Wednesday, November 27, 2019

This is the shocking number of people that have stress-cried at work

This is the shocking number of people that have stress-cried at workThis is the shocking number of people that have stress-cried at workSometimes, the stress runneth over. If youre lucky, your work-tears have flowed in the restroom, or at the end of a long, empty hallway. Ginger, an on-demand behavioral health system, released its first annual Workforce Attitudes Towards Behavioral Health Report, where they surveyed 1,214 workers with employer-provided benefits over a one-year period about emotional and mental health.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreMaybe surprisingly, elend only have nearly half of the respondents surveyed wept at work due to stress, but 36% of those who cried were men.Crying game83% of respondents experience stress at least once a week, with 16% reporting extreme stress, meaning experiencing stress daily. Manual workers, Gen Z, and lower-income employees report ed the highest levels of extreme stress.81 percent of workers said that stress negatively affects their work negatively, and results in symptoms ranging from fatigue and anxiety to physical ailments.50% of workers missed at least one day of work per year due to their mental or emotional health. Gen Z and Millennials are the groups more likely to miss more than one day.Employees are beginning to consider their mental health more important than ever, however 85% ranked mental health services as important when considering a new job.Mental health resourcesAccess remains a problem one-third have paid out-of-pocket for mental-health services their employer benefits didnt cover.And 81% never used their mental-health benefits at all. Various reasons given were concerns over their employer finding out, not enough time, or difficulty finding providers.Only 26% of the workplace actually seeks professional help for their workplace stress. Of that quarter, the younger generations were the most l ikely to get help, with Millennials at 62%, followed by Gen Z at 54%.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people

Friday, November 22, 2019

This is the only out-of-office autoreply you will ever need

This is the only out-of-office autoreply you will ever needThis is the only out-of-office autoreply you will ever needOut of Office Message Ill be away through Monday, July 9th and I will notlage be checking this schmelzglas address. When I return I will probably batch delete schmelzglass received during this time. If you have a news emergency please contact XXXxxx.xxx. If there is a matter you would like me to see, please re-send it after July 10th. ThanksThat is a version of an out of office emaillele I used through many vacations when I was Executive Producer of Morning Edition and then Executive Editor of NPR News.Deleting all your emails? Thats a bit extreme, you might be telling yourself.In fact, it was liberating for me and everyone I dealt with. There was a caveat. A few people at work knew how to connect with me for emergencies that they deemed needed my attention, and who I trusted to make that determination. The rest had to wait.Friends, its a system that works.Follow Ladd ers on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreAmericans are notorious for not taking their full vacation allotment or for working during vacation for a variety of reasons, including fear of losing their jobs. And the great liberator, technology, has made us even worse at taking a well-earned break.I used to be one of those people. Id be somewhere in the woods and get twitchy if I had been out of signal sortiment for a few hours. Then Id be that crazy rolle trying to find a signal when outside the public library or plan an afternoon in the village coffee shop with wi-fi just in case I was missing something at work.I used to try and zero out my inbox before leaving, just to be crushed by the thousands and thousands of emails that greeted me on my return.Did I really need to sift through all of those emails? What had I missed?Well, there were things that seemed like crises at the time that got sorted out within 24 hours A birthday celebration for someone in the cafeteria free food leftover after a meeting in the conference room an incredible number of lame PR pitches meetings that I was invited to that I really didnt need to be at an absurd number of emails I was ccd on that I really didnt need to be (abuse of the cc line can be the topic of another piece) requests to borrow umbrellas during a sudden storm. You get the picture. Our email is full of stuff that is immediate but not necessarily important.So my new out of office email, clearly stating every message would be deleted, was the only way to restore some sanity. I replied to every person who wrote back to me after my return.In return, I could have a great vacation where I could devote myself to the people around me, not the people in cyberspace or the ones back at the office.So here are my rules for email hygieneAlways leave an out of office message if you are on vacation or locked in an all-day meeting and cant easily access email. It makes the sender feel better that they are not necessarily being ignored.Make sure your workplace understands that you will be taking your vacation seriously.Do not use your work email address for things other than work.Friends should email you on your personal email address the same goes for all social plans.Keep your lives separate.If you get a phone through work, dont use it for your personal email or phone number, even though you can. Yes, you feel like a dork carrying around two phones, but the work phone belongs to your employer and everything on it is accessible to the information technology team.When youleave and want your information back, it gets messy. Case law is not definitive on your rights with regard to that work phone.If you do have your personal and work emails on one device, delete the work email account - and Slack, Gchat, and any other messaging platforms - from your phone for the duration of your vacation. Youve left an out of office message, peopl e will get it.Good luck with your new email hygiene regimen. Im out of office for the next 10 days.Madhulika Sikka is a media consultant and someone who has won battles against email but has yet to win the war.This article was first published on July 10, 2017.This is the only out-of-office autoreply you will ever needOut of Office Message Ill be away through Monday July 9th and I will not be checking this email address. When I return I will probably batch delete emails received during this time. If you have a news emergency please contact XXXxxx.xxx. If there is a matter you would like me to see, please re-send it after July 10th. ThanksThat is a version of an out of office email I used through many vacations when I was Executive Producer of Morning Edition and then Executive Editor of NPR News.Deleting all your emails? Thats a bit extreme, you might be telling yourself. In fact, it was liberating for me and everyone I dealt with. There was a caveat. A few people at work knew how to connect with me for emergencies that they deemed needed my attention, and who I trusted to make that determination. The rest had to wait. Friends, its a system that works. Americans are notorious for not taking their full vacation allotment or for working during vacation for a variety of reasons, including fear of losing their jobs. And the great liberator, technology, has made us even worse at taking a well-earned break. I used to be one of those people. Id be somewhere in the woods and get twitchy if I had been out of signal range for a few hours. Then Id be that be that crazy person trying to find a signal when outside the public library or plan an afternoon in the village coffee shop with wi-fi just in case I was missing something at work.I used to try and zero out my inbox before leaving, just to be crushed by the thousands and thousands of emails that greeted me on my return.Did I really need to sift through all of those emails? What had I missed? Well, there were things that seemed like crises at the time that got sorted out within 24 hours A birthday celebration for someone in the cafeteria free food leftover after a meeting in the conference room an incredible number of lame PR pitches meetings that I was invited to that I really didnt need to be at an absurd number of emails I was ccd on that I really didnt need to be (abuse of the cc line can be the topic of another piece) requests to borrow umbrellas during a sudden storm. You get the picture. Our email is full of stuff that is immediate but not necessarily important. So my new out of office email, clearly stating every message would be deleted, was the only way to restore some sanity. I replied to every person who wrote back to me after my return. In return, I could have a great vacation where I could devote myself to the people around me, not the people in cyberspace or the ones back at the office.So here are my rules for email hygiene Always leave an out of office message if you are on vacation or locked in an all-day meeting and cant easily access email. It makes the sender feel better that they are not necessarily being ignored.Make sure your workplace understands that you will be taking your vacation seriously.Do not use your work email address for things other than work.Friends should email you on your personal email address the same goes for all social plans.Keep your lives separate. If you get a phone through work, dont use it for your personal email or phone number, even though you can. Yes, you feel like a dork carrying around two phones, but the work phone belongs to your employer and everything on it is accessible to the information technology team.When youleave and want your information back, it gets messy. Case law is not definitive on your rights with regard to that work phone. If you do have your personal and work emails on one device, delete the work email account - and Slack, Gchat, and any other messaging platforms - from your phone for the duration of your vacation. Youve left an out of office message, people will get it. Good luck with your new email hygiene regimen. Im out of office for the next 10 days.Madhulika Sikka is a media consultant and someone who has won battles against email but has yet to win the war.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Do men cheat more Maybe not as women close the infidelity gap

Do men cheat mora Maybe not as women close the infidelity gapDo men cheat more Maybe not as women close the infidelity gapMen tend tocheat morethan women, but theres evidence theinfidelity gapclosing - not because men are having fewer affairs, but because women are having more. But there are some questions about this data, which is largely self-reported. Do respondents to the surveys used by social scientists lie? And do the numbers on who gets caught align with the numbers of cheating? According to couples therapist Tammy Nelson, author ofWhen Youre The One Who Cheats, theres a reason to suspect that women may be not only cheating more, but getting away with it a lot more frequently.We dont know if more men or more women are caught cheating, on average.But it would make sense that women are better at hiding their affairs. Traditionally women have faced harsher punishment for cheating, Nelson toldFatherly. They have lost their financial support, risked the loss of their children, an d in some countries even risked the loss of their lives.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreTwenty percent of men cheat compared to 13% of women, according to theU.S. General Social Survey. Men are more prone to casual and opportunistic cheating, which plays a big part in why they get caught. Infidelity, for many men, is evidence of recklessness. For women, it may be evidence of a more thought-out plan to address perceived needs. The potential costs of being sexually reckless is otherwise too high. Intimate partner violence, whichone out of three women experiences at some point, is often triggered by infidelity.Sex therapist Candice Cooper-Lovett agrees with Nelson that womens ability to hide infidelity is at least somewhat adaptive.A lot of women in my practice have shared that cheating was something that you take to the grave with you because men cant handle cheating in the way t hat women do, or are expected to, she explains.Its important to note that emerging data suggests this dynamic might change. One ongoing online survey conducted by the academic blogTruth About Deception,currently includes 61,901 women and 31,238 men (results are ongoing and updated daily). A total of 67.3% of male cheaters reported cheating on their spouses more than once, compared to 53.5% of women. Of those, 21.5% of men were suspected of cheating, compared to 40.1% of women. Finally, 39.2% of male cheaters said they eventually got caught, compared to 48% of women.But thats survey datathat hasnt been subjected to scientific controls. Its enough that Nelson acknowledges men may be getting better at sneaking around. But its a grudging acknowledgment.What we know is that men are better at compartmentalizing their affairs than women. They seem to be better at keeping their extramarital relationships separate from their primary partnerships than women, they can hide their outside behavi ors and seem to be less disturbed by maintaining multiple lives, Nelson says. How long they can keep the compartmentalization going is not clear.Its also possible that more women are getting caught cheating for the same reasons that more women are either admitting to infidelity and committing it in the first place - because its not as dangerous as it used to be. Since intimate partner violence remains a real problem, a less idealistic conclusion to draw may be that gender is not a good lens through which to look at the issue of infidelity. Nelson and Cooper-Lovett both say that the one thing most people who get caught cheating have in common is that they want to get caught - either on a conscious or subconscious level.Those who dont want to be caught take actions to ensure their affair goes undiscovered, says Nelson. It seems to be working.This article originally appeared on Fatherly.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

to Benefit Your Business

to Benefit Your Business to Benefit Your Business Have you been told your business needs a cost accountant more than it needs more rolls of adding-machine tape? The first thing you might wonder is if there's a difference between financial accounting and cost accounting, and the answer is yes. Financial accountants calculate assets and liabilities and show outside investors how a firm is doing. A cost accountant analyzes financial processes within an organization and makes recommendations for improved cost-control management. So the bottom line is, if you want to reduce waste and increase cost efficiency, your organization could benefit from the services of a cost accountant. Here are some questions you might have - and answers. What does a cost accountant do? These are the main duties of a cost accountant: Compute costs of production/service and facilitate cost reduction Develop an internal reporting system for decision making that cuts costs in the future Categorize cost classifications based on function (i.e., activities, products and processes) Collect, analyze, summarize and evaluate various alternative courses of action Complete gross margin analyses related to a company's products, inventory and overall value Investigate variances in financial records Establish inventory value as it changes with market fluctuations What is the pay for a cost accountant? According to the 2018 Robert Half Salary Guide, the starting salary midpoint for a cost accountant with up to a year of experience is $48,500 in 2018; cost accountants with one to three years of experience can expect $62,000 at midpoint, and for senior cost accountants, $77,000. Visit our Salary Center, where you can use the Salary Calculator to adjust these salaries for your city. When is it time to consider a cost accountant? Here are some key questions to determine if a cost accountant can help your business: Do you need help deciding what to charge for products? By using intricate formulas, software and spreadsheets, a cost accountant can help business owners and managers determine product pricing. Do you need to improve net margins? Cost accounting can be a beneficial management tool for budgeting and setting up cost-control programs, which can improve future net margins. Do you need a better understanding of where the money is going and why? The cost accounting process assesses the input costs of each step of production, as well as fixed costs such as depreciation of capital equipment. A cost accountant will measure and record these costs individually and compare input results to output or actual results. This will help management measure financial performance. Do you need to figure out where the holes are? Cost accountants can help companies identify solutions and create resources for control gaps. A control gap occurs when a company collects a great deal of cash but has no method in place to keep it secure prior to depositing it. Cost accountants can help you design, create and implement strategies, best practices and process improvements. What should you look for? Cost accountants should hold a bachelor's degree with an emphasis on accounting. Many companies prefer to hire cost accountants with at least three years of experience. Aside from familiarity with Microsoft Excel, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and other accounting and spreadsheet software, cost accountants should have an understanding of various product cost-evaluation techniques. Cost accountants need to know how to design or create data collection systems, then analyze and interpret that data for upper management. Savvy soft skills for collaborating and communicating with people at different levels - from clerks to managers - are also important. Skilled cost accountants are in demand in cities across the United States. See our cost accountant candidates in these hot cities (and check candidates in your city): Cost accountant candidates in Santa Barbara, Calif. Cost accountant candidates in Macon, Ga. Cost accountant candidates in Woodbridge, N.J. Cost accountant candidates in Knoxville, Tenn. If you determine you don't have a full-time need for a cost accountant, consider a temporary professional instead. A specialized staffing agency like Accountemps can help assess your business's unique requirements and match you with a skilled and experienced cost accountant who can make an immediate difference. WE CAN HELP YOU FIND A COST ACCOUNTANT

Monday, November 18, 2019

Nearshore IT Outsourcing

Nearshore IT Outsourcing Nearshore IT Outsourcing In recent years, it has become less and less necessary for companies to have all their employees under one roof. Some alternatives for IT jobs include offshore outsourcing, assigning employees to work from home, insourcing, and nearshore IT outsourcing, also called “nearshoring.” Nearshoring involves sending information technology work to a foreign country that is relatively close to the home base of the company outsourcing the work. Reasons to Nearshore IT Services Companies may decide to nearshore some of their IT work because they want to cut costs, and nearshoring enables this by sending work to another country where workers will generally be paid lower wages. Unlike offshore IT outsourcing, which involves sending IT workers to an overseas location that is much further away (e.g., work from U.S. companies being sent to India), nearshoring (e.g., sending work from the U.S. to Canada) offers the following benefits: fewer time zone differencesgeographical proximitymore cultural and/or language similarities These conditions may be crucial to a company that is outsourcing a complex IT project and requires a lot of ongoing communication between its internal team and the nearshore team it is working with, or frequent travel to the nearshore destination. Usually, workers in nearshore companies will be more highly trained than those in the ubiquitous sourcing companies in places like India, China, and Malaysia. It’s also more likely that the workers will be awake and alert if they aren’t being made to work in the middle of the night to fit another country’s hours of business. Examples of Popular Nearshore Locations U.S. companies have been known to nearshore IT work to Canada as well as Mexico and other Latin American countries. Similarly, companies in Western Europe may choose to nearshore work to Eastern European countries such as Ukraine or Bulgaria. When It Is Not a Good Idea to Nearshore Any company considering nearshore outsourcing should first spend some time weighing the logistics, as in the long run, it may not always be cheaper to nearshore. Especially if the nearshore company is in a developed country, the costs of hiring the workers may not be significantly lower. There may be time costs to consider: will the nearshore company operate independently, or will in-house company employees need to pitch in and provide guidance and resources? Will travel between the locations be required, and if so, how often? It’s much easier for project confusion to happen when the boss and workers are on different sides of a border. Due to this, neither offshoring nor nearshoring is typically a good idea for complicated projects or tasks that need a great deal of direction and oversight from the hiring company. It’s better reserved for simpler day-to-day operations like developing, help desks, analytics, etc. Conclusion Nearshoring can certainly be of benefit to companies, as long as it’s used wisely. It can allow them to take on more work, assigning their in-house team the important projects while getting a cheaper deal on more tedious tasks. It’s definitely a leg up on full-scale offshoring, which almost always comes with the sacrifice of quality. When choosing a nearshore location, companies should research the country’s laws, the level of intellectual property security, and the nearshore company’s level of employee training.

Sunday, November 17, 2019

100,000 Employers Looking to Hire... You

100,000 Employers Looking to Hire... You 100,000 Employers Looking to Hire... You We’ve crossed 100,000s HR people and recruiters hiring on Ladders, and it’s a reason to celebrate.Why? Because having tens of thousands of HR professionals using Ladders means it’s ever more likely that you’ll connect with the right opportunities for your future.It feels like the economy right now is getting better all the time, so that can only be a good thing for you.Good luck with your search!I’m rooting for you.

Saturday, November 16, 2019

What to Look for in an Interview Thank You Letter

What to Look for in an Interview Thank You Letter What to Look for in an Interview Thank You Letter In the day-to-day busy, its easy to quickly glance at an interview thank you letter from a candidate, smile, and move on to your next task. When you do this, however, you are by-passing a little goldmine of information in the interview thank you letter about your candidate. Whats important about a thank you letter or email that you receive from each candidate following the interview? Lots. Especially if you use each interaction with the candidate to assess his or her cultural fit within your organization, these interview thank you letters add one more piece to the puzzle. And, it is a puzzle you piece together from all of the information you obtain from each step in your hiring process. The finished puzzle enables you to select the most qualified candidate for your open positions. Does the Interview Thank You Letter Send a Message? The fact that the candidate sent an interview thank you letter or an email signals that he or she cares about the position. You can assess the candidate as polite and caring enough to know how to do appropriate follow-up. Should you disqualify a candidate who fails to send a thank you letter? Not necessarily, but with the proliferation of job searching how-to materials available, it is surprising when a candidate, who wants the job, skips this polite step. And, sometimes, qualified candidates are not available for the job you are filling, so you will want to make your decision based on more important qualifications. Failure to send an interview thank you letter to each employer can signal arrogance from a candidate with a marketable skill set. But, the candidate may also just have forgotten  or doesnt know, the niceties. So, dont march too quickly to a judgment that is not supported by other evidence. What Should an Employer Look for in an Interview Thank You Letter? These are the key opportunities that the interview thank you letter provides for employers. As with all application materials, you want to see an error-free and well-written copy. More than the resume or the cover letter, the interview thank you letter is the candidate writing sample that is least likely to have been reviewed by others. So, the interview thank you letter is your best bet to assess your candidates writing style and competence.Is excellent writing needed for all positions? No, but freedom from typos, spelling, and grammatical errors, and poorly written sentences signals a candidate who pays attention to detail and cares. Evidence that the candidate is enthusiastic about the job, your company  and the people he or she met is important. Some candidates are just attempting to get the job- any job. Your preferable candidate is actively choosing you in the employer-candidate match dance.Look at what the candidate emphasizes about the job, the company, and the people he or she met. Did the candidate place emphasis on what was important to you? Did the candidate seem to catch on to what was the most important outcomes from your position? Do you have the sense that what you communicated to the candidate was understood, so the candidate is not surprised at what the job comprises further along in the hiring process? Did the candidate have follow-up questions that you need to make sure are answered? Perhaps youll want to quickly schedule a second interview. You dont want to let a qualified person move on to another employer because they lacked information that you could have supplied.Does the candidate indicate that he or she understands the next step in your hiring process and timeline? Again, you dont want to lose your most qualified person because they think you dont want them or that they are your second choice. You need to respond quickly to your candidates of choice and communicate regularly through your hiring process. If the candidate has reiterated his or her qualifications, do they match what you are searching for closely- especially in the key areas identified? You dont want to settle for a so-so candidate because of the pressure to accomplish the work or an artificial Human Resources department measure such as average length of time to hire. While this is detailed information about what an employer should look for in an interview thank you letter from a candidate, note that you can accomplish this review quite quickly. And, the more times you apply these questions to interview thank you letters, the more efficient the process will become for you. The interview thank you letter is just one more piece in the puzzle of successful candidate selection. Use your interview thank you letter review to enhance your knowledge about your candidates.