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NWjobs | NWautos | NWhomes | NWapartments | NWsource | Classifieds | seattlepi.com | seattletimes.com
The Seattle Times Company representing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
NWjobs | NWautos | NWhomes | NWapartments | NWsource | Classifieds | seattlepi.com | seattletimes.com
NWjobs
Author Michelle Goodman serves up fresh tips and trends for attaining that crazy little thing called work/life balance.
August 18, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
I just received a press release from financial staffing firm Accountemps saying that 94 percent of the nation's 1,000 largest companies offer tuition reimbursement benefits to employees and 95 percent reimburse workers for other types of professional training programs. Of course not everyone works for a Fortune 1000 firm, so I checked the Society for Human Resource Management 2008 employee benefits survey for comparison. According to the SHRM, 66 percent of firms provide undergraduate education assistance and 61 percent help finance graduate education. While SHRM members range widely in the...
August 16, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
I was recently talking to a mother of two about how much maternity leave she received when she had her first child in her early twenties. At the time, she was an entry-level worker and barely scraping by financially. Ditto for her husband. So to help make ends meet, the woman took her employer up on the paid six weeks of maternity leave they offered, knowing full well she'd be quitting the job once her leave was up. Her plan wasn't to be a stay-at-home mom though; it was to...
August 8, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
Can you handle one more blog post about wives and husbands and kids and careers and stay-at-home parents? Because I can't resist mentioning this latest study on the topic. According to the study (courtesy of Cornell University's sociology department, and based on U.S. census stats from 1995 to 2000), when husbands work 60+ hours a week, their wives are 44 more likely to abandon their own career to keep the household running smoothly. And if the husband works 60+ hours a week and the couple has kids, the number of wives...
August 6, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
Sue Shellenbarger had an interesting (okay, disturbing) piece in the Wall Street Journal last week. Apparently one freelance job board (you can read which one in the WSJ article) and a couple of companies employing home-based call center workers (see article for which ones) feel the need to monitor whether their independent home-based workers are actually working as opposed to, say, surfing the web or watching soap operas. Some of the tactics being employed: Taking snapshots of freelancers' computer screens dozens of times a day. Recording the keystrokes and mouse...
August 4, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
Chris Colin has a wonderful "On the Job" column in the San Francisco Chronicle today about forsaking ambition and simply treating work as a means to an end (i.e., eating). In it, Colin profiles a thirtysomething guy who lucked into a series of ample-paying, temp and consulting-ish jobs that didn't require him to do much of anything. As a result, Colin's subject wound up with an abundance of leisure time, so much so that friends began offering unsolicited suggestions about what he should do with all his spare hours (take up bluegrass guitar, help...
July 30, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
It's no secret that a number of middle managers are simply worker bees who did their job so well that they were promoted to a supervisory position, regardless of whether they had any inkling about how to manage and motivate others. As an homage to Hell Bosses everywhere and the employees who put up with them, Harvard Business Publishing's David Silverman wrote a funny blog post this week called 11 Habits of the Worst Boss I Ever Had. Here's my personal favorite from his list (which, by the way, happens...
July 28, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported yesterday that 26 percent of Americans age 16 or older volunteered for a non-profit organization in 2007. What's more, 36 percent of volunteers donated at least 100 hours of their time last year, the highest rate since 2002. (These stats courtesy of a new study by the Corporation for National and Community Service.) Curiously, the study also found that you're more likely to volunteer if: You live in Seattle or Portland. Both ranked in the top five big cities with the most volunteers. (Minneapolis-St. Paul was number one.) You live...
July 25, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
It's been fascinating to read all the different opinions readers have about blending work with leisure time vs. keeping weekends, evenings, and vacations work-free. Keep 'em coming. Meantime, here's another tidbit to chew on: Last week, a new CareerBuilder.com survey found that 78 percent of U.S. workers say they're "burned out." Why so fried? Forty-six percent of the 7,600 workers surveyed said their workload had increased in the past six months. Forty-five percent described their workload as "heavy" or "too heavy." And 23 percent said their balance was just plain...
July 24, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
Earlier this year, I was out walking my dog and got to talking to a neighbor who'd been undergoing chemo for breast cancer. She was doing well, but she of course needed the day off work once a week for her treatments, and sometimes the day after that to recover from side effects. As she was single, I was curious: How could she afford all that time off, and what did her employer think of the absences? Fortunately, the neighbor worked for a state agency that had a generous shared...
July 23, 2008
Posted by Michelle Goodman
Not to belabor the "not opting out" conversation, but the day after I wrote about laying the so-called opt-out revolution to rest an interesting Congressional study was released: Contrary to once-popular belief, women have not been dropping out of the workforce in increasing numbers to raise kids or run households. Instead, they're losing their jobs and coming up against the same salary stalemates as men. As the New York Times put it on Tuesday, "After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns,...
