Showing 38 posts tagged employees
“While the majority of employers don’t mind when workers start their days later, they in turn expect flexibility from their employees to work outside of normal business hours, even as they wind down for the night. The fluid approach to working hours means that many employers are now comfortable with calling employees after-hours, with 80 percent saying they think it’s acceptable to call staff in the evening.”
Managers Don’t Have to Ensure Lunch Breaks, California Court Says
The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that employers are under no obligation to ensure that workers take legally mandated lunch breaks in a case that affects thousands of businesses and millions of workers.
The unanimous opinion came after workers’ attorneys argued that abuses are routine and widespread when companies aren’t required to issue direct orders to take the breaks. They claimed employers take advantage of workers who don’t want to leave colleagues during busy times.
» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
(via thenextweb)
Lost in BYOD's uncharted legal waters
The majority of businesses now allow employees to choose — or even bring — their own mobile devices rather than require the use of corporate-issued units. The BYOD phenomenon quickly moved from a “not in my business” option in 2010 to the de facto standard in 2011. BYOD also intermingles personal and professional usage, data, and ownership, creating uncharted territory for businesses and individuals alike as to who has rights over what, as well as to what are the best legal approaches to securing their respective interests.
Even in the BYOD world there remains the question of who should legally own the device, in addition to the questions of who owns the data consumed and created on it. The harsh truth is that there are no answers to these questions — the courts haven’t ruled on them, and legislators haven’t written laws to address them. The good news is that we’re in a period of experimentation to see what works best; the bad news is that the resulting uncertainty and inconsistency make “doing the right thing” very difficult.
» via InfoWorld
Disgruntled Employees Can Be Good for Business
You’ve heard the news story many times: Employee fired for posting negative comments about employer on Facebook. It’s happened over and over again, even though the National Labor Relations Board says employees have the right to exercise their freedom of speech on social media without being punished.
As it turns out, all that negativity might actually be good for business. That’s the finding of new research that discovered consumers like the candid nature of employee blogs, especially negative ones, and are more likely to do business with the company if company blog posts contain moderate criticism of corporate policy, service or even products.
The research, conducted by Rohit Aggarwal, an assistant professor at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, suggests that negative posts act as a catalyst and can exponentially increase the readership of employee blogs.
» via Live Science
Are Workers Too Productive?
We all know about Moore’s Law; Gordon Moore’s 1965 prediction that the number of components making up an integrated circuit would double every two years for at least ten years. Indeed, semiconductor industry output grew at approximately that exponential rate for the next 45 years, and semiconductor manufacturers flooded the market with transistors and memory bits.
There’s mounting evidence that Moore’s Law applies to commodity work — labor that can be produced by many different individuals with a minimal amount of training. It’s difficult to distinguish the output of one commodity worker from another, just as it is difficult to differentiate wheat grown on one farm from wheat grown on another. If Moore’s Law applies to commodity work, commodity workers are in big trouble.
As economies in many advanced nations struggle to create jobs, I worry about whether Moore’s Law is spilling over into the job creation process. I worry that computers, smart phones, and robots are making us so productive and enabling us to leverage inexpensive labor so effectively that we are in a steep uphill battle.
» via The Atlantic
“I always felt to run a good company you had to have room for everybody — you could always figure out a way to make room for smart people.”
(via hiten)
“On its Web site, the American Postal Workers Union disputes the notion that “hard-copy mail is destined to be replaced by electronic messages.” Mail volume was down, it says, because its principal component — advertising — had fallen in the recession. “As the nation and the world emerge from economic stagnation, hard-copy mail volume will expand,” it asserts. But that, of course, ignores the rise of the Internet, and its ever-growing use for checking bills or sending payments — with no need for that army of 500,000.”
Library Limbo
The layoffs of eight library staff members — some with decades of experience and only a couple of years away from retirement — have faculty members at the University of San Diego up in arms. Critics call the administration’s actions an affront to the Roman Catholic teachings of the university.
Administrators said a reorganization of the university’s Copley Library was necessary in an increasingly technological world, and eliminating some positions made way for the creation of new positions that ensure the library will stay on top of current, digital trends. Those who lost their jobs devoted many years to the university; four are over the age of 58 and two have worked at the library for more than 25 years. But their jobs include positions such as inventory control official, night supervisor and reserves manager — positions that the library doesn’t see as essential in a digital age. At the very least, faculty critics say, the library workers should have been retrained for new positions.
» via Inside Higher Ed
