Work/Life Balance
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A Poor Dating Policy Could Break a Company's Heart—and Wallet
With employees and companies becoming more accepting of office romances, companies should make sure they protect themselves from any potential sexual harassment or discrimination lawsuits.
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No Joke: Stand-Up Comedy Training for Employees Can Improve Workplace Culture
Infusing comedy into workplace culture has the potential to improve employee communication skills, build a tight-knit team of employees and lower turnover rate.
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McDonald's to Franchisees: Merry Christmas. Now Open Your Stores
McDonald's must pull out all the stops to eke out gains after its global October sales decline, its first in nine years.
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Advisers Reveal the Proper Care and Feeding of Interns
Skip the clerical work. Bring on the client meetings, mentoring and day-to-day business.
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Happy Holiday: More Executives Are Taking Vacation
Completely unplugging from the office is still a challenge, although about 50 percent of CFOs in a recent survey said they didn't check in while checked out.
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Most Risky Day of Week to Drive to Work? TGIF
A Columbus, Ohio-based insurance company determined its members have the highest average number of claims per day on Fridays—at 4,664. Wednesday came in second with an average of 4,197 claims, followed closely by Thursday, Monday and Tuesday.
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Survey: 45 Percent Would Cut Salary for Flexibility
A survey released August 30 found 45 percent of working adults are willing to relinquish 8.6 percent of their salary for more flexibility at work.
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Many Moms Leave Maternity Leave Behind Early
When Divya Gugnani, founder of accessories e-commerce site Send the Trend, gave birth to her son in May, she took two weeks of maternity leave—far less than the 12 weeks of leave that many corporate women get.
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Memphis Opens Health Clinic for City Employees, Retirees, Dependents
The clinic offers diagnostic services and non-emergency care for a range of conditions, including sinus, urinary tract and upper respiratory infections, cold and flu symptoms, muscle sprains and minor cuts and burns.
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The Young and the Carless
Among millennials, the love affair with the automobile is turning chilly.
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Poll: Social Life, Not Social Media, Is Work's Biggest Distraction
A new ComPsych poll runs contrary to other surveys that indicate that tools such as Facebook distract employees during work hours.
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Teleworking Has Come a Long Way for Workers
National Telework Week, slated to start Monday, recognizes the financial and employee retention benefits of working remotely.
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Turning Off Email, Turning Up Productivity
Execs find the best way to promote efficiency is to minimize online distractions.
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Preventing Employee Burnout: Customized Solutions
Employers are demanding more while employees are engaging less, but there is one way to keep your best workers from checking out completely—recognizing who they are and rewarding them accordingly
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EAPs: First Responders in a ‘Work-More Economy’
Employee assistance providers say they continue to see a continued spike in employee calls for help in coping with added work pressures.
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Worker ‘Gas Tanks’ Close to Empty
Scholars say employees have a reservoir of physical and psychological resources for fueling their work contributions—and those tanks are running low.
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Companies Pushing Workers Over the Limit
Like Charlie Chaplin's character in the comedy Modern Times about an assembly-line worker who loses it after tightening one bolt too many, HR consultant Art Quinn says that when employees are pushed to their limits, the workplace can be a dehumanizing place.
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Perhaps Your Workers Are Entitled to New Titles
A promotion can do a lot to make up for the longer hours and extra duties that many workers have wrestled with in the past couple of years. But firms often fail to see where employees who are learning on the job might fit into new roles.
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Secret Santa? Scary!
Someone brought up a previous job they'd worked at and how the company would hold a Secret Santa event. I immediately felt this chill, like a nor'easter howling off Lake Michigan through an open window. Secret Santa? Oh man. Call in our EAP. I've harbored a Secret Santa humbug for years.
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Millennials Italiano
It seems milllennials Italiano aren’t so different from millennials Americano. When I wrote my book The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace a few years ago, there were signs that across the globe millennials share many of the same traits.
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Survey: U.S. Workers Feeling Overwrought and Unproductive
Thirty percent of employees say they were ineffective for at least one week due to job-related stress, while two-thirds of U.S. workers reported extremely high stress levels, including fatigue and feeling a ‘loss of control.'
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Court Ruling Puts Workplace Grief on Trial
Even though the defendants avoided liability, grief recovery experts say the case illustrates the pitfalls for managers who are not trained to be sufficiently sensitive toward and educated about grief.
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Tech Tools for Hiring Disabled Candidates
Here are some handy tools when considering hiring disabled workers.
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Poll Says Overweight Workers Miss Millions More Days of Work
Their missed work results in about $153 billion in lost productivity annually, according to data collected this year by Washington-based Gallup.
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Data Bank Focus: Time Management
Research and analysis you need to make your job easier.
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Health Care Cost Hikes Increasing, Expected to Continue
The key difference between the Kaiser Family Foundation and Aon Hewitt surveys is that the KFF survey included more fully insured plans, 40 percent, and more small and midsize firms, 85 percent, with fewer than 5,000 workers.
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‘People Pleasers,’ a Worker’s Best Friend?
Benefits plan administrators are discovering that lifestyle benefits are becoming more important, and employees are willing to eat the cost.
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Here, Kitty, Kitty: Pet Insurance Benefit Picking Up
First introduced in 1982, insurance policies for pets have grown in popularity and are now offered by thousands of employers. It’s a benefit that costs nothing for employers, and requires little, if any, administration, while providing affordable group rates to employees.
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Office Pool Policy Best Defense to Curb In-House March Madness
Only 16 percent of employees surveyed said their company has a policy against office pools; another 37 percent didn’t know whether there was a policy or not.
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Companies Focus Their Attention on Flexibility
To limit contingent staffing, some companies are making permanent employees more agile.
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Appeals Court Judges Plan Quick Review of Reform Law Decision
The decision means the Virginia federal appeals court will render a quick decision as the case winds its way toward what will be its likely final destination, the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Vanguard CEO to Employees: Let's Lose the Suits
Despite being more than 100 miles away from the formalities of Wall Street, Vanguard always has required its employees worldwide to dress in business attire: a jacket and tie for men and professional dress for women.
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5 Questions for Laurel Kennedy Equality in Caregiving
The author of The Daughter Trap takes a critical look atsociety’s reliance on adult daughters to provideelder care.
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Survey 30 Percent of Managers Under More Stress
The survey also found that 28 percent of respondents expect their anxiety levels to rise in the coming year. Sixty-four percent said it would be about the same.
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A Game Plan for Networking
Rob Howard, founder and chief technology officer of Telligent, offers tips to help companies make their decision about establishing a corporate social networking site.
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Social Work
To satisfy employees' need to feel connected, a growing number of companies are developing their own social networks.
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Weighing the Risks of Social Networking
Doing research in advance and putting ground rules in place before launching a corporate social networking site can ease fears and minimize risks.
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Tapping Family Leave—Occasionally
For employers, intermittent use of the Family and Medical Leave Act can pose some of their greatest challenges. Even if workers use the law appropriately, the periodic leave requests can create paperwork and tracking difficulties, experts say.
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Employers Cope With FMLA's Expanded Reach
Amid tight economic times, the scope of the federal law has been expanded to a few additional groups, including military families and same-sex parents.
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Healthy Returns on Flex Work
A research group looks to determine whether workplace flexibility pays off in better employee health—and an improved bottom line.
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Volunteering on the Job Clock
Corporations that provide employees paid time off to volunteer typically pursue one of two routes: setting a designated volunteer day or providing a block of paid hours annually.
