Category: Industry News

Posted on

News You Can Use: 10/30/2019


Photo by Mihai Surdu on Unsplash

  • Why you should ditch team building activities and just let people get to work

    Forget the rock-climbing excursions; instead, give team members meaty tasks to accomplish together (and I’m talking about real work, not fake tasks here). The most effective way to strengthen team bonds is by having people work together and accomplish results as a group. Winning the three-legged race may be exhilarating (or embarrassing for those who don’t love the cheesy), but overcoming a work challenge or solving a thorny problem is a much more effective way to get your team closer together.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90408773/4-things-you-should-do-instead-of-team-building-activities

  • The Phone Call Isn’t Dead, It’s Evolving

    Talking was the most popular way to communicate via cellphone in the fall of 2012, with 94% of survey respondents having done so in the prior week, according to consumer-research firm MRI-Simmons. By the spring of 2019, talking had fallen to least popular, behind texting, emailing, posting to social media and using chat apps, with just 45% reporting doing it in the prior week. In other words, less than half had used their phone for an actual phone call.

    Multiple people I interviewed said when the phone rings unexpectedly, they assume someone has died. But some app developers and investors think voice communication over the phone isn’t the problem, just the act of making a phone call itself. Between the rise of smart speakers and Apple’s wireless AirPod earbuds, and the ubiquity of group messaging and video chat, they’re betting now might be the time for voice to make a comeback.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-phone-call-isnt-dead-its-evolving-11571457605

  • What causes an economic recession?
  • Zuckerberg defends Facebook as bastion of ‘free expression’ in speech

    Zuckerberg defended the company’s decision to allow misinformation in political advertising on the platform, despite high-profile pushback against the policy.

    “Given the sensitivity around political ads, I’ve considered whether we should stop allowing them altogether,” Zuckerberg said. “But political ads are an important part of voice – especially for local candidates, up-and-coming challengers and advocacy groups that may not get much media attention otherwise. Banning political ads favors incumbents and whoever the media covers.”

    And he also seemed to brazenly rewrite the site’s beginnings, which were reportedly as a “hot or not” game for Harvard students to play, as a platform to share perspectives after the beginning of the Iraq war.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-free-expression-speech

  • Debt-ridden GE abruptly freezes pensions on 20,000 employees

    The company announced today that it was going to pre-fund about $4-5 billion of estimated minimum ERISA funding requirements for 2021 and 2022 and offer a limited time lump-sum payment option to approximately 100,000 eligible former employees who have not started getting their monthly pension payments yet.

    According to GE, these moves will cut its pension deficit by about $5-$8 billion and its industrial net debt by approximately $4-$6 billion.

    Wall Street seemed to like the decision. GE’s stock was $8.63, up 6 cents or 0.70%, in pre-market trading.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90414035/debt-ridden-ge-abruptly-freezes-20000-employee-pensions

Posted on

News You Can Use: 10/16/2019


Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash

  • Scratching the Itch: Knowing When to Leave a Job or to Stay

    Because talent can be difficult to come by, an employer should do something that recognizes your worth. Despite it being in the HR department’s best interests to retain talent, incentives are actually skewed to get employees to leave. Employees more quickly leave “incentivizing” companies in favor of companies that help them visualize their path within the organization.

    It’s hard to walk away from a clearly communicated path to success. That’s the bet that companies are making in the HR space. For example, Instructure introduced Bridge, an employee development platform that creates a visual roadmap for success. Bridge also connects employees with mentors, but the real benefit is that it allows each employee to visualize what he has to do in the next six months to get promoted to get where he ultimately wants to be in his career in the next three years.

    “In the 1990s and early 2000s, customer centricity was used by corporations who wanted to effectively connect with and understand their clients,” noted Dan Goldsmith, CEO of Instructure. “We see a similar focus by companies today who want to be more employee-centric.”

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/340220

  • Meetings aren’t the biggest time waster at work. This thing is

    “There’s been an explosion in the number of software applications available,” says Jody Shapiro, Productiv founder and former head of Google Analytics. “The struggle is in the organic adoption of these tools. Ten years ago, everybody used Microsoft Office and Adobe tools. Today, SaaS [software as a service] vendors are selling directly to business units, and we are experiencing a sprawl of applications meant to increase productivity. The problem is that different departments are using different tools, and that slows everyone down.”

    Shapiro says the biggest challenge is redundancy. “Within a company, the legal team might use Microsoft Word, the engineers are using Google Docs and the marketing team is using Dropbox Paper. If you want to find a document, you may need to check five different tools. This is a massive productivity killer, and it can impact morale.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90411686/meetings-arent-the-biggest-time-waster-at-work-this-thing-is

  • Talking Tech with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
  • Millennial and Gen Z employment: 7 things young talent wants in a job

    Working in the field often requires on the spot decision-making. Without a supervisor hovering over you, one of the most essential skills field service technicians have to master is how best to solve problems. Armed with tools like augmented reality interfacing and video tutorials, service technicians are given the freedom and trust to reach the best conclusion for each customer.

    This kind of autonomous work environment demands independent thinking, keen insight, clever workarounds, and confidence in one’s own abilities. Millennials, accustomed to seeking out information just within reach of their fingertips, are ideally suited to handle the pressure and reap the rewards of satisfying tough customer requests. And this in turn explains the trend towards a gig economy.

    https://www.the-future-of-commerce.com/2019/10/02/millennial-and-gen-z-employment-wants/

Posted on

News You Can Use: 10/9/2019


Photo by Anton Darius | @theSollers on Unsplash

  • Jenny Odell on why we need to learn to do nothing: ‘It’s a reminder that you’re alive’

    Many commentators have zeroed in on our relationship with technology as the source of the problem: Newport advocates a 30-day “digital declutter”, while others suggest using apps to monitor or restrict screen time. But Odell sees that approach as too limited, not only inadequately isolating tech as the cause but also framing it as the answer. Her proposal is that we train ourselves to assume a different perspective, one that allows us to see familiar things in a new way and in the process find momentary relief.

    “When I try to articulate it, it sounds really abstract, but I think it’s actually very practical,” Odell says. “If you think about your mindset when you go to a place you’ve never been, especially on vacation, the way that you look at things is quite different than how you would normally look at things while on your way to work. A lot of what I’m describing is trying to apply that same mindset to things that you’ve seen many times – you will always be surprised.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/27/jenny-odell-on-why-we-need-to-learn-to-do-nothing-its-a-reminder-that-youre-alive

  • Blockchain simplified: How it eliminates the middleman
  • Willingness to learn is number one skill when hiring says IBM chief

    In an interview with Bloomberg TV, she talked about what she looks for when recruiting. ‘’The number one thing we hire for is now is propensity to learn. It doesn’t matter about age. If you think about tech, the half life of a skill is less than five years. If I hire you with a skill today, it’s not going to matter in a very short period of time. I want you to be curious and want to learn’’.

    IBM has invested heavily in training and education, and Rometty says 8 out of 10 employees are equipped with the skills needed for the future. ‘’It starts with telling people – be transparent. Will your skill be in demand in the future? Is it abundant or scarce?’’

    http://hrmasia.com/willingness-to-learn-is-number-one-skill-when-hiring-says-ibm-chief/

  • Can Bullet Journaling Save You?

    Basically, you take a journal, number the pages, and create an index so you can find everything. From there, you can list tasks, write diary entries, and build out a minimalist calendar. Like CrossFit, Paleo, and other hyper-efficient communities, Bullet Journaling—or BuJo, as it is known online—has developed its own vocabulary. Participants identify as Bullet Journalists. There’s a daily log, a monthly log, and something called a future log. There are symbols for notes, events, and tasks, and additional symbols to indicate when a task has been completed, scheduled, moved to another section, or deemed irrelevant. (The method takes its name from the bullet point, as well as the word’s suggestion of speed.) There are collections of related material, like languages you’ve failed to learn or miles you haven’t run. There are trackers for anything you feel compelled to track: sleep, workouts, mood, alcohol. Each day, you practice “rapid logging.” Each month, you review everything you wrote down and move only what is meaningful to the next monthly spread, in a spine-straightening process called migration.

    https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/can-bullet-journaling-save-you

Posted on

News You Can Use: 10/2/2019


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  • Team Productivity: Striking a Balance Between Being a Boss and Friend

    “All strong relationships are built on honesty,” writes Tamara Luzajic for Humanity. “And just like a good friend would tell you when you are doing something wrong no matter how much it hurts, a good manager will use open communication to help employees become better at what they do.”

    “Honesty is one of the best principles you can use to establish a healthy balance between caring your employees and leading them professionally,” adds Luzajic. “The closer you get to someone on a personal level, the harder it becomes to give them honest feedback as employees.”

    Additionally, build trust with each of your employees. For example, grant them autonomy and flexible schedules. Trust in your employee builds resilience — shows you rely on them enough to work where, when, and however they prefer. As a result, this will create a more positive and productive culture.

    And, if someone needs to take a day off because they’re attending to a sick family member, don’t freak out on them. Give them the day off without penalizing them.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/338651

  • The hackable technology that worries even a legendary con man
  • How is Meritocracy Damaging Our Economy?

    Interesting podcast about how high-achieving workers are stuck on a treadmill that they can’t get off of. If you are reading this blog, this probably hits home. Not a bad way to spend 30 minutes.

    https://beta.prx.org/stories/291960
    Thanks LJP!

  • For millennials, unlimited vacation isn’t always a perk

    But unlimited vacation policies can be a Trojan horse, particularly for young people who are newer to the workforce and less likely to take time off in the first place. On the surface, the offer seems generous, even altruistic; it implies employers trust their employees and encourage work-life balance. In practice, however, “unlimited vacation” is a misnomer. Employees often take fewer vacation days if their company has an unlimited policy, since there’s no framework for how many days they can—or should—take off.

    Managers can decline to approve time off, especially if there’s an implicit assumption that nobody can take more than two to three weeks of vacation per year. And when they leave the company, employees can’t cash out on the paid time off that they have accrued (which is required by law in a number of states). For workers in their twenties who are more likely to job hop and let vacation time go unused, that can mean foregoing a sizable chunk of cash.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90398810/for-millennials-unlimited-vacation-isnt-always-a-perk

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/25/2019


Photo by Frank Busch on Unsplash

  • Hey, Jeff Bezos: I work for Amazon – and I’m protesting against your firm’s climate inaction

    Since late last year, a group of workers within Amazon have been organizing to push the company to radically reduce its carbon emissions. Yesterday, they announced a major new action: on 20 September, Amazon workers around the world will walk out of their offices to join the Global Climate Strike. So far, more than 1,000 workers have pledged to participate. The organizers have three demands. They want the company to commit to zero emissions by 2030, to have zero custom cloud computing contracts with fossil fuel companies and to spend zero dollars on funding climate-denying lobbyists and politicians.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/10/jeff-bezos-amazon-climate-strike-aecj

  • Dozens of Google employees say they were retaliated against for reporting harassment

    After the retaliation document began circulating internally in late April, Google employees continued to use internal listservs to share similar retaliation cases related to sexual harassment and discrimination. In one anonymous mailing list dedicated to discussing mental health, at least seven stories about retaliation were shared in just the past few months, according to a source.

    Since many employees are reluctant to report HR violations through official channels, they have turned to anonymous platforms like these mailing lists for communicating with their colleagues. But some unofficial platforms for candid discussions, such as a previously employee-run newsletter for sharing complaints, are now being overseen by HR, which sources say is making matters worse.

    “In general, there’s a culture at Google where people were afraid to talk to HR — and in many cases for good reason,” Liz Fong-Jones, a former Google engineer and activist on internal company issues who said she faced retaliation for her activism, told Recode.

    https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/9/20853647/google-employee-retaliation-harassment-me-too-exclusive

  • What Tech Leaders Really Want
  • Government Orders Google: Let Employees Speak Out

    The NLRB’s settlement comes in response to a pair of complaints about Google’s reaction to workplace dissent. The settlement orders Google to inform current employees that they are free to speak to the media—without having to ask Google higher-ups for permission—on topics such as workplace diversity and compensation, regardless of whether Google views such topics as inappropriate for the workplace.

    The settlement was approved by an agency director this week, according to a document. It is slated to go into effect after an appeals period.

    The NLRB action is the second formal reminder to Google in a week to stay within the law. Last week, Google’s YouTube unit settled an investigation into alleged violations of child-privacy law with a $170 million fine and an admonishment from regulators not to track the internet activity of children under age 13.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/government-orders-google-let-employees-speak-out-11568284582