Tag: Workplace culture

Thanksgiving travel rush is back with some new habits

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The Thanksgiving travel rush was back on this year, as people caught planes in numbers not seen in years, setting aside inflation concerns to reunite with loved ones and enjoy some normalcy after two holiday seasons marked by COVID-19 restrictions.

Changing habits around work and play, however, might spread out the crowds and reduce the usual amount of holiday travel stress. Experts say many people will start holiday trips early or return home later than normal because they will spend a few days working remotely — or at least tell the boss they’re working remotely.

The busiest travel days during Thanksgiving week are usually Tuesday, Wednesday and the Sunday after the holiday. This year, the Federal Aviation Administration expects Tuesday to be the busiest travel day with roughly 48,000 scheduled flights.

Chris Williams, of Raleigh, North Carolina, flew Tuesday morning with his wife and two kids to Atlanta, Georgia, to spend the holiday with extended family.

“Of course it’s a stressful and expensive time to fly,” said Williams, 44, who works in finance. “But after a couple years of not getting to spend Thanksgiving with our extended family, I’d say we’re feeling thankful that the world’s gotten to a safe enough place where we can be with loved ones again.”

Although Williams said the family’s budget has been tight this year, he’s capitalized on the opportunity to teach his kids some personal finance basics. His youngest, 11, has been learning how to budget her allowance money since March and is excited to buy small gifts for her friends on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. “Probably slime,” she said, “with glitter.”

The Transportation Security Administration screened nearly 2.3 million travelers on Tuesday, down from more than 2.4 million screened the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in 2019. On Monday, the numbers were up versus 2019 — more than 2.6 million travelers compared with 2.5 million. That same trend occurred Sunday, marking the first year that the number of people catching planes on Thanksgiving week surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

“People are traveling on different days. Not everyone is traveling on that Wednesday night,” says Sharon Pinkerton, senior vice president at the trade group Airlines for America. “People are spreading their travel out throughout the week, which I also think will help ensure smoother operations.”

AAA predicts that 54.6 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home in the U.S. this week, a 1.5% bump over Thanksgiving last year and only 2% less than in 2019. The auto club and insurance seller says nearly 49 million of those will travel by car, and 4.5 million will fly between Wednesday and Sunday.

U.S. airlines struggled to keep up as the number of passengers surged this year.

“We did have a challenging summer,” said Pinkerton, whose group speaks for members including American, United and Delta. She said that airlines have pared their schedules and hired thousands of workers — they now have more pilots than before the pandemic. “As a result, we’re confident that the week is going to go well.”

U.S. airlines plan to operate 13% fewer flights this week than during Thanksgiving week in 2019. However, by using larger planes on average, the number of seats will drop only 2%, according to data from travel-researcher Cirium.

Airlines continue to blame flight disruptions on shortages of air traffic controllers, especially in Florida, a major holiday destination.

Controllers, who work for the Federal Aviation Administration, “get tested around the holidays. That seems to be when we have challenges,” Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle said a few days ago. “The FAA is adding another 10% to headcount, hopefully that’s enough.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has disputed such claims, saying that the vast majority of delays and cancellations are caused by the airlines themselves.

TSA expects airports to be busier than last year and probably about on par with 2019. The busiest day in TSA’s history came on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2019, when nearly 2.9 million people were screened at airport checkpoints.

Stephanie Escutia, traveling with four children, her husband and her mother, said it took the family four hours to get through checking and security at the Orlando airport early Tuesday. The family was returning to Kansas City in time for Thanksgiving after a birthday trip to Disney World.

“We were surprised at how full the park was,” said Escutia, 32. “We thought it might be down some but it was packed.”

She welcomed the sense of normalcy, and said her family would be gathering for Thanksgiving without worrying about keeping their distance this year. “Now we are back to normal and looking forward to a nice holiday,” she said.

People getting behind the wheel or boarding a plane don’t seem fazed by higher gasoline and airfare prices than last year or the widespread concern about inflation and the economy. That is already leading to predictions of strong travel over Christmas and New Year’s.

“This pent-up demand for travel is still a real thing. It doesn’t feel like it’s going away,” says Tom Hall, a vice president and longtime writer for Lonely Planet, the publisher of travel guides. “That’s keeping planes full, that’s keeping prices high.”

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Associated Press writers Hannah Schoenbaum in Raleigh, North Carolina, Margaret Stafford in Kansas City and AP video journalist Terence Chea in Oakland, California contributed to this report.

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David Koenig can be reached at twitter.com/airlinewriter

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November 23, 2022
Twitter survival at stake, Musk warns as remote work ends

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Elon Musk is warning Twitter employees to brace for “difficult times ahead” that might end with the collapse of the social media platform if they can’t find new ways of making money.

Workers who survived last week’s mass layoffs are facing harsher work conditions and growing uncertainty about their ability to keep Twitter running safely as it continues to lose high-level leaders responsible for data privacy, cybersecurity and complying with regulations.

Musk’s first companywide message to employees came by email late Wednesday night and ordered them to stop working from home and show up in the office Thursday morning. He followed that with his first “all-hands” meeting Thursday answering workers’ concerns. Before that, many were relying on the billionaire Tesla CEO’s public tweets for clues about Twitter’s future.

“Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company, but there is no way to sugarcoat the message,” wrote Musk, before he described a dire economic climate for businesses like Twitter that rely almost entirely on advertising to make money.

“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” Musk said. “We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.”

At the staff meeting Thursday afternoon, Musk said some “exceptional” employees could seek an exemption from his return-to-work order but that others who didn’t like it could quit, according to an employee at the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity out of a concern for job security.

The employee also said Musk appeared to downplay employee concerns about how a pared-back Twitter workforce was handling its obligations to maintain privacy and data security standards, saying as CEO of Tesla he knew how that worked.

Musk’s memo and staff meeting echoed a livestreamed conversation trying to assuage major advertisers Wednesday, his most expansive public comments about Twitter’s direction since he closed a $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform late last month and dismissed its top executives. A number of well-known brands have paused advertising on Twitter as they wait to see how Musk’s proposals to relax content rules against hate and misinformation affect the tenor of the platform.

Musk told employees the “priority over the past 10 days” was to develop and launch Twitter’s new subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check mark next to the name of paid members — the mark was previously only for verified accounts. Musk’s project has had a rocky rollout with an onslaught of newly bought fake accounts this week impersonating high-profile figures such as basketball star LeBron James, former U.S. President George W. Bush and the drug company Eli Lilly to post false information or offensive jokes.

In a second email to employees, Musk said the “absolute top priority” over the coming days is to suspend “bots/trolls/spam” exploiting the verified accounts. But Twitter now employs far fewer people to help him do that.

An executive last week said Twitter was cutting roughly 50% of its workforce, which numbered 7,500 earlier this year.

Musk had previously expressed distaste for Twitter’s pandemic-era remote work policies that enabled team leaders to decide if employees had to show up in the office.

Musk told employees in the email that “remote work is no longer allowed” and the road ahead is “arduous and will require intense work to succeed” and they will need to be in the office at least 40 hours per week. He said he would personally review any request for an exception.

Twitter hasn’t disclosed the total number of layoffs across its global workforce but told local and state officials in the U.S. that it was cutting 784 workers at its San Francisco headquarters, about 200 elsewhere in California, more than 400 in New York City, more than 200 in Seattle and about 80 in Atlanta.

The exodus at Twitter is ongoing, including the company’s chief privacy officer, Damien Kieran, and chief information security officer Lea Kissner, who tweeted Thursday that “I’ve made the hard decision to leave Twitter.”

Cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos, a former Facebook security chief, tweeted Thursday that there is a “serious risk of a breach with drastically reduced staff” that could also put Twitter at odds with a 2011 order from the Federal Trade Commission that required it to address serious data security lapses.

“Twitter made huge strides towards a more rational internal security model and backsliding will put them in trouble with the FTC” and other regulators in the U.S. and Europe, Stamos said.

The FTC said in a statement Thursday that it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” said the agency’s statement. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

The FTC would not say whether it was investigating Twitter for potential violations. If it were, it is empowered to demand documents and depose employees.

Twitter paid a $150 million penalty in May for violating the 2011 consent order and its updated version established new procedures requiring the company to implement an enhanced privacy protection program as well as beefing up info security.

Those new procedures include an exhaustive list of disclosures Twitter must make to the FTC when introducing new products and services — particularly when they affect personal data collected on users.

Musk is, of course, fundamentally overhauling platform offerings, and it’s not known if he is telling the FTC about it. Twitter, which gutted its communications department, didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Musk has a history of tangling with regulators. “I do not respect the SEC,” Musk declared in a 2018 tweet.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently examined for possible tardiness his disclosures to the agency of his purchases of Twitter stock to amass a major stake. In 2018, Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million in fines over Musk’s allegedly misleading tweets saying he’d secured the funding to take the electric car maker private for $420 a share. Musk has fought the SEC in court over compliance with the agreement.

The consequences for not meeting FTC’s requirements can be severe — such as when Facebook had to pay $5 billion for privacy violations.

“If Twitter so much as sneezes, it has to do a privacy review beforehand,” tweeted Riana Pfefferkorn, a Stanford University researcher who said she previously provided Twitter outside legal counsel. “There are periodic outside audits, and the FTC can monitor compliance.”

Twitter was fined in May for the alleged commercial exploit of customers data — phone numbers and email addresses — that it had claimed it needed for security purposes, such as enabling multi-factor authentication.

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AP reporters Frank Bajak and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.

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November 10, 2022
Musk ends remote work at Twitter, warns of troubles ahead

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Elon Musk has emailed Twitter employees, most working remotely, ordering them to return to the office immediately for at least 40 hours a week and warning of “difficult times ahead.”

A pair of Wednesday night missives seen by The Associated Press marked Musk’s first companywide message to employees who survived last week’s mass layoffs. Many have had to rely on the billionaire Tesla CEO’s public tweets for clues about Twitter’s future.

“Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company, but there is no way to sugarcoat the message,” wrote Musk, before he described a dire economic climate for businesses like Twitter that rely almost entirely on advertising to make money.

“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” Musk said. “We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.”

Musk’s memo followed a livestreamed conversation trying to assuage major advertisers Wednesday, his most expansive public comments about Twitter’s direction since he closed a $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform late last month and dismissed its top executives. A number of well-known brands have paused advertising on Twitter as they wait to see how Musk’s proposals to relax content rules against hate and misinformation affect the tenor of the platform.

Musk told employees “the priority over the past ten days” was to develop and launch Twitter’s new subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check mark next to the name of paid members — the mark was previously only for verified accounts.

An executive last week said Twitter was cutting roughly 50% of its workforce, which numbered 7,500 earlier this year.

Musk had previously expressed distaste for Twitter’s pandemic-era remote work policies that enabled team leaders to decide if employees had to show up in the office. On Wednesday, he ordered all employees to return to the office Thursday.

Musk told employees in the email that “remote work is no longer allowed” and the road ahead is “arduous and will require intense work to succeed.” He said he would personally review any request for an exception.

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November 10, 2022
Jane Fonda: Nonprofit’s work ‘far more important’ after Roe

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ATLANTA — Jane Fonda says the work of the Georgia-based nonprofit organization she founded to prevent teenage pregnancies has become “far more important” in the months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion it guaranteed to women in the United States.

The activist and Oscar winner has been an outspoken critic of the court’s decision, previously calling it “unconscionable.”

While a post-Roe world will be harder on girls because they are the ones who would have to carry a baby, the work to fight teen pregnancy must also focus on adolescent boys, said Fonda, who was in Atlanta for a fundraiser Thursday to celebrate the 27th anniversary of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential.

“We have to help our boys understand that they don’t have to get a girl pregnant to be men, that being a real man means taking care of yourself, respecting your body and the body of your partner,” Fonda told The Associated Press. “Things are much, much harder for boys and girls now and, so, teaching them skills around their reproductive health, how to stay healthy, how to stay pregnancy-free, how to say no, how to have agency over their body, these things are more important than ever.”

Fonda, 84, founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995 when she lived in Atlanta and when Georgia had the highest teenage birth rate in the United States.

In 2012, the organization changed its name and expanded its mission beyond teenage pregnancy prevention to include nutrition and physical activity. The group says its programs now reach more than 60,000 young people every year.

“We have to educate them about how their bodies work so that they will know how to protect themselves,” Fonda said. “We have to help young people see that they have a future that will be productive, that they can work for – towards, that they can reach towards – and getting in trouble when they’re a teenager and having a baby when you’re very young will make reaching for that future that much harder.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the birth rate for 15- to 19-year-olds in the United States in 2020 was down 8% from the previous year and down 75% from its peak in 1991.

Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana have the highest teenage birth rates in the U.S. Birth rates also remain higher among Native American, Hispanic and Black teenagers.

Fonda served as GCAPP’s chair until she moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles in 2010.

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Follow Alex Sanz on Twitter at @AlexSanz.

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November 9, 2022
Is Remote Work the Future? It’s Time For The Agile Workplace.
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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
As the pandemic subsides, many executives and employees are transitioning to the new normal. Companies that transitioned to a remote environment are now opening their offices again and trying to determine how they will operate. Some businesses, like Airbnb, Salesforce, Meta and Google, have stated they will allow people to remain remote if they choose to, as employers believe it improves their chances at retention and employees have proven they can get the work done.

Others, like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Netflix, are pushing to have all employees back in the office five days a week in the belief that there is no substitute for in-office collaboration and interactions. Other companies are trying to land in the middle. Adobe, Apple, and Citi use a hybrid approach in which employees are generally expected in the office 2-3 days a week.

Several factors suggest the winning strategy won’t be forcing one approach but adapting to the needs and desires of the workforce. A more agile strategy toward workplace design, culture and operating models will be required to succeed. To understand why, consider the business realities and opportunities behind a more agile approach.

Related: Remote Work Is Here to Stay. It’s Time to Update the Way You Lead.

Why an agile strategy will win

Gallup published a study of more than 8,000 remote-capable workers to learn what they prefer, what they see as the future and what they plan to do if their company changes directions.

Fifty-six percent said their job can be done entirely remotely today, and only 20% said they believe fully on-site will remain a valid strategy, down from 60% in 2019. Only 6% said they want to work entirely on-site. That means 94% of employees surveyed want a more flexible strategy. With more than 70 million workers in the U.S. estimated to be in remote-capable roles, that’s a significant number looking for a more flexible strategy.

After two years of the “great work experiment,” in which vast portions of the workforce were forced to work from home, we have a lot of information and data. Here’s what we’ve learned:
- Workers are more productive at home: a Stanford University study found that working from home full-time was equivalent to adding a full day of productivity per week.
- Workers are more likely to stay at their employer: the same study indicated turnover decreased by 50% as employees felt more loyal and refreshed because they could be more comfortable at home and spend more time with friends and family.
- It limits wage inflation: a July 2022 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed those organizations that expanded work-from-home and remote work opportunities moderated wage inflation by 1% of wages over 12 months on average. The annual Survey of Business Uncertainty found that 55.4% of companies have been able to “restrain wage growth” by employing a flexible work strategy.
- It allows companies to tap into a more global, more diverse workplace: remote teams give employers access to worldwide talent and potentially be “open” to the public around the clock ― the “follow the sun” model, in which work continues in various regions night and day. Groups that have traditionally “fallen” out of the workforce, like women who have kids, can work from home part-time or full-time more easily.
- Employers save money on rent and other facilities costs. A study by Global Workplace Analytics estimates facilities savings could equal $10,000 per year per employee.
So what does an agile work strategy mean and look like?

An agile workplace strategy means an organization is not wedded to traditional 20^th-century operating models or organizational structures and is willing and able to adapt flexibly to meet the needs and preferences of its talent. The new models include:
- Fully Distributed Organizations: rather than trying to employ all technology workers in traditional markets (Silicon Valley, Seattle, Los Angeles, etc.), companies will establish hubs all over the world. Top talent can be obtained and retained in lower-cost markets like Eastern Europe, India or Southeast Asia, or even small non-traditional cities in the U.S. like Boise, Idaho.
- Full Remote Organizations: these organizations have removed the requirement to be in an office entirely for nearly every role and now employ a global “work where you are” strategy. Companies like GitLab, with 1,500 employees in more than 65 countries, have gone even further — they have no company-owned offices at all. Dropbox is “virtual first” now and retains 16 studios worldwide, but employees aren’t required to come in or be near a location.
How do you make this work strategy work? Four quick tips:
- Change your organization’s operating model and structure to allow this environment. For example, Google provides “distributed work playbooks” for leaders, managers, employees and buddies (to help new hires) to help drive how to make the environment work for everyone.
- Set clear expectations: practical goal setting, feedback processes, and regular and effective check-ins and 1:1s between managers and employees to ensure things don’t fall through the cracks with a remote, global or hybrid workplace.
- Gather the right tools: effective project management software like Asana, shared document approaches like Google Docs/Sheets/Slides, shared drives like One Drive, and effective real-time collaboration tools like Slack and Zoom for working seamlessly in a (usually) single-sign-on environment.
- Make it an organizational imperative to forge connections, bonds and friendships at work: in an Agile work environment, people will need to find ways to connect as informal in-person mechanisms will be more limited.
Related: 4 Things for Employers to Consider About the Future of Work

Conclusion

How to deploy an agile work strategy is complex, nuanced and challenging, but it will be required to win in the future. The organizations that begin the journey now will be more ready to survive the challenges ahead and capitalize on the opportunities the future will provide.
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Jesse Meschuk

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October 31, 2022
How to Create a Work Environment That Supports Grief and Loss

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Many people lost a loved one in the past two years due to Covid-19. Employees, communities, companies, organizations and institutions faced severe losses in the workforce and will never be the same as we were before 2020.

Despite this, many employers want the workplace to return to a certain degree of normalcy. While this may seem like a consciousness-based decision, the pandemic exposed apparent social issues and gaps organizations can no longer ignore if they want to adopt a more wellness-based enterprise and culture.

The workplace will never ultimately return to “normal,” because the global pandemic left a scar on the lives of the bereaved and their mental health. Before, grieving was situational; but in light of the pandemic, many people experienced tremendous loss — almost everyone was grieving, especially employees. The most important stakeholders are your employees, and their well-being is the most valuable asset to any organization. They are instrumental to incremental growth and development.

Grieving wasn’t always appropriately addressed by the workforce. Employers need to embrace this change, recognize when someone is grieving and make them feel comfortable about being transparent and vulnerable. The workplace has a duty to be mindful of employee and worker wellness.

Related: ‘Corporate America Is Killing Us.’ Employees Share Gut-Wrenching Stories That Reveal a Compassion Crisis.

The pandemic normalized grief and loss

Covid-19 has wholly transformed the working world, including how a company’s culture includes those who grieve. Grief is not only a series of emotions one experiences after losing someone — it is a new identity the bereaved needs to learn and understand. It is not an easy process, especially in the workforce. Believe it or not, grief fundamentally changes someone and their perspective. They may never be the same again — their values, motivations and interests may change.

The dire consequences of unsupported and untreated grief can have long-lasting effects in the workplace psychologically, emotionally and even financially. A company’s culture of death, loss and grief can be what makes someone stay or leave. The workplace needs to be proactively mindful of the people around them who may be experiencing feelings of grief and loss. Many withstanding challenges can become persistent when there is a lack of practices, policies or systemic culture to best support grieving employees.

Foster the emotional space

Grieving can be challenging and lengthy. When someone loses someone close to them, this can cause them to feel overwhelmed. They may worry about how they will manage their role and productivity. They may encounter additional stress, burnout and brain fog. Managers should open up the space for employees to share their feelings and express concerns about moving forward.

Ask your employee how they want to be supported. It is imperative to learn how to show up for employees, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.

Related: What Grief Taught Me About Running a Business

Create environments where productivity and innovation can thrive. Employees should feel celebrated for their contributions to the organization. Employee autonomy is crucial because some are very comfortable talking about their grief, while others may not. It is their choice if they would like to talk about it, but knowingly having the support is what makes the difference. A thoughtful manager goes beyond delegating tasks and ensuring teams continue to be productive and organized.

Communication and support are two of the most valued components of the workplace. Employees are more than their position; therefore, managers must acknowledge their employees as people. These honest conversations allow leaders to identify where extra support is needed for teams to prosper and produce efficient results. Most importantly, this will help managers build rapport and better relationships with their team members and actively play a role in shifting how the company approaches workplace grief.

Some solely want work to remain at work, but investing in employees’ emotional support will be tremendously helpful for retention, cultural change and employee branding. Employees should not be alone and carry the burden of being the only ones initiating changes they want to see. Real change begins with upper management, and when they lead by example, it will trickle down to all areas of the company.

Thinking back and ahead

It isn’t only about creating a safe space for employees; fostering an environment that supports grief and loss includes implementing company-wide policies to produce structural changes. Do you offer generous bereavement leave for employees to reflect on their grief? If so, is it communicated thoroughly to employees?

Do you have mental health training for employees to take? If you do not, consider consulting with outside trainers or starting your own training plan. It is necessary to make sure you highlight the area of grief, so your colleagues will know how to treat and support people who are grieving.

Related: 4 Tips for Entrepreneurial Survival During the Grieving Process

Create a comprehensive grieving plan if you think your company can benefit from an individual training plan. This plan can detail what grieving is, how emotionally hard it can be, why it is essential to recognize it, the emotional toll it can have on someone, how to be empathetic to others and even suicide awareness to address workplace mental health and suicide.

Begin your meetings with mental health check-ins to see how everyone is doing emotionally. Consider hosting a “lunch and learn event” on what grieving is like in the workplace and how it impacts and intersects with occupational identities.

Sometimes, your entire company will experience grief when an employee passes away. Consider implementing a course of action on how they can be honored. Would you give your employees a paid day off to grieve? It would help if you had a communication plan to outline what your message would be to the entire company. Does your company specifically outline mental health benefits if your employees need professional care?

Always have the conversation

If you want your company to embrace a culture of support for grief and loss, the conversation must always be happening. The conversation cannot stop when things seem to return to “normal.” Grieving is a lifelong journey, and the support must always be there. Finally, grief is just one aspect of creating a workplace of holistic wellness and well-being. You can’t only tackle grief; you must ensure that all work areas of wellness are treated and supported.

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Zane Landin

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October 21, 2022
4-day work week firms are seeing a surge in job applications

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Job applications have soared at companies taking part in the trial for a four-day work week.

Westend61 via Getty Images

Trying to attract and retain workers? Forget pizza parties and nap pods. Companies in the U.K. are looking at a more promising solution: the four-day work week.

“Visits to our recruitment page have gone up by 60% and enquiries to the company have gone up by 534%,” Helen Brittain, human resources director at environmental consultancy Tyler Grange, told CNBC’s Make It.

The company is among those taking part in the U.K.’s trial for a four-day work week. Since implementing a shorter working week, the firm has noticed a huge difference when it comes to recruitment and retainment of employees.

“The interest that people are showing in the company is amazing,” Brittain said.

Tyler Grange isn’t the only company that has noticed a difference. Gaming-focused communications consultancy The Story Mob is another one, according to its founder and co-CEO Anna Rozwandowicz.

“We have definitely seen an increase in interest from job seekers,” she said, adding that shortly after shifting to the four-day work week, the team was able to fill a position that had been vacant for a long time.

Britain’s four-day work week trial is the largest of its kind so far, and has had widely positive reactions from employees and companies taking part. The idea behind it is simple: Workers aim for the same levels of productivity and output in 20% less time, for 100% of their pay.

The 4 Day Week Global campaign has also started a trial in Australia and New Zealand and is planning to expand in the United States, Canada, Europe and South Africa throughout 2022 and 2023.

Recruiting in an employee’s market

For education technology firm Bedrock Learning, making recruitment and retention easier was a key driver for shifting to a four-day work week.

“Being brutally honest, it is a retention and recruitment piece,” its CEO and founder Aaron Leary told CNBC’s Make It. “It has been very much an employee’s market through the pandemic and there’s been a lot of movement, a lot of changing and Bedrock was also sort of susceptible to that,” he added.

Our retention of staff went up from 80% to 98%.

Mark Haslam

Managing Director, Loud Mouth Media

Like many other companies, Bedrock Learning struggled with the Great Resignation and the shift to flexible working, which made maintaining a company culture more difficult while making it easier to switch jobs. In early 2022, job vacancies also hit an all-time high in the U.K., according to the country’s Office for National Statistics, increasing competition for workers and therefore making recruitment harder.

Marketing agency Loud Mouth Media, also part of the four-day work week trial, was also affected. “That’s why we got involved,” said Managing Director Mark Haslam.

“During Covid our guys were just getting tapped up, left, right and centre,” he says, adding that competition for talent also intensified as companies started adding new perks for employees.

The shift to the four-day work week has been game changing for both companies.

“I would say things have completely sort of stabilised compared to what they were in terms of like retention,” Bedrock Learning’s Leary said, adding that only one employee has resigned since June, when the trial began.

According to companies trialing a four-day work week that CNBC Make It spoke to, employee recruitment has improved. However, the surge in applications doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to find the right candidate, said one managing director.

Westend61 via Getty Images

Over at Loud Mouth Media, Haslam also noticed major changes in both recruitment and retention.

“I would say our applications have doubled. We get a lot more ad hoc applications,” he said. “Our retention of staff went up from 80% to 98%.”

More applications = better candidates?

However, the surge in applications doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to find the right candidate, Haslam said.

“If somebody comes to me and says I want to work for you because you do a four-day week, we don’t entertain them remotely. Because it’s not a genuine driver for somebody and that just means somebody wants to work less, you know, it makes you kind of question their ethics,” he says.

Haslam said he wants to hire candidates who are aligned with the company’s values and goals, and that goes beyond the four-day week.

Tyler Grange has had similar experiences.

“We get an awful lot of people apply because we’re a four-day week trial company and not because they’ve got the right skill that we would actually be looking for in our business,” said Human Resources Director Brittain.

The firm’s managing director Simon Ursell agrees. “There aren’t that many applicants that are applying specifically for the roles we want,” he said. Even with the four-day work week, it remains difficult to fill some roles and find suitable candidates as the job market remains tough, he added.

“So, it’s not the panacea.”

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October 18, 2022
Alexis Ohanian gets sports award, calls for reforms in NWSL

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NEW YORK — Alexis Ohanian called out the need for a safe work environment in the National Women’s Soccer League while receiving the Champions for Equality Award at the annual Salute to Women in Sports event on Wednesday night.

The former executive chairman of Reddit is a founding investor of the newest women’s professional soccer team, Angel City FC in Los Angeles. He was accompanied by his wife Serena Williams and daughter Olympia.

“As a club owner, as a husband and as a father, I have been disgusted by what’s been brought to light as part of this ongoing investigation,” he said. “I’m hopeful it will lead to necessary reform.”

He praised the players in the NWSL who are demanding accountability and changes after last week’s report from an independent investigation highlighted systemic sexual misconduct and emotional abuse. The investigation detailed administrative reporting failures in the sport, impacting several teams, coaches and executives in the league.

“It’s to their strength, their bravery and their courage that we’re going to get a better NWSL,” Ohanian said to cheers at the Women’s Sports Foundation’s event in Manhattan.

Five of the 10 head coaches in the NWSL either were fired or stepped down last season amid allegations of misconduct. Two owners have recently stepped away from their teams.

Ohanian said he watched the U.S. women win the 2019 World Cup and mused about how Olympia might someday play in a World Cup: “Serena said, without missing a beat, ‘Not until they pay her what she’s worth.’”

Ohanian is part of the majority-female Angel City FC ownership group that includes Williams, Natalie Portman, Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, Julie Foudy, America Ferrera, Uzo Aduba, Candace Parker and Billie Jean King, among others.

Foudy, a two-time U.S. World Cup champion, said rigorous guidelines are needed to combat sexual misconduct and it would “absolutely” help to have more female owners and female coaches in the NWSL.

“The change of mindset in Angel City and that ownership group … is remarkable to see,” she said. “You don’t have to spend so much time expending energy about why you should support these women. They get it. The Angel City refrain I always get it is: ’What’s possible?’”

Olympic gold medalists Sunisa Lee in gymnastics and Maggie Steffens in water polo were also honored as Sportswomen of the Year at the awards dinner, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley received the Billie Jean King Leadership Award. Staley not only led the U.S. women’s basketball team to the gold medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics but also guided South Carolina to its second NCAA title in five years in April. Staley is the first Black coach to win two NCAA Division I basketball championships.

Bobsledder Elena Meyers Taylor, the most decorated Black athlete at the winter Olympics with five medals, was given the Wilma Rudolph Courage Award. She accepted the award with her young son, Nico, at her side. Meyers Taylor won her most recent medal despite having COVID-19 at the Beijing Olympics.

“I’m inspired by this remarkable group of honorees, who are breaking records, eliminating barriers and blazing a path for a brighter future in and out of sports for girls and women,” said King, who in 1974 created the Women’s Sports Foundation, which provides community sports programs and training grants.

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More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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October 13, 2022