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Author Michelle Goodman serves up fresh tips and trends for attaining that crazy little thing called work/life balance.
November 21, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
A few of you have wisely asked for scientific proof you can use to help make a business case for working a more flexible schedule or telecommuting to your job. A new study by a team of industrial organizational psychologists offers just that. According the study, employees with managers who champion a flexible workplace are more satisfied with their jobs and in better physical health. What's more, those employees have less turnover than staff whose managers aren't as supportive of flexible work. For the four-year study, researchers evaluated how supportive managers...
November 18, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
I'm not much for reading (or heeding the advice of) women's magazines. But a friend sent me a recent Women's Health article that had me leaping from my chair. Apparently sitting on your duff and staring at a computer screen all day is detrimental to far more than your spine and waistline. According to medical research cited in Women's Health, on average, Americans spend a staggering 56 hours a week in front of their computer screens, steering wheels, or televisions. Among the article's more dire warnings, all attributed to various...
November 14, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
If you've been following the headlines lately, you might think that workplace shootings are the rule rather than the exception. But according to the Workplace Violence Research Institute, nothing could be further from the truth. "A much more common cause of death is robbery, which causes approximately 1,000 deaths from violence in the workplace each year," write Institute founders and workplace violence experts Steve Kaufer and Jurg Mattman. But since many of us still have gun-wielding colleagues fresh in our minds, I thought it would be helpful to mention some...
November 10, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
If you follow social media news, you've probably heard about Chip Conley, the 48-year-old CEO of Joie de Vivre, a 3,000-employee company that runs a collection of boutique hotels in California. Apparently Conley likes to get personal on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, he posted pictures of himself at Burning Man, shirtless, donning a tutu in one photo, a sarong in another. On Twitter, he's lamented about the breakup of his eight-year romantic relationship. Conley's propensity to lay his life bare online left some of his younger employees confused, not...
November 7, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from a job seeker concerned that an upcoming vacation he'd booked ages ago might cost him the "perfect fit" dream job he's interviewing for this month. When I say this guy has an upcoming vacation planned, I don't mean some easy-to-reschedule four-day weekend on a friend's couch in Portland next month. I mean 10 nonrefundable days overseas several months from now. "Should I tell my potential employer about this at the interview?" our intrepid interviewee wrote. "I feel like this could possibly dissuade or...
November 4, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
Much of what's written about office gossip makes it sound as though no good can come from sharing juicy tidbits about those we work with. Earlier this week, an article in the Science section of the New York Times discussed a recent study that found that workplace gossip tends to be "overwhelmingly negative." So negative, in fact, that Times writer John Tierney suggested it rivaled the damaging teenage jabs seen on TV's "Gossip Girl." According to Tierney's article, the big difference between working adults and the petty, overprivileged teens seen on the...
November 1, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
Corporate theft is nothing new. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), U.S. employers lose 7 percent of their annual revenue to employee theft -- from inflated expense reports and abuse of corporate credit cards to out-and-out embezzling. Occupational fraud has certainly made headlines a lot this past year, from the Bernie Madoff crew to the guy accused of pocketing four-plus years of paychecks (totaling almost half a million dollars) from a company he never worked for. In fact, a recent ACFE survey of fraud experts found that the recession...
October 29, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
I've always been fairly ambivalent about office Halloween celebrations. One the plus side, any festivities your department has scheduled (haunted house, costume contest, orange-and-black cake, people bringing in their kids to treat or treat) can provide a nice distraction on an otherwise dull Friday. On the minus side, if you're trying to put a pressing project to bed before the weekend so the coming Monday isn't quite so miserable, you may not appreciate gathering round the jack-o'-lantern with your coworkers in superhero garb, especially if attendance is mandatory. On the web...
October 26, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
I know many of you are swapping your Seattle mayoral picks and your thoughts on I-1033 and Ref. 71 around the office water cooler. But how about on Facebook and Twitter where many of your officemates and customers lurk? When I've written about talking election politics at the office in years past, the expert advice has been to play it safe and stay mum. If you can't resist swapping election picks at work, the legal and career experts would warn, do so on a lunch or coffee break, steer clear...
October 25, 2009
Posted by Michelle Goodman
With today's cost-cutting employers keeping close tabs on worker productivity, no one wants to look like they're operating at less than 200 percent. Of course all this goes out the window if your body throws you a curve ball. Suddenly, recovering from an accident, treating a life-threatening illness, or otherwise regaining your health becomes your primary concern. So how you tell your employer you have to spend the next eight weeks in the hospital recuperating? How do break the news that you won't be in on Fridays for the rest...
