Tag: Workplace Culture

Posted on

News You Can Use: 1/9/2019

  • Stanford professor: “The workplace is killing people and nobody cares”

    There is a tremendous amount of epidemiological literature that suggests that diabetes, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome—and many health-relevant individual behaviors such as overeating and underexercising and drug and alcohol abuse–come from stress.

    And third, there is a large amount of data that suggests the biggest source of stress is the workplace. So that’s how Chapman can stand up and make the statement that CEOs are the cause of the health care crisis: You are the source of stress, stress causes chronic disease, and chronic disease is the biggest component of our ongoing and enormous health care costs.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90282735/the-workplace-is-killing-people-and-nobody-cares

  • Amazon, to Win in Booming Rural India, Reinvents Itself

    Amazon’s efforts here face direct competition from Walmart Inc. and local startups, who are all trying to capture customers jumping directly to e-commerce thanks to the recent rollout of 4G mobile internet across India. Amazon expects the number of online shoppers in India to triple in the next few years, most of them from rural areas. More than 80% of its new customers this year are from outside India’s biggest cities, it said.

    The Seattle giant has modified its app to work with inexpensive smartphones and patchy cellular networks. It has added hundreds of thousands of Indian language descriptions of products and videos for those who can’t read, and it has opened physical Amazon stores to walk people through the process of ordering online. It brought on tens of thousands of local distributors to deliver packages, often by bicycle down dirt roads, where it will accept cash or digital payment on delivery.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-win-in-booming-rural-india-reinvents-itself-11546196176

  • Corporations are getting political… and it sucks
  • Amazon Promised Drone Delivery in Five Years… Five Years Ago

    Of course, there’s nothing wrong with dreaming big, especially when it comes to tech that has the potential to help humanity. But this 60 Minutes segment about Amazon’s vaporware delivery drones never should’ve seen the light of day. Drone delivery is certainly a technological possibility today just as it was in 2013, but just like so many other billionaire-led pipedreams (anyone remember the Hyperloop?), the hurdles are more political than technological. As the Associated Press notes, federal rules that would allow drones to be flown outside of an operator’s line of sight are probably at least 10 years away.

    https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/amazon-promised-drone-delivery-in-five-years-five-ye-1830818625

  • Want to Be a Great Leader? Here’s Why Personal Mastery Is the Single Best Place to Start.

    “One of the tragedies of workplace politics and turf wars is that nobody wants them, but we all get caught up in them and feel powerless about it,” says Hughes. “We assign blame to someone else, or the organization as a whole.”

    The goal, according to Hughes, is for executives to learn to recognize ways they’re inadvertently and involuntarily perpetuating this dynamic. By becoming comfortable with self-diagnosing their contribution to the problem and talking about turf wars with their staff and colleagues in a more transparent way, they can begin to reduce the powerlessness people feel over it.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/310795

Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 11/28/2018

  • Managers, consider these things before you give someone a promotion

    Moving into a managerial role is usually considered a high point in one’s career. It’s a sign that the company recognizes your leadership potential. In actuality, being a good employee doesn’t automatically translate to being a good leader. That transition requires learning a lot of new skills, sometimes from scratch.

    When new managers struggle, so do their teams. The likelihood of losing employees under a struggling manager is high. And that gets costly when you look at all that goes into replacing employees. Statistics on the cost of replacing a new hire run from tens of thousands of dollars to 1.5 to two times the employee’s annual salary.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90268727/managers-consider-these-things-before-give-you-give-someone-a-promotion

  • You Didn’t Get the Promotion: Now What? 3 Options For Moving On When You Can’t Move Up

    Forget society’s formula. Ask yourself what you want. Do you really want to sink more hours into a job that may or may not have anything to do with your passions and beliefs? Is managing a small chain of stores specializing in Halloween costumes for pets worth the extra twenty-plus hours of your existence you’ll put in? If it is, great – but don’t buy into the notion that you need to constantly curb-stomp your fellow man to chase something you never wanted to begin with.

    https://www.primermagazine.com/2018/earn/didnt-get-promotion

  • The connection paradox: Why are workplaces more isolating than ever? | Dan Schawbel
  • How to Be Wrong Without Losing Face

    When JFK went on national television and took full responsibility for the Bay of Pigs disaster, the nation didn’t throw up their hands in collective horror and ask themselves how they could have possible elected such a moron to high office. The opposite was true. His popularity rose. Far from losing the trust of the citizenry, he gained even more of it. There’s something inspiring about a leader who can come right out and confess their faults.

    The reasons for this aren’t hard to discern. For one, you become relatable, because there isn’t a single person on the planet who hasn’t been in your shoes. Secondly, letting down your guard, showing vulnerability, is attractive and inspiring. Instead of locking the door to your soul, you let folks in.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/321911

  • Half of Jobs at Amazon’s Two New Headquarters Won’t Be Tech Positions

    New York City officials said during a presentation Tuesday night that of the at least 25,000 jobs that the online retailer plans to bring to a new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, 12,500 will be in tech.

    The other half will be “administrative jobs, custodial staff, HR, all those things,” said Eleni Bourinaris-Suarez, vice president of government and community relations at the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which helped broker the Queens deal with Amazon.

    Virginia officials said they expect the same job breakdown for Amazon’s new headquarters in Northern Virginia. The company has also promised to bring at least 25,000 jobs to that site.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/half-of-queens-amazon-jobs-wont-be-tech-positions-1542829226

Photo by Caleb Frith on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 8/15/2018

The Source: Burned Out: Joey Lombardi

  • 5 Signs Your Employees are Nearing Burnout

    Forty-four percent of workers said a serious business mistake or shortcoming has been the result of a miscommunication at some point in their professional experience. And 18 percent said that miscommunication lost a sale — a third of those sales valued above $100,000.

    For efficiency and profitability’s sake, miscommunication is one thing you don’t want running rampant around the workplace. Sadly, when employees are overworked and overstressed, miscommunications are inevitable — and they’re often a sign that you need to hire more people, clean up processes or redistribute existing projects from certain employees.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/317535

  • Are middle children really going extinct? Here’s a reality check

    Sadly, statistics from Pew Research back up this up. In honor of Middle Child Day, which is today, the research organization parsed some of the demographic data around family size to dig deeper into the question of middle child extinction. Broadly speaking, middle children in America are a lot less common than they were 30 years ago. In 1976, 65% of American mothers aged 40-44 had three or more children, Pew writes. By 2016, that number had fallen to just 38%.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90216974/are-middle-children-really-going-extinct-heres-a-reality-check

  • Is War With China Inevitable?
  • Why You Should Get Good at Small Talk

    It’s quite beautifully phrased that “Small talk brings us into the present moment with one another.” You might have been thinking about two different things, or feeling separated by unfamiliarity, but even a point of contact over your favorite coffee flavor (uh, mocha?) can make you feel like you’re sharing an experience with someone. A small experience. Big experiences come with big talks, and you will build to that together.

    https://lifehacker.com/why-you-should-get-good-at-small-talk-1828174579

  • How to Actually Make Money as a Travel Blogger or Lifestyle Brand

    Before you start dreaming up an online course, ask yourself how to best serve your community. “It’s actually been proven that only 3 percent of people will ever complete the course. I don’t want people spending money on my stuff if they’re not going to implement,” she shared. Instead, she asked herself, What’s the best way to get in front of them and make it so valuable that they absolutely love it? She went on to create experiences and workshops that helped people learn and implement right away.

    “Get back to basics — to caring about your community and your customers and asking them all the time, ‘What matters to you? What’s important?’ And then [work backwards and create a solution] for them.”

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/317848

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 7/11/2018

The Source: Work Smart? Joey Lombardi

  • ‘Work Smart, Not Hard’ Is a Lie: Why Smart Is Nice But It’s Hard that Matters

    High performers typically work more hours than average performers. Simple logic explains why. If two equally skilled and motivated people engage in an activity and one person spends 25 percent more time on it, that person will produce more results, on average. The additional time they invest at work creates a virtuous cycle. More work means more learning has occurred, so that person becomes more capable and potentially a better contributor in the future. Her higher performance from her additional hours becomes known in the organization, so she receives additional opportunities to show her skills. She might get more exposure to senior leaders who can serve as sponsors or mentors. Her success isn’t guaranteed because she’s put in more hours, but she will be more likely to succeed than those who work fewer hours.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/315381

  • It’s official: No one cares about your “cool” office perks

    Those funky perks employers tout as supposed emblems of a great work culture are actually empty totems that employees don’t really care about.

    “One of the top factors most likely to keep professionals at their company for 5+ years,” LinkedIn researchers write in a summary of the findings shared this morning with Fast Company, “is having strong workplace benefits such as PTO, parental leave, and health insurance (44%). In comparison, the least enticing factor for keeping professionals at their current companies is having in-office perks such as food, game rooms, and gyms (19%).”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40589970/its-official-no-one-cares-about-your-cool-office-perks

  • Uber ruined their careers. Should it pay a price?
  • Higher testosterone levels are apparently driving men to luxury goods

    A new study published this week by a collaboration of very serious academic institutions has come up with a finding that’s equal parts trivial and amusing: higher testosterone levels in men have been shown to stimulate a higher preference for luxury or status symbol goods. Authored by researchers at Caltech, the Wharton School, INSEAD, ZRT Laboratory, and the Sorbonne University, the study suggests there’s a measurable causal relationship between the hormone testosterone and a person’s desire for higher-status brands and goods.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/4/17534124/caltech-testosterone-luxury-status-symbols-study-report

  • When diversity training backfires

    “While the capacity for white people to sustain challenges to our racial positions is limited — and, in this way, fragile — the effects of our responses are not fragile at all; they are quite powerful, because they take advantage of historical and institutional power and control. We wield this power and control in whatever way is most useful in the moment to protect our positions. If we need to cry so that all the resources rush back to us and attention is diverted away from a discussion of our racism, then we will cry (a strategy most commonly employed by white middle-class women). If we need to take umbrage and respond with righteous outrage, then we will take umbrage. If we need to argue, minimize, explain, play devil’s advocate, pout, tune out, or withdraw to stop the challenge, then we will.”

    https://www.cio.com/article/3286623/it-industry/when-diversity-training-backfires.html

Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash