Leading by example to close the gender pay gap
Leslie Stahl, 60 Minutes
Unequal pay between men and women is a persistent problem in the United States. Salesforce, a tech company with 30,000 employees, is doing its part to change that.
Why Do Workers Feel So Unhappy?
Bourree Lam, The Atlantic
Just one-fifth of employees report believing that their workplaces strongly value them.
Being unhappy at work is such a cliché, and unfortunately for companies it also looks like an expensive one. Research on worker happiness has linked it to 12 percent more productivity, and businesses with happy employees beat their peers by 3.8 percent in the stock market. A Gallup report tallies up the cost of unhappy, disengaged employees to the U.S. economy at $350 billion annually due to lost productivity.
How much is an hour worth? The war over the minimum wage
Peter C. Baker, The Guardian
It is no coincidence that this framing tracks closely with the way the minimum wage is typically discussed by academic economists. In the US’s national organs of respectable public discourse – New York Times op-eds, Vox podcasts and Atlantic explainers – the minimum-wage debate is conducted almost entirely by economists or by journalists steeped in the economics literature. At first glance, this seems perfectly natural, just as it may seem completely natural that the debate is framed exclusively in terms of employment and pay. After all, the minimum wage is obviously an economic policy: shouldn’t economists be the people best equipped to discuss its effects?
But to historians of the future, this may well appear as a telling artifact of our age. Just imagine, for a moment, combing through a pile of articles debating slavery, or child labour, in which almost every participant spoke primarily in the specialised language of market exchange and incentives, and buttressed their points by wielding competing spreadsheets, graphs and statistical formulas. This would be, I think we can all agree, a discussion that was limited to the point of irrelevance. Our contemporary minimum-wage debates are similarly blinkered. In its reflexive focus on just a few variables, it risks skipping over the fundamental question: how do we value work? And is the answer determined by us – by politics and politicians – or by the allegedly immutable laws of economics?
Middle management job security in the age of automation
Dana Theus, Smart Brief
KC is the Head of Human Resources for a mid-sized B2B systems integrator. The company is growing rapidly and until recently her team’s success has been defined by its ability to quickly onboard new hires. More recently as the job market tightened, she’s focused on employee retention as well. Over a year ago, one of her internal clients approached her and asked if they could trial a customization of a newly enhanced Salesforce extension (Einstein Analytics) on their employee data to discover what factors most heavily impacted employee turnover. Eight weeks later, using basic demographic data combined and performance ratings, the company developed predictive algorithms that produced a list of the individuals most likely to leave in the next 12 months.
The Truth About Work Life Balance
Natasha Burton, DailyWorth
We’ve all heard the phrases “work-life balance” and “having it all” ad nauseam, but what we don’t hear are the unfiltered, unpretty truth from those in the trenches — what trying to create a balanced life actually looks and feels like.
So we asked professional women — CEOs, lawyers, divorced women, single moms, those who are childfree by choice — to share what they were surprised to learn about the notorious pursuit of “having it all.” Here’s what they said.
Promising Drop in Financial Stress Does a Troubling 180
Patty Kujawa, Workforce
Employees are losing confidence in their finances, affecting their health and their ability to be productive at work. How can the benefits industry respond to this troubling trend?
According to the 2017 “Global Benefits Attitudes Survey” by consulting group Willis Towers Watson, one-third of U.S. workers said their financial problems are negatively impacting their lives, compared to only 21 percent making this statement two years ago. Plus, only 35 percent said they were happy with their money matters.
Linking talent to value
Mike Barriere, McKinsey & Company
Getting the best people into the most important roles does not happen by chance; it requires a disciplined look at where the organization really creates value and how top talent contributes.
More noteworthy HR news
- Study: Voodoo Dolls Help Employees Pinpoint Problem Bosses
- LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner: Communications is the No. 1 skill gap.
- The Schmucks at the Office
- Starbucks Just Learned that Virtue Signaling Isn’t Enough, You’ve Got to Be Virtuous
- Three Lessons CEOs Can Learn from King Hammurabi
- Tips For Determining Whether Employees Should Be Hourly Or Salaried
- 4 Mistakes CEO’s Make in Difficult Conversations
- Maternity leave does not guarantee continued employment
- 10 Common Warning Signs of a Mental Health Condition in Teens and Young Adults
- Can Baby Boomers Succeed in a Millennial World?
- 3 Social Media Recruiting Strategies
- At the Waffle House, she cut up a customer’s food for him. It changed her life.
- What Am I Doing Wrong?? Common FMLA Mistakes
- 10 Ways You Can Make an Impressive Impact at Work
- Google Automatically Rejects Most Resumes for Common Mistakes You’ve Probably Made Too
News from the lighter side
Start your day with a little whimsy, get creative with your eggs
If you’ve been wondering what you’ll do with all that spare time once you retire, 84 year old Ken Samll might provide some inspiration. Amazing story.
Here’s a creative way to get someone’s attention. I don’t know if it made the sale, bu that would likely get someone a job interview.
From Britain’s Got Talent, enjoy the comedian called Lost Voice Guy. Lee Ridley has cerebral palsy and he delivers his routine via a synthetic voice machine.