What do Traditionalists, Boomers, Gen Xers and Millenials Gen Y have in common? They are all working side by side in the workplace and the need to balance the generational differences is at its greatest ever. This diversity brings many advantages, from life experience and polished expertise...
The Find: Managers who believe in their employees' capacity to change and grow are more likely to provide them support and to spot changes in performance than those who believe you can't teach an old dog new tricks. The Source: "Managers' Implicit Assumptions About Personnel" in...
The Find: Poaching star performers from rivals is unlikely to yield the hoped-for results. The Source: Management Insights from the July issue of the journal Management Science. The Takeaway: The researchers analyzed the performance of star analysts over a period of nine years to...
You've probably noticed what I've noticed: Soaring gas prices are finally, finally, causing people to change their behavior. Take me, for example. I now share my 44-mile commute into Boston with a co-worker, something I thought I would never do. So people are ready to change. How...
If you do a lot of reading or research in your job, taking notes the old-fashioned way can really slow you down as you're wading through tons of white papers or reams of reports. But here's a hack that's guaranteed to speed things up: an approach called the Morse Code...
As we know from last month's poll, most of you guys tip Firefox as your browser of choice. You like it because of its openness, customizability and security features, and because it's less prone to bugs and crashes. Now there's a way to get even more performance out of the...
It appears our workplace boozing post touched a few hot buttons, especially those of BNET reader, Acrebel, who is dead set against allowing any alcohol in the workplace, and who lays out a pretty tight case against it: I am utterly opposed to alcohol in the workplace, for...
The Find: If you really want to motivate yourself and your company to root out jerks and their productivity and creativity sucking behavior, one business guru suggest you calculate your TCJ: total cost of jerks. The Source: An article entitled "Building the Civilized Workplace" by No Asshole...
Watch the AMC series "Mad Men," and you'd think that workplace boozing was key to productivity. Well, the three-martini lunch may be a thing of the past, but boozing and work still go hand-in-hand in many office cultures. From the company holiday party, to the monthly beer-bash,...
The Find: The ability to make good decisions is key to management and rests on a brain function called "executive function," but psychologists warn that this decision making function is far more easily depleted than once thought. The Source: A fascinating article in Scientific American....
Expanding on yesterday's blog on the diminishing ROI for business users of Facebook, Harvard Business Online blogger John Sviokla checks in with a positive look at its main competitor for business users, LinkedIn. His take: LinkedIn delivers tremendous reach to business professionals for a relatively small investment....
If you want to make sure the information you are trying to get across is picked up, you need to make sure it is interesting. Too often, business information is full of fluff words and jargon that makes it impossible for other people to care. But what...
Do you find Facebook a helpful tool for maintaining and growing business contacts, or are you contemplating what Harvard Online editor Paul Michelman is about to do: "Defriend" all his business contacts. As a business tool, says Michelman, Facebook is not working, and it's...
In this new BNET Video, Sun Microsystem's "chief green evangelist," Dave Douglas, talks about how Sun made telecommuting work, helping the company increase productivity and its employees save time, money and fuel. More BNET Videos » by Michael Mattis
As the price of fuel continues to skyrocket, there's a workplace trend afoot to shortening workweeks to save energy. In Utah, administrative offices will be closed on Fridays while hours will be extended Monday through Thursday. Birmingham, Ala. implemented a truncated schedule for city employees on July 1, and officials...
Are you hiring? If you are, chances are you've been spending a good chunk of your time sitting in one-on-one interviews with a multitude of candidates, many or most who won't make it past this initial grilling. But there's a way you can increase your interview efficiency and improve your...
In a much debated research paper last year, Princeton economist Alan S. Blinder concluded that up to 38 million jobs, or 29 percent, of US jobs are potentially offshorable within the next couple of decades -- that is, capable of being outsourced to workers in other countries. ...
The reach for non-U.S. director and executive talent continues. More companies based in the U.S or elsewhere are diversifying their C-suites and boardrooms with non-Americans and are looking increasingly to India and China for fresh blood. That's the trend noted by BusinessWeek and America.gov. ...
Seems like it's Cosmopolitan Day here at BNET. Over at the Corner Office, Peter Galuszka notes that U.S. companies are, in increasing numbers, tapping executives and board members from abroad, notably China and India (Or, as the kids are calling it, Chindia.) Meanwhile, BNET1's...
Although many employers are looking for new graduates or someone younger with a bit of experience, there are still plenty of jobs that you can secure as a senior citizen. Opportunities in the work force abound for older Americans. On the surface it may seem harder to find such roles;...
