500 employees at Asana, a $1.5-billion-dollar productivity startup by CEO and co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, have ditched their internal emails. Moskowitz backed this move saying “It’s just very natural for everyone to be organizing their conversations around the actual work. Most of the time, when you’re having an email thread with your coworkers, it’s really about some project that you’re working on, or some action items or goals. In Asana, that’s all organized in ‘projects’ or ‘tasks’ and each of those can have conversation threads around them. So our conversations happen there.” While doing without emails may not look like a feasible strategy for every organization, Asana has gained popularity among its 60,000 paying organizations that include Uber and Air France.
While moving its ordering process online, Tesla went on a job-cut spree leaving many of its employees confused and miserable. According to anonymous sources, the company dismissed many of its team members on Thursday. Most of these sacked employees were the “inside sales” team members who were involved in inviting customers to take test drives of Tesla cars. These employees were reportedly moved to other administrative tasks. The move seems to be a part of Tesla’s retail retrenchment strategy that was announced earlier in February 2019. CEO, Elon Musk, has said that the initiative is aimed at cutting costs as the company plans to launch new models. Tesla has refused to disclose further details.
Taco Bell is driven to fulfill its target of hiring 100,000 workers by 2022. Summer hiring season is on and the company plans to host 600 hiring parties in the US from April 22 to 27. On its interesting platter, it now is serving on-the-spot job interviews, free food, and activities. Its new partnership with Crew, a communication platform, will allow Taco Bell’s employees to maintain their work schedules, pick or swap shifts on their smartphones. They will also have access to one free meal per shift at corporate-owned Taco Bell locations. Taco Bell intends to improve its employee experience with these measures.
For Nicole Andreu, senior vice president and design director of commercial interiors at CannonDesign's New York City office, colors are no secondary thing. Associating colors with psychological impacts Nichole said "Red has energy and passion. Yellow is for happiness. Green is for growth and stability." While color theory can mean different things for different people, for Nichole, it means how their combinations will affect the surroundings. Nichole said it “affects our mood. It can create balance or imbalance depending on how it's used." The color theory explains how a color will affect the design and also suggests its impact on the viewer.
IBM reportedly dropped its employee headcount by 25%. Under, Ginni Rometty, CEO, president and chairman of IBM, the total headcount was about 350,000 which had dropped further to 225,000 under CEO Lou Gerstner tenure. In 2012, when Ginni Rometty had re-joined the firm, the company’s employee population had swelled to 450,000 people. However, it has now reduced to 350,000. Rometty cited new age technologies such as artificial intelligence as the prime reason for job cuts. Contradicting her own words, Rometty said that going ahead skills will be crucial for employee’s relevance. She pointed out that “If you have a skill that is not needed for the future and is abundant in the market and does not fit a strategy my company needs, you are not in a good square to stay inside of.”
The tech giant is well known for the perks it offers to its employees. In spite of it throwing tons of benefits at its employees, more than half of the employees at Google are not working full time. With changing workforce, enter changed contractual conditions. Contract workers are often paid less than full-time employees. But Google is trying to rewrite the rules. Going forward, Google will now need contractors and temporary workers to submit their parental, healthcare, family leave, and other reimbursements to get full compensation at par with its regular employees. Google’s new rule is sought after privilege. Whether other companies take a lesson from the same is something that is yet to be seen.
A study from the Creative Group has suggested that 77% of advertising and marketing hiring managers say their organizations are offering some degree of pay transparency and 34% say that they are offering full transparency. The Creative Group has fixed three benchmarks for pay transparency: full, near full and partial. Full being external and internal transparency, near full being internal transparency and partial being selective transparency. But it seems both employers are employees are not ready to swallow this pill. Employers are wary of disclosing pays openly and 60% of tech workers have contended that they aren’t free to discuss their salaries with their colleagues. Another study from Harvard and UCLA has pointed out that 80% of workers would like to keep their salaries a secret. It has been a widely accepted notion that pay transparency can help ease pay disparity and bias.
Microsoft employees launched a protest against the company’s sexual harassment and gender discrimination conducts. Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft and Kathleen Hogan, top human resources executive were challenged by several women employees. These women, who were dressed in white, questioned the company’s treatment of women in a Q&A session. In another case of an email thread, dozens of female employees shared incidents of sexual and gender harassment at Microsoft. The extent of these charges is acute with women alleging charges like “called bitch at work” and asked to “sit on someone’s lap” during a meeting in which senior HR representatives were present.
To ease the pressing insurance costs, Walmart and other employers have come up with a new game plan. They are now suggesting doctors for their employees. This move takes cost optimization to another level as the companies are mining their own data to arrive at the lowest cost-best service physicians. And it seems to be working. The company is also covering travel and medical costs. Results of this plan have been impressive with employees spending less time in hospitals, cheaper follow-up care and shortened leaves in offices. In many cases, surgeries were replaced with other less invasive options. Looks like a win-win solution to us.
As a part of its digital revolution, PwC is committed to reskill its 50,000 workers. To achieve this mammoth goal, the company has turned to tech-enabled education. It is Digital Fitness App which was launched two years back and focusses on basic elements, helps employees assess their tech capabilities. PwC has kept it simple and short with only a 15 min assessment that gives immediate results. Once the employee knows her skill level, the app moves to suggest curated and in-house courses. PwC has also been delivering its curriculum through other mechanisms including apps and a podcast series. The initiative seems to have garnered interest with an average participation of 30-40 hours per year. To top its efforts, PwC has also built a team of accelerators, senior members who mentor others.
.jpg "GOOGLE TAKES NEW STRIDES IN DIVERSITY INITIATIVES BUT MORE NEED TO BE DONE")
Staying true to its representation of the Asian workforce, Google in 2018 employed fewer white and more Asian employees. However, the tech giant still needs to improve its representation of women and people of color. Though it gained on the hiring of black and Latino women and attrition rate for the diverse group declined, more needs to be done to create a significant impact. The company’s board is also mulling over tying the diversity initiatives with executive bonuses. The thought has grown after a number of protests by its employees concerning working rights, a military contract and its treatment of sexual misconduct pleas. More women were hired for technical jobs and women gained more leadership positions up from 25.3% to 26% in 2018.
A report from the non-profit association of cybersecurity professional’s states that 1/3rd of cybersecurity workforce now comprises of women. More women are joining cybersecurity with the majority of them being millennials. The grim side of the trend shows ongoing pay-disparity with 17% of women earning between $50,000 and $90,000 in comparison with 29% of their male counterparts and 16% of women earning $100,000 and above in comparison with 20% of men. Demand for cybersecurity professionals has increased as more and more companies seek to secure their systems under ongoing cyber threats. A report from the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis centre confirmed this trend saying that business leaders are taking cyber security training on priority now.
Things don’t seem to improve any soon for Sears employees. They are left high and dry with the new CEO, Eddie Lampert’s bizarre and insensitive policies like cuts in life insurance policy benefits for the company’s retired employees. The number of these employees can go up to 90,000. Though the news has not been officially confirmed yet internal employees have confirmed its authenticity. An anonymous employee divulged that they are being asked to sign an “arbitration agreement” which limits their actions if their jobs are eliminated.
Google will start equal benefits for all, thanks to months of activism by the staff and contractors. More than half of the people working in Google are contractual staff and it’s high time that the company focusses on equal health benefits, parental leave and other benefits for all. The move also ensures $15 minimum wages and a $5,000 a year for education. The benefits package will be applicable to contractors, part-time workers, and vendors have known internally as TVC. The top priority is the healthcare package that covers preventive and wellness services, hospitalization, prescription drugs, labor and delivery, rehabilitation and emergency services among others.
Automation is good for creativity, says a report by ServiceNow, a cloud computing company 80% of employees in automated workplace believe that highly automated workflows increase their productivity, which is contrasting to the 59% of a similar claim by employees in a highly manual workflow. 83% of employees in highly automated companies say that they are eager to learn new skills. The same number dips to 70% for manual organizations. However, just 7% of employees claim their workplace to be either highly automated or highly manual and 45% of them claimed their workflow as “technology enabled.”
Harley Davidson came up with a proposal for a five-year contract in the wake of the expiry of the seven-year contract only to be rejected by their Milwaukee and Tomahawk, Wisconsin unit workers. The United Steelworkers (USW) union, representing the workers stated more than one non-financial issues like job security and temporary workers. Harley sees temporary workers as the company’s way of using flexibility to increase efficiency during peak demand months. The union, on the other hand, is opposed to the idea of temporary workers as a means of doing away with the permanent staff. The union is rooting for greater job security.
A group of Google employees, starting with a fifty and expanding to hundreds have called for the removal of Kay Coles James, the company’s new artificial intelligence development advisory council member. The reason the company’s employees issued and signed the letter containing words like “In selecting James, Google is making clear that its version of ‘ethics’ values proximity to power over the wellbeing of trans people, other LGBTQ people, and immigrants.” Is because of the Thinktank leader’s rather obvious rightwing inclinations. James has been previously known for fighting against trans rights and LGBT protections and favored President Donald Trump’s famous to an infamous proposed wall. Among the people who signed the letter were Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, Naomi Klein, author and Meredith Whittaker, cofounder AI Now Institute at NYU.
New York has a quirky little-big statue of the “Fearless Girl” that awes and inspires many, State Street Corporation the firm behind it may have garnered $ 13 million in free publicity and more but its fund supporting gender diversity has looked in the opposite direction when it comes to promoting the mission it stands for. The latest research by Morningstar indicates that eight out of 10 times the firm faced shareholder resolutions related to its very own Gender Diversity Index ETF, called SHE between July 2015 and June 2018, they were either abstained or voted no. State Street sites the reason that shareholder resolutions, “(do) not tell the whole story” regarding its approach towards the issue. However, Madison Sargis, involved in Morningstar research says that “SHE” was the only one who voted against the resolution. SHE has companies like Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Starbucks and Mastercard in its portfolio and voted against an annual report on the gender pay gap at Aetna and against a report on gender pay equity at Mastercard among the others.
Disruption became the new norm for the 100-year-old tech giant called erstwhile as IBM and with it, it was time for the HR department to shed the old compliance wing image and get a brand new makeover. Carrie Altieri, vice president of communications for people and culture, IBM said, “We looked seriously at how the work of digital business actually gets done and recognized shifting to agile at scale was the change we needed to make.” The tech giant looked at an agile leadership that allowed teams to be dynamic, self-directed and assemble-dismantle with agility if and when the need arises. The transformation started in 2015 when the company started to redesign its performance management system to align with the new leadership model. IBM created a social-media wish list where 350,000 employees could suggest their desired transformation, removing the old review that took months and was conducted by an all-HR panel. They got employee feedback loop and higher accountability of managers for the process as an immediate result.
.jpg "CEOS THINK EMPATHY IS PRIMARY BUT FALL SHORT ON IMPLEMENTATION")
The good news is that 91% of the CEOs see a direct relation between empathy and company’s financial performance, the bad news is that they are slow to implement empathy on themselves, says 2019 State of Workplace Empathy Study by Businesslover. The 1,850 professionals and executives strong survey further stated an “empathy gap” that came up as 92% CEOs believing their company to be empathetic, the contrast to 72% of employees actually agreeing to it. CEOs were found to be in introspective mood as 72% of them said that empathy must change in their organization, which is a 15-point increase since the last two years. Some of the areas of showing empathy were in the way of implementing several benefits program such as daycare, paid parental leave, flexible work hours and extended bereavement.
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