.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.
Glassdoor found a “salary confidence gap” infesting on the already existing gender-pay gap. The new study by Glassdoor Economic Research found out that men are “more self-confident in the workplace than women” that lets them apply for jobs with base salaries averaging $13,635 more than the ones applied by women creating a salary pay gap of 18.3%. However, if you see the gap between men and women of similar age, education and years of experience the gap closes to 16.9%. The gap closes dramatically to 3.90% if you compare men and women in the same industry, occupation, state, and firm size. The gap almost vanishes to 1.20% and 0.70% when you compare men and women with similar job titles and current salary. The gender pay gap is narrowing and in the U.S the adjusted pay gap in the U.S. fell from 6.5% in 2011 to 4.6% in 2018. However, going by the current rate it will be 2070 before the pay gap closes completely.
The news is not so much about women in STEM than it is about lack of women representation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. With women increasingly becoming the part of the workforce for over a century now, the lack of women names who inspire in STEM is a matter of concern. Audi in America with Forbes came up with “Idea Incubator” a program that inspires future STEM leaders to solve future problems through a STEM lens. The program had women students from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering to design the impact electric cars will have on urban mobility and the winning team walked away with a combined $50,000 scholarship towards their studies by “Audi Drive Progress Grant.”
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV plans to eliminate its third shift in its Windsor, Ontario assembly plant, resulting in 1,500 job cuts in Canada. The reason cited behind this large scaling down is dwindling minivan sales. The company produces Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Grand Caravan minivans and employs over 6,100 employees. This comes as a second major blow to the Canadian auto industry after General Motors Co made it official that it had no future product planned for its Oshawa, Ontario assembly plant employing 2,600 workers. The GM plant may shut down after half a century of operations after they shut the door for Impala, Chevrolet, and Cadillac XTS Sedan.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV plans to eliminate its third shift in its Windsor, Ontario assembly plant, resulting in 1,500 job cuts in Canada. The reason cited behind this large scaling down is dwindling minivan sales. The company produces Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Grand Caravan minivans and employs over 6,100 employees. This comes as a second major blow to the Canadian auto industry after General Motors Co made it official that it had no future product planned for its Oshawa, Ontario assembly plant employing 2,600 workers. The GM plant may shut down after half a century of operations after they shut the door for Impala, Chevrolet, and Cadillac XTS Sedan.
Companies are hiring more PhDs for jobs primarily there are more of them eager to enter the industry. Salaries for at least some of these talented and highly qualified individuals are on a steady rise. Artificial-intelligence researchers, for instance, can earn more than $1 million a year. The salary bloom is despite the increased number of talent pouring in and mechanical, electrical and software engineers are also reaping substantial benefits. Technical skills or people who “tell computers what to do” are on high demand and a similar trend is seen in the case of finance professionals. A Google search for tech industry positions reveals that companies now are looking for most advanced degrees.
H&M is looking to hire “the best in retail talent” and are launching a new campaign focusing on “we are one team” core value of the company. At the heart of the campaign are H&M employees across the U.S., who like the company believes play the biggest role in business’ success. The branding campaign comes close to the heels of November benefits offering announcement that includes a weekly schedule commitment, assuring minimum 12 hours of work per week for part-timers from March through December. The benefits offer also includes a mobile scheduling app that allows workers to be more flexible with work shift swapping and management.
Leaders are not having the best of days as a glaring 65% of employees are ready to forego pay hike to see their leader fired, remarked Rasmus Hougaard, managing director of Potential Project citing a Forbes survey. At Workhuman 2019 conference Hougaard further called upon enhanced employee engagement and “people are just going to find somewhere else.” David Rodriguez, executive vice president, and global CHRO Mariott said giving leadership back to employees made it to be one of the foremost companies on Fortune’s 2019 Best Big Companies to Work For and 31st overall. Marriott has five-pronged core values when it comes to creating an organizational culture – Put people first, pursue excellence, embrace change, act with integrity, serve our world.
EasyJet Plc took a flight towards gender equality and hired more women in the cockpit with the proportion of 5%, but the move does not erase the pay disparity that continues to rise. The male employees of the air carrier got 54.1 percent more than their female counterparts in 2018, an increase from last year’s 51.7 percent. Airlines suffer from a chasm of pay between its male and female employees as women acquire low paying jobs like cabin crew and ground staff, while the high flying jobs of pilot go to men. In EasyJet’s case, it will be 71% of the low paying jobs being filled by women.
Warner Media’s buyout offer for the veterans of Turner employees comes as a part of the reorganization of this AT&T owned media giant. The company is extending an offer of early-retirement packages to workers who are 55 years or older with 10 years of service under their belt. The staff reduction does not come as a surprise as it was doing rounds since the division of Turner employees among many Warner Media units. AT&T has a long-term debt of about $170 billion and cutting that down seems to be the top priority as per Randall Stephenson, The Chief Executive Officer of the group that spent $85 billion to acquire Time Warner Inc.
Fidelity Investments, the mutual health giant is hoping on the charitable train that led United Way and Salesforce offer employers and their philanthropic employees the Philanthropy Ground. The workplace giving platform is a joint effort by Fidelity workplace investing and Fidelity Charitable and is coined the Giving Marketplace. It is aimed to promote small- charities, as opposed to the tax benefit, backed bigger and more generous charities that Fidelity Charitable, the firm’s charitable arm that runs donor-advised fund business. Their pitch to employers is “Giving is part of your employees’ DNA” and is essentially meant for the masses. The employees just have to log in and select which charity they want to donate with a minimum amount of $25. There is no separate account and the donation is made via credit card, bank draft, and payroll with WePay payment processor operating behind the scenes.
Performance-based pay has long been a booster of employee productivity, but a recent study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Aarhus University in Denmark found that it may also up employees chances of profound mental health issues. The study found out that about 70% of the global workforce receives performance-based pay of one or the other kind, be it commissions, bonuses, profit sharing or goal achievement incentives. The study found a 5.4% increase in the probability of taking medications to combat anxiety and depression where performance-based pay was involved. The study co-author opined that there is more than what looks to the eyes and “this is the tip of the iceberg, and we don’t know how deep that iceberg goes beneath.”
A survey by Recruitment and Employment Confederation found firms downbeat and wanting clarity regarding Brexit. REC has been conducting the survey since 2016 and the conundrum of Brexit – when or if it will happen, has led employers to curb down their hiring and investment plans. It has been three years since Brexit referendum came out, but the way ahead after it is obscure as it was in the beginning days. Employers are feeling the strain of Brexit, even when the labor market is strong. The employers as per the survey are planning to add permanent staff, while the ax looms large on the temporary staff.
A survey by the National Institute on Retirement Security found out that nearly 60% of workers have zero retirement asset and the ones with a retirement account have only $40,000 saved. Companies need to be open about the retirement talk without implying an intention of replacing the employee at the onset of the discussion. The retirement talk as Erik Fromm, Financial Advisor at Janney Montgomery Scott said should start 5 to 15 years before the intended retirement to enable employees to build a sustainable retirement asset plan. From further said, “Early 50s is where we really start to engage with people” and set out a plan during the robust earning years of professionals when the thought of not having a full-time income source is a decade far, but yet obscure.
“Facial discrimination” is climbing up the stairs and maybe soon at par with racial discrimination when it comes to prevalent social ills. Even when Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967 prohibits discrimination against people older than 40, a recent report by AARP indicated that about two-thirds of professionals between 45 to 74 years have faced ageism at some or the other juncture in their careers. When it comes to tech firms Silicon Valley’s top 150 names faced increased accusations of ageism that toppled over the instances of gender and racial bias. The solution does not lie in proactive law enforcement, which is present, but in building a company culture against ageism. It will, in turn, benefit their younger counterparts – the millennials, in getting a perennial wisdom inflow along with their skills.
The latest Department of Labor Memo is slated to bring more complications for the employers who deploy H-1B visa employees. The new memo though not a regulation mandates employers to put a notice to employees about employing H-1B workers. The notice, electronically distributed or circulated internally otherwise should contain details like the location of the Labor Condition Application that employers must file for inspection by the Department of Labor and the wage details. The memo is targeted specifically to the Information Technology service industry and requires employers to put a notice to the collective bargaining representative or in the worksite in case of a not-unionized entity. Failure to comply can bar the company responsible for the slip from hiring foreign nationals (H-1B workers) for at least a year.
.jpg "PEPSI CO. APPOINTS A WOMAN AS ITS LATIN AMERICAN CEO")
PepsiCo. CEO Ramon Laguarta sent an internal email on the occasion of International Women’s Day announcing Paula Santilli’s appointment as CEO LatAm. Santilli, who joined PepsiCo as a part of its Quaker Acquisition has been in in a number of leadership positions in the region since 1992. Santilli who is slated to succeed Laxmi Narashiman, who is moving to be the global chief commercial officer of PepsiCo was previously president of PepsiCo. Mexico Foods, one of her numerous leadership roles in the Latin American region. This is the second woman in the recent weeks whom PepsiCo named to the top in their endeavor to get more women leaders on board. Michelle Gass, CEO Kohl was named on the board two weeks prior to the announcement.
Old work habits, especially the toxic ones must go to improve the overall health of the workplace. A recent report by Myers-Briggs Company says that old habits entrenched in the workplace might be holding back the business. One of the major habits that need to see the door is the “always on” culture that as the study points out leads to disproportionate work-life balance, stress, poor performance, and ill-health among employees. Employers also need to let go of the narcissistic leaders and replace them with leaders who inspire and motivate. Employers need to upskill leaders in interpersonal skills and as a second step train leaders about effective leadership approaches.
Hybrid Jobs are the latest to hit the town and they are here to stay as per a long-tailed study by Burning Glass Study. The people who manage multiple skills like, marketing with statistics or IT with creativity have a piece of two-pronged good news. The first is the unique combination makes them a rare occurrence and thereby eligible for premium pay package. The second advantage is that these unique skills make their job automation resistant. Case in point is the marketing managers with data analysis skills who earned 40% more than the ones who did not. In another instance 2010 saw just 150 job postings for people who were experts in applying statistics to business problem concentrated in Wall Street. A contrasting scenario is that of 2017, with 1.7 million job postings for data science in every conceivable industry. Burning Glass first started tracking the hybrid jobs in 2015 and are now slated to grow by 21% in the coming decade as opposed to the overall job market expected to grow by 10% in the same time.
Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani of Rakuten, the country’s leading e-commerce portal, is taking collective organizational learning and development to a new dimension yet again. Mikitani recently announced that it would require all of its 17,000 employees to learn computer science beyond mere usage, followed by a mandatory knowledge of programming for all entry-level hires. Rakuten faces increasing competition from the likes of Amazon who are trying to gain a foothold in the lucrative world of Japanese e-commerce. Experts on the subject opined that this could be a step in the right direction for Rakuten, where employees could play a crucial role in understanding technology and effective decision making beyond mere technology buzzwords.
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