Deregulation success will bring back employers to the U.S. again, President Donald Trump opined during his second State of the Union address where he addressed many workforce issues. The focus was on low unemployment and job mentions and painted at the early jobs numbers for January. He called to attention the increased rate of employment among racial minorities and workers with disabilities. Trump also said that the women got the best out of the thriving economy as they filled 58% of new jobs created previous year. The President gave a positive push to the nationwide paid family leave program and said: “every new parent has the chance to bond with their newborn child”. He also touted an immigration system that in his words “is safe, lawful, modern and secure.”
Stand-up desks may be better than the sit-down desks, but there is a price for standing up on your feet at the same place the entire day. The radical report of James Levine, a doctor of endocrinology at the Mayo Clinic in 2011 led to revolutionize office desks. But, in the opinion of Levine, it is the office habits that needed a change and not the furniture. Moving around is the healthiest option as standing up all day without movement, can get people closer to the risk of cardiovascular diseases. While Levin’s statement, “Excessive sitting is a lethal activity” holds true, moving around or going for a walk across the hallway as opposed to standing all day long is the alternative.
The retail industry found a new competition in the now growing cannabis industry. The last December saw 1,500 job postings in Glassdoor as the marijuana industry saw a spike of 76% in openings. Though the federal law still prohibits the sale and use of cannabis, the states’ moves to legalize the medicinal and at times for recreational use. The support for the legalization is up like never before with 66% of Americans saying ‘yes’ to the move and 33 states have made the use legal in one or both of its avatars. The wages for the cannabis industry is 10% more than the U.S. median that sums up to be around $58,511 per year.
Ellyn Shook, Chief Leadership and human resources officer at Accenture is all up for creating a “work-learn, work-learn mindset” and to put words to practice the company has retrained nearly 300,000 out of its 469,000 strong workforces. Shook further believes that the experience of “reskilling” puts Accenture as a case study of the job-retraining in the wake of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The company’s cost of reskilling is $1 billion per year. Shook, also said while speaking at World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland that the company created “Job Buddy”, a software that tells what part of their job will get automated and how they can upskill. 85% of the employees have taken the assessment till date.
Motherhood comes with a reward and penalty for working mothers, looking from the corporate career perspective. If the recent survey by Bright Horizon’s Modern Family Index is to be believed then an overwhelming number of workers feel that mothers are better listeners, crisis managers, multitaskers and time managers. Club the above skills with an increased calm in a crisis and all the pointers indicate towards a leadership boost. The other side of the coin says that motherhood is penalized as 72% of both working moms and dads feel women are having to pay with their careers for starting a family as opposed to men. Most working mothers believe that they have to work extra hard to quiet the skeptics and 37% of them fear that motherhood will render them incapable to “fit the leadership mold” in a world filled with male leaders.
The automobile major announced the handouts of yet another round of pink slips on Monday, aligned to its announcements in November 2018, this time numbering at around 4,000 of its salaried employees, in what was described as a restructuring of its entire white collar workforce. The outcome will be in a total expected shrinkage of its workforce by 15%. The current round of layoffs, according to insiders, would largely affect its information technology workers at facilities in Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan. This follows the 1500 workers already laid off in December alongside 2300 workers who accepted the buyouts by the company. It is also cutting down executive ranks by 25%
Google’s parent company swelled both its hiring and it’s spending in the fourth quarter, according to reports. The period saw a spending surge of 26%, touching $31 bn. In the same quarter, the company hired more than 4,300 employees, taking its total employee count to 98,771. This number is exclusive of Temporary Workers, Vendors or Contractors (TVCs in Google parlance). The largest number of hires that the company made over the last quarter was noted to have been in its cloud computing business segments. This division of Google’s business has seen significant focus from the parent company and has also reported a strong growth recently.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced that its 52-week parental leave program for staff would be cut down to half its size. According to the organization’s CHRO, the parental week program was halved because it was found to be disruptive to the overall productivity of the employees. The new policy is expected to come into effect in the latter half of the year and will offer only 6 months of paid leave to employees. It will, however, come with an added benefit of a $20,000 taxable allowance that is aimed at helping employees with childcare and other costs.
The world’s second-largest economy recently announced a slew of policies and initiatives aimed at uplifting the low-income workers and SMB segments. This is a part of the initiatives of the government to boost spending amid fears of an economic slowdown. In these efforts, graduates and migrant workers would be given a higher priority in terms of tax breaks and employer benefits for companies who hire needy workers. The aggressive stimulus package may be a result to combat the heavy toll that the US-China trade war has taken on Chinese manufacturing and export industries throughout 2018, according to reports.
The world’s largest search engine company has always been at the forefront of technology and innovation largely because of the superlative intellect of the workforce. However, if recent internal reports are anything to go by, employee confidence in the CEO Sundar Pichai’s vision is fast failing. In an internal poll called Googlegeist, just over 2/3rd of employees surveyed agreed that the CEO’s vision of what the company can achieve inspires them. This was down 10% from the results of a similar poll the year before. In a similar vein, only 74% of the employees agreed that Pichai and his management team can effectively lead Google into the future, down 18% from the year before.
According to industry estimates, a staggering 17.2 million workers across America are expected to call in sick on Monday, a day after the Super Bowl. In a survey released by consultant firm Robert Half, 42% of senior managers have reported that post-game hangover is the most annoying sports related employee behavior. Another aspect is the ultra-low productivity for employees who do show up – largely due to lack of sleep and other post-recreational factors. In fact, Super Bowl Monday was reported by 72% of HR managers as a preference for an instituted paid leave, in another similar survey conducted last year.
Elon Musk’s automotive brainchild is in troubled waters again, with the company recently formally announcing laying off at least a thousand workers. The electric car manufacturer will be cutting down just over 800 jobs in Fremont, where it’s assembly plant is located. In addition to this, it will also be terminating 130+ employees at its Lathrop facility and around 78 employees at its Palo Alto headquarters. This follows closely on the heels of Musk’s announcement via email earlier in January, where he announced the layoff of 7% of the staff at Tesla, citing the need to be ‘relentless about costs’.
The double-tailed mermaid is leading the way in inclusion and diversity efforts and civil rights and equity. This report follows the high profile controversy in April last year, that led to the coffee chain shutting its stores across the US for half a day of diversity and inclusion training. According to the agencies conducting the assessment, Starbucks’ processes and policy implementations were well aligned to its mission and value statement. While a lot of work remains to be done, law firm Covington and Burling concluded that the holistic approach to inclusion and diversity efforts by the company were commendable.
The most in-demand jobs of the year are going to be in healthcare, according to career portal careercast. In fact, the US Department of Labor has predicted that more the healthcare sector will see the biggest surge in job creation. At the top of this chain are home aides, with a projected 47% increase through 2024. the portal also cited data from Mercer stating that the sector will see 2 million new jobs being created over the next few years. Nurses commanded some of the highest medians in the country, with averages over $70,000. Demand has been racing ahead of supply for the fourth year in US healthcare now.
After vanquishing Uber from the Chinese market a couple of years ago, Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is now reportedly considering layoffs in several of its own support departments. With ten thousand employees across the world, the job cuts are largely expected to affect functions like marketing and human resources. This is aligned to their recent announcements that safety and driver engagement was their biggest priorities in the immediate future. The company’s spokesperson also mentioned that it would be offering incentives to its employees in other engineering functions to move into safety and engagement departments.
People in creative careers possess the highest levels of emotional intelligence, according to a recent report released by payroll and staffing firm Paychex. In the study that covered more than 1000 respondents, employees in the entertainment, arts & design and recreation industries. Among the highest scorers, those employees that scored above the 90% percentile, most were found to be working low wage jobs, with less than 35,000 in annual compensation. The highest valued qualities among respondents with high EQ included positivity, creativity, and perseverance. Emotional Quotient is usually associated with strong leadership skills and also help indicate an employee’s ability to adapt to change
According to Mercer, the global consulting firm paid parental leave being offered by employers surged to 40% over the past three years, up from a meager 25% in 2015. While this is good news for most, employers still have a long way to go with only 9% considering paying their employees unlimited time off. The study, titled 2018 Survey of Absence and Disability Management, also shows that more and more employers are choosing to outsource their leave administration functions to specialized companies and consultants, indicating that the numbers of best practices in leave and benefits administration may continue to improve in the near term.
The creative and marketing industry might be falling behind in their race to catch up with the digital revolution as 88% of the professionals said that they are struggling to keep their skills up-to-date. The Creative Group and AIGA who conducted a 1000 professional strong poll also said that almost half of these professionals felt that advances in technology will create more opportunities for work in their industry. A 70% of them believed that a company’s effort guides the entire upskilling initiative and a 45% of them found that tech adaptation in their company was slow. Just 41% of the respondents thought that the company’s training resources were satisfactorily good or excellent.
Walmart is gamifying the training experience of their store associates with their all-new simulation-style game they call Spark City. The game is in the form of a mobile app, which already has 104,000 downloads and puts the players (read employees) in charge of the dry goods department of the Walmart Store, where they face numerous real-world challenges as store managers and move up the levels as they find solutions to these challenges. The game developed by Walmart associate Daniel Shepherd was piloted with Walmart Academies before being available on a larger scale. The retail giant plans to launch a new version of the app that has other departments – specific cash register and store management levels.
Getting Talent Back to Work is a brand new initiative by SHRM and Koch Industries to encourage individuals and companies in taking a pledge to provide equal opportunities to qualified candidates with a criminal background. So far companies and trade associations representing more than half of the U.S. workforce have put forward a pledge in this direction. The names include The American Staffing Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation and the National Restaurant Association among others. SHRM also developed a toolkit in conjunction with the pledge that helps companies in understanding the legal issues surrounding hiring a person with a criminal background, the importance of an evidence-based background check and the dynamics of acquiring and developing such talents as stated by industry leaders.
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