According to a CareerBuilder survey, 30 per cent of Canadians have dated a co-worker at least once in their career. 28 percent of those ended up getting married, so it must have been worth their while. But is it worth it to companies that have to deal with the possible repercussions?
“Love contracts”
A Globe and Mail story that quotes Forbes.com notes that some employers are now asking dating employees to sign a “love contract.” Contrary to how it sounds, this is not a contract in which they promise never to break up, thus ensuring the company won’t have to deal with the awkward aftermath. Instead, it’s an acknowledgement of the company’s sexual harassment policies and a declaration that the relationship is consensual. The contract is signed in front of their bosses and is evidently meant as backup, since it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s not possible to prevent consenting adults from dating each other in a workplace environment.
Have you ever answered a work-related e-mail after hours? Judging by the number of people I see tapping away on their smartphones each day, I am going to guess that many of you have. And you probably didn’t think twice about it, because answering e-mails promptly often leads to an easier next day in the office. After-hours e-mail has simply become a common habit, if not a necessity for some people.
If you were Brazilian, however, your after hours e-mailing would be considered extra work. A new law, approved by President Dilma Rousseff in December, allows Brazilians who reply to work-related e-mails outside of regular hours to qualify for overtime. The legislation maintains that company e-mails sent to workers are the equivalent of direct orders. Thus, employees should be paid for the time they spend e-mailing from home (or any and every other location you can think of).
A new study, published in PLoS medicine, suggests that shift work is related to higher rates of obesity and diabetes.
The blame for this is placed on irregular meals and easy access to junk food. People who work night shifts are apparently especially at risk because their sleep patterns are interrupted, which affects diet and metabolism.
Breaking it down
A piece posted to Injury Board Minneapolis looks at the study in some detail. It quotes a statistic from the study that indicates 15-20% of workers in the U.S. and Europe are shift workers, a number that’s expected to increase as 24-hour operations become more common.
As a single, 27-year-old male, parental leave isn’t something I think about often. I would be lying if I said that I never think about it, but I’m a serious daydreamer with a penchant for fantasizing about white picket fences and happily ever afters. So, I’ve thought about it, but in a very, very abstract way.
But maternity leave is something that professional women have always had to grapple with. Men take parental leave, too, but not in the same numbers. Unless you’re a homosexual or a single parent, odds are that maternity leave will trump paternity leave (Statistics Canada says that one in five fathers claim benefits in Canada). Knowing this, many women prepare for their leave long in advance. One way that they can do this is by establishing a maternity buddy.
We all learn in Cover Letters 101 that we’re supposed to make ourselves stand out. But I don’t think the letter written by a would-be Wall-Streeter is quite on the mark, as evidenced by this paragraph:
"I am unequivocally the most unflaggingly hard worker I know, and I love self-improvement. I have always felt that my time should be spent wisely, so I continuously challenge myself ... I decided to redouble my effort by placing out of two classes, taking two honors classes, and holding two part-time jobs. That semester I achieved a 3.93, and in the same time I managed to bench double my bodyweight and do 35 pull-ups."
Over the top and then some
That paragraph, quoted by Yahoo! Finance, was only a piece of a letter that has Wall Street firms laughing at the NYU undergrad who was hoping to join them. The whole letter, which you can read at the post linked above, just got progressively worse.
This just in: recess isn’t solely for kids anymore. Sure, recess is not quite as much fun without a slide and some monkey bars, but workplace recess can be just as beneficial as playground time. And, it seems, people are finally starting to catch on.
Is there a difference in the amount of ambition that men and women possess? High profile businesswoman Sheryl Sandberg seems to think so. Facebook’s chief operating officer is making headlines for her remarks about the aforementioned “ambition gap,” and her words seem to have fired up a conversation on women’s drive in the workplace. Interestingly enough, the conversation hasn’t been so much of a debate, as these issues tend to veer toward, but more of a discussion.
Sandberg made the comments last week at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. “We reward men for being leaders, for being assertive, for taking risks, for being competitive,” Sandberg said to a panel on the future of women in business. “(But) we teach women as young as 4 to lay back, be communal. We need our girls to be ambitious to achieve in the workforce.”
A Rotman School of Management professor, Jennifer Berdahl, told the Toronto Star that she agrees with Sandberg, though she moved away from the idea of women somehow lacking ambition. Instead, she focused on the difficulties women face after displaying ambition at work. “Women who are competent and assertive in the workplace — which we typically think of as required for becoming a leader — experience backlash for being that way,” she said. “It’s hard for women to do what it takes to become a leader if that’s the social reaction to them in the workplace.”
At the last organization I worked for, the former top executive had a progressive philosophy: “Work is something you do, not somewhere you go.” She got some “huh?” reactions, but many of us thought that was a great way of describing the way the concept of work is heading.
Location, location, location
So far, “going to work” is what people typically do. We hop in the car, on the train, on a bike – whatever our preferred mode of transportation – and go to our place of employment, and when we get there we start working. Depending on your vocation, of course. This is obviously less true for people in occupations that are mobile by nature, like mail carriers.
Kyle Dowie had worked at an Iowa supermarket for 25 years when he was fired for cashing 20 cents worth of bottle deposits.
This is not a joke or a Saturday Night Live skit. It really happened and, at last report, Dowie was considering accepting his job back.
The back story
Dowie, who is mentally disabled, came in to work at the Hy-Vee supermarket one day in November and recycled $3.75 worth of bottles he had brought from home. Up to that point things were fine. It was when he tried to redeem 20 cents in credit slips that things got messy.
Those credit slips may have been left behind by customers, according to news reports, but his manager assumed that Dowie had stolen them and showed him the door.
In recent months, we have featured blogs that paint workers in a distressing light. First, we posted about a study that claims workers feel at their best only one day a week. Then we discussed a survey that found that nearly a quarter of workers are depressed. And we even broached the topic of extended benefits for stressed workers. Clearly, there’s an underlying problem at play. Is it “frustration” in the workplace? The authors of a new book on employee engagement seem to think so.
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