While this broadened approach will certainly be more complex, it will also be highly beneficial.
Strong leadership
Successful major projects are led by unifying, credible and persevering promoters. Project governance requires rigorous process management by seasoned professionals. Yet, the vision and determination of an inspirational leader is what will drive a project to succeed and rally all parties.
A project that strengthens a territory’s identity
A successful cultural infrastructure contributes to a territory’s vitality while enhancing its specific features and respecting its core values. A cultural infrastructure contributes to citizens’ sense of belonging and acts as an attractiveness factor by creating friendly and innovative living environments.
Pay attention to governance
To the above issues and conditions for success, we must add project governance. Good governance cannot save a bad project, but bad governance can kill a good project! From the outset, you must pay particular attention to defining the appropriate decision-making bodies and management mechanisms.
17 May 2023 | Written by :
Justin Maheu is a management consulting expert at Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton.
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The Grant Thornton International IFRS team has published the 2023 version of its IFRS Example Interim Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements 2023.
The IFRS Example Interim Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements 2023 have been reviewed and updated to reflect changes in IAS 34 Interim Financial Reporting and in other IFRS that are effective for the year ending December 31, 2023 and that have been issued prior to April 30, 2023.
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Updated on February 23, 2024
There is nothing worse than employees who let their work frustrations fester without talking about it with their managers. “Resenteeism” can be damaging.
Resenteeism is a new term describing employees who show resentment towards their employer but don’t dare talk about it openly—except with their colleagues. This phenomenon can become contagious and quickly undermine the work climate. That’s why employers must be mindful about resenteeism and find ways to identify and address it before it’s too late.
Presenteeism and resenteeism, how to distinguish them?
Presenteeism leads to a loss of productivity because employees show up to work physically but not mentally. Resenteeism however can cause employees to check out more permanently if an employer fails to spot it. That’s because resentful employees can remain productive for some time even while continually blaming their employer and sharing their bad moods with colleagues.
In a labour shortage context, it’s especially important to understand what may be displeasing employees and try to redress the situation to leverage their skills in the best possible conditions. As well, maintaining a healthy and pleasant work climate is essential for retaining the finest talent in your business.
How do you recognize that something’s amiss?
With the rise of telework and remote management, resenteeism can be even more difficult to identify as it is not always visually perceptible. The key is communication. It’s important to encourage manager-employee exchanges in groups and individually:
- Listen, take an interest in what employees experience on a daily basis;
- Stay open and take time to receive suggestions and comments from everyone;
- Set aside time during the week to speak with employees, one-on-one and in groups, and give them a space to talk about their life and work issues.
You probably know the saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The time you take to listen and discuss with your teams is an investment that will save you significant costs in the medium and long run.
This aspect of the employer-manager-employee relationship should even be covered under your occupational health and safety strategy. Just as you maintain your business’s equipment and tools, it is essential that you look after your employees’ physical and mental health.
What are the solutions to help solve the problem?
Once you identify a resenteeism problem in your team, you must determine its root causes and then propose solutions best suited to the context and needs. If the dissatisfaction expressed by employees is directly tied to their professional life, you can be flexible in improving the situation, just as you are with presenteeism. For example, you could:
- change certain tasks while factoring in the impact this will have on the team’s productivity or work climate;
- get employees to commit to correcting the situation by guiding them towards available resources;
- follow up with employees, encourage them and formally recognize their progress;
- provide employees with opportunities for job development by encouraging them to update and develop their skills.
If the cause of resenteeism stems from an employee’s personal life, you can consider alternative solutions, such as more flexible working conditions for a better work-life balance, or prescribed preventive leave to avert a longer absence.
What are the benefits of considering resentment?
Prolonged or pervasive, resenteeism adds to a toxic work climate. In the medium and long run, it will undermine your employees’ retention and productivity.
Recognizing employee resenteeism will help you circumscribe it and find solutions faster to eradicate it. This way, you will contribute to:
- employee cohesion and collaboration;
- better intra-team productivity;
- a higher rate of employee retention and commitment.
Don’t remain passive before this phenomenon, which tends to spread. As a manager and employer, getting ahead of the problem will allow you to have an easier time correcting any resenteeism and thereby avoid major collateral damage.
24 Apr 2023 | Written by :
Jean-François Boudreault is a RH expert at Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton.
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Innovation is more than a buzzword. How do you foster success and stand out in a highly competitive marketplace?
More than ever, innovation is crucial to the success of businesses, whether to stand out from the competition or adapt to the new realities of a changing market. However, based on that, how do you identify opportunities to innovate? Where do you start and what steps do you take to set up winning conditions?
1 – Know your business well
First, you need to get a specific picture of your business.
• What are its strengths and weaknesses?
• Where does it stand versus the competition?
• What is your vision for your business for the next two or three years?
Make room for innovation in your business when designing your strategic planning. Allocate a budget for innovative ideas to allow for experimentation, trial and error. This is often the way to create successful projects that will increase your revenues.
2 – Study market trends
In addition to knowing your business well, you also need to know your market and competitors, here and elsewhere in the world. What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are the market trends and consumer needs?
For example, demographics are changing, mobility is increasing and, in recent years, environmental concerns have led to an increased demand for greener products. Will these aspects affect the demand for your products and services?
To keep up to date with the evolution of your business sector, you can subscribe to newsletters, attend trade shows, and talk to people you work with in your business sector, for instance.
By anticipating your clients’ needs, your business will be better able to remain relevant and appealing to them.
3 – Assessing your business’s processes
By analyzing the way you work, in other words, your processes, you may be able to identify weaknesses and discover new ways of doing things that will make you more efficient and productive.
In some cases, for example, a manual process that is time- and energy-consuming may be replaced with automation, which is much more efficient. That could be a good time to leverage the potential of new technologies for your business.
4 – Involve your employees
While a culture of innovation must of course be led by a business’s owners, it must also involve employees. By creating an environment where they can share their ideas and by encouraging innovation, you will see new development opportunities emerge, e.g., these could include launching a new product, streamlining processes or improving the customer experience, to name a few.
In addition, by involving your employees from the start, change management will probably be less burdensome, especially if you make sure you properly support your employees and all stakeholders in the new ways of doing things. As a bonus, your business’s culture of innovation will more likely attract and retain the best talent.
5 – Listen to your clients’ feedback
Your clients are an excellent source of information for finding ways to innovate. By listening carefully to their comments and suggestions, you can discover various ways to improve your products and services. If your clients frequently complain about a problem or shortcoming, see it as an opportunity to create a new product or service.
Feedback can also suggest new ideas for existing products. By offering your clients innovative solutions, you’ll be leagues ahead of your competitors and be seen as a leader in your industry.
Look beyond technology
Yes, technology is important, but it is not the only way to innovate. Innovation can be about marketing, business models, and much more. For example, you might find a new approach to your social media strategy or work with a new business to share resources.
Innovation is essential to the survival and success of businesses operating in an ever changing world. By embracing a culture of innovation, your business will stand out from the competition and stay in tune with your clients’ changing needs. That’s how you create more opportunities to innovate!
06 Apr 2023 | Written by :
