Archive for the 'Workplace' Category

Archives for Workplace

One evening in May 2006, the president of the China division of a $10-billion-a-year multinational locked himself out of his office. Using his handheld, he fired off a nasty e-mail to his secretary, ordering her to start checking with her superiors every night before she went home. He also CCed others in the company before hitting send.

She replied, CCing the company’s entire China staff and asking him to remember his manners. “Even though I’m your subordinate, please pay attention to politeness when you speak,” she wrote.

The Chinese press caught wind of the exchange and because the president was from Singapore, it sparked a fury about cultural imperialism. He later resigned.

Archives for Workplace

This hasn’t been a good year for jerks in the workplace. Apart from the usual controversies about egomaniacal politicians, baseball managers and CEOs, a popular new book recommends zero tolerance for assholes and a research report by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Management School underscores the toxic organizational impact of emotions in the workplace.

Experts who study emotional intelligence, also called EQ for emotional quotient, gather data proving that highly empathetic rather than insensitive people excel in business or personal relationships. The emerging ’science’ of EQ is gaining traction among recruiters and HR executives, many of whom screen potential hires for these ’soft skills’.

What hasn’t been well understood until now is how intense emotions, especially in the workplace, impact productivity and spread from person to person.

“We engage in emotional contagion,” contends Sigal Barsade, a Wharton professor who studies the influence of emotions on the workplace. “Emotions travel from person to person like a virus.”

Archives for Workplace

Somewhere between bankruptcy and profitability the airlines lost their way. And somewhere between the tarmac at JFK and the friendly skies, the thought strikes me that the time for sympathy has long since passed.

In response to heavy losses earlier this decade, management sought to balance the books by reducing quality and costs. They cut back on customer service - often in petty ways - and slashed pay for airline workers, and then, despite high fuel prices, they slowly crawled back toward profitability. And investors are happy - air travel is growing by 7 percent each year.

Of course, I’m neither a shareholder nor an employee - I’m just an economy-class customer struggling to work on a six hour cross-country flight. I’m average height; my knees are buckled against the seat in front of me. If the guy in front of me leans back any more my laptop keyboard will be on my chest. And if I don’t work, I won’t get much sleep tonight.

The government regulates safety, but personal comfort and productivity is a free market issue. “We do not mandate comfort. It is up to airline how they want to configure seats,” says Alison Duquette, FAA spokeswoman. “As far as how many seats an airline can cram in there or configure it’s up to them.”

Archives for Workplace

Disabled workers are known to fly under the radar of unemployment statistics and recruiters. But in a fast-growing job market, companies may be eager to explore new ways to tap their talents.

There’s no issue on the supply-side. New studies show that disability payments are increasing at “an accelerating pace,” with a 51 percent rise in people on Social Security Disability Income over the last decade, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The cause? More and more, it’s unhealthy lifestyles - namely poor diets and not enough exercise. Still, back and joint problems, cancer and heat disease remain among the top reasons for disability. Some companies try the carrot and stick approach to promoting good health.

But because of the high cost of replacing personnel and fewer qualified candidates to fill open positions, companies are investing in accommodation.

Archives for Workplace

Have you heard? Crackberry is now a word.

Webster’s Dictionary defines the noun as “a person who uses a Blackberry addictively or obsessively or the device when used this way.” Webster’s doesn’t just add words to the dictionary in a wanton manner.

A new study by Robert Half Management Resources finds that 69 percent of senior executives believe it’s okay to crack out on a BlackBerry during a meeting.

But be careful. The trick is to know when it is acceptable to check your BlackBerry.

Archives for Workplace

This has been a rough year for lousy bosses. First we were empowered by Robert Sutton’s book, The No Asshole Rule, then we were amused by Stanley Bing’s Crazy Bosses, and now there’s a website called eBossWatch that allows us to call out the bastards.

What do these works have in common? Call it bad boss transparency.

Bing, the Fortune columnist with a light touch, has a funny quiz about crazy bosses, too.

Asher Adelman, the brains behind the recently launched eBossWatch, believes “Nobody should have to work with a jerk.” That’s the appealing tagline of eBossWatch and pretty much the high point of the implementation thus far.

I love the idea of telling on bad bosses. Not telling their mothers, of course, but warning future employees - watch out! Adelman’s site allows you to rate your bosses - by name.

The site was inspired by Adelman’s “painful experience” several years ago in which he lost a job after confronting an abusive boss about his behavior.

I asked him via e-mail (he was in Israel) about some of his policies regarding the rating system. What happens, for instance, if a boss wants to appeal a terrible rating? “No,” says Adelman. “It is extremely difficult to monitor thousands of comments for accuracy or even to verify that the comments were indeed submitted by the bosses themselves (and not by someone impersonating the boss).”

Archives for Employment

Would you rather work for a founder or a professional manager?  Yahooligans will find out in the wake of CEO Terry Semel’s demotion this week. Co-founder Jerry Yang is returning to shepherd the company.

Yang is a sharp and savvy tech veteran who understands Yahoo!’s culture from inside out. Just as with Michael Dell, who resumed leadership in 2007 of the company he founded in 1984, the concept is that the founder can’t do any worse. In the head to head competition against Google, Wall Street viewed Semel’s Yahoo! as Avis to Google’s Hertz.

Certainly Yang and Dell are likeable fellows who understand their customer’s needs. Still, I wonder if founders have the objectivity - or stomach - to make substantial changes.

In general, founders are not considered excellent professional managers (not that you require an M.B.A. to shepherd people). Though they never lack passion or interest in employees, founders often lack objectivity. They may cling to ineffective ideas longer than is healthy. And investors often fear that the founders lack the ability to scale operations, sell or merge the company when the time is right.

On the bright side founders have the corporate culture imprinted in their DNA. Sometimes companies need a shot of the original Mojo and that’s the perfect time to bring back the founder. Certainly that idea worked pretty well for Apple when it brought back Steve Jobs.

No one ever said Jobs was easy to work for, but that’s not what investors care about. It’s an issue both for employees and prospects to consider.