LA Times (December 17)
‘’Uber built its business by challenging regulators and entrenched assumptions about how best to assure public safety. It successfully evaded the strict local rules that the taxi industry faces on fares, licenses and driver background checks by arguing that smartphone-summoned rides were different from taxis and should be regulated under new state standards. It has also avoided a variety of mandates on employers by classifying its drivers as independent contractors, not employees.” But when it comes to testing driverless vehicles on California roads, the technology company should play be the rules.
Tags: ” Driverless vehicles, Assumptions, California, Contractors, Drivers, Employees, Employers, Fares, Licenses, Mandates, Public safety, Regulators, Rules, Smartphone, Taxi industry, Uber
Reuters (November 16)
“It will be a new day at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after President-elect Donald Trump installs his choice to run the agency.” With the resignation of SEC Chairman Mary Jo White, who was a proponent of regulation, Trump’s team will have a relatively free hand. “Some rules already are marked for death or dialback.” Among them are the conflict mineral disclosure requirements and “a proposal that would require companies to disclose pay ratios between their CEOs and employees.”
Tags: CEOs, Conflict minerals, Dialback, Employees, Mary Jo White, Pay ratios, Regulation, Resignation, SEC, Trump, U.S.
The Week (October 31)
Designed to foster communication and collaboration, open office layouts are having a negative impact on employee productivity and satisfaction. “Overheard conversations can result in a 5 percent to 10 percent decline in the performance of cognitive tasks…like reading, writing, and other forms of creative work. Noise can impair workers’ ability to recall information and do basic arithmetic. It also can decrease productivity by as much as 86 minutes per day.”
Tags: Collaboration, Communication, Employees, Impact, Noise, Performance, Productivity, Satisfaction
The Economist (March 19)
“Companies are abandoning functional silos and organising employees into cross-disciplinary teams that focus on particular products, problems or customers. These teams are gaining more power to run their own affairs. They are also spending more time working with each other rather than reporting upwards. But the transition to “a network of teams” in place of conventional hierarchy has hardly been smooth. Managing teams is “hard” and research routinely uncovers lapses. And even when teamwork is well managed, things can be taken too far. “Even in the age of open-plan offices and social networks some work is best left to the individual.”
Tags: Cross-disciplinary teams, Customers, Employees, Functional silos, Hierarchy, Individual, Network, Open-plan offices, Problems, Products, Research, Social networks, Teamwork
The Economist (July 25)
“Employees are often said to be a company’s biggest resource. It is equally true that they are its biggest liability. Scarcely a week goes by without a company falling victim to employees-turned-enemies-or-embarrassments.”
Wall Street Journal (March 18)
“Major Japanese manufacturers lined up Wednesday to give their employees bigger pay raises starting in April.” This could provide a boost to Abenomics, but “the diverging fortunes of Japan’s big and small firms suggest that Mr. Abe may have more work to make wage growth spread.”
Tags: Abenomics, Employees, Japan, Manufacturers, Pay raises, Small firms, Wage growth
Washington Post (August 8)
“Knowing how much the Grahams loved the paper, we could only imagine how hard it must have been for Don and his niece, Post publisher Katharine Weymouth, to tell that stunned room of employees that the paper was being sold…. Many of us sense that Don and his family have done an unselfish and courageous thing, at some personal emotional cost. Knowing that the Grahams could not sustain The Post indefinitely as a great newspaper, they looked for someone who could.” Selling the Washington Post “was Grahams’ gift to journalism.”
Tags: Courageous, Don Graham, Emotional cost, Employees, Journalism, Katharine Weymouth, Newspaper, Publisher, Unselfish, Washington Post
Financial Times (February 27)
Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, will require employees who previously worked from home to come to the office. “The lesson to draw from Ms Mayer’s whip-cracking – in Silicon Valley, of all places – is that this is an age of harder work. From intense teamwork at the top to monitoring and surveillance at the bottom, managers are squeezing more from employees than they previously would have dared.”
Tags: Employees, Home, Managers, Marissa Mayer, Monitoring, Office, Silicon Valley, Surveillance, Workplace, Yahoo
Los Angeles Times (September 2)
“A relentless focus on share price can hurt not only employees, taxpayers and society, but shareholders too. Managers who are pressured to raise stock price quickly often resort to tricks — selling assets, cutting payroll and investment, draining cash through dividends and share repurchase programs — to bump up stock price for a year or two. But such strategies often hurt a company’s long-term ability to grow and prosper.”
Forbes (July 20)
The computer maker Lenovo “had a banner year in 2011, with its profits up 73%.” CEO Yang Yuanqing did something unusual with his bonus, which was $3 million more than last year. “He decided to give that raise to his employees instead of himself, and divided it among 10,000 lower-level employees—receptionists and factory workers and the like. They got an average of 2,000 yuan, or $314, apiece.”
