Bianca Andreescu’s stunning victory at the U.S. Open this weekend—the 19-year-old Canadian beat 37-year-old tennis legend Serena Williams—has sparked a nature or nurture debate, of sorts, in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper.
A few years ago, Dutch researchers Noortje van Amsterdam and Dide van Eck posted an ad on Wondervol, a closed Facebook group that serves as a virtual meeting place for Dutch women to talk about “body positivity, weight discrimination, fashion, self-acceptance, and more.”
When people feel exhausted and demoralized at their jobs, they’re often advised to meditate, adopt an exercise routine, or go on vacation. But just in time for Labor Day, In These Times writer Kayla Blado offered up a different—and far more radical—prescription for unhappy Americans: “Your best defense against burnout isn’t self-care, it’s joining together with your colleagues to build power collectively at your workplace.”
Marie-Anne Manique and her husband were standing in line at a hockey arena in Canada’s capital city last February when they had to acknowledge a sense of mild dread.
ICYMI, we wanted to let you know about a major change in corporate attitudes—if not yet actions—that was officially recognized this week. The Business Roundtable, a powerful CEO lobbying group led by JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, agreed to an updated definition of the purpose of a company that recognizes responsibilities to customers, employees, suppliers, and the environment as being on par with the responsibility to shareholders.
The thumbnail for Caitlin Boston’s “Student Loan Debt Celebration” YouTube video, now making the rounds on social media, has an intentionally silly vibe.
Since 1997, the Business Roundtable, America’s most influential group of corporate leaders, has agreed on one principle: “The paramount duty of management and of boards of directors is to the corporation’s stockholders,” its mission statement declared.
It’s commonly believed that women are far more likely than men to be victims of ageism in the workplace, but new numbers suggest otherwise.
Some companies have a serious addiction to brainstorming. Whenever a problem arises, the team is called to gather and shout out possible solutions, with at least one notetaker scrambling to get everything down. It’s as if this were the only known way out of a pickle, or into a new project—and it can feel like a supreme waste of time, especially when the same few dominating personalities ruin the mood.
Numerous people were killed at a mass shooting in an El Paso shopping center today (Aug. 3). According to NBC, law enforcement officials have reported at least 19 dead and 40 injured.
To randomly catch sight of a shooting star can feel fateful and full of meaning—as it should. But you can often make your luck in life, and this is one of those opportunities.
Americans have been warned by Good Morning America, and by news stations in California and Texas, that not all guacamole is what it seems.
Americans are still coming to terms with all the ways they’re being watched by phones and smart home devices with a front seat to their daily lives.
During last night’s Democratic debates, Senator Bernie Sanders naturally talked up his signature policy point, his Medicare for All proposal. He also made a familiar comparison, describing a bus trip he made from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario, with Americans who fill prescriptions in the northern country at a fraction of what they cost south of the border.
In life and work, we’re supposed to be on guard against “jumping the shark.”
In the US and most of the world, deep-pocketed employers try to lure the best and brightest employees with a patchwork of paid time off benefits, including various lengths of parental or bereavement leave, time off to care for elderly parents, and, in a tiny fraction of large firms, personal sabbaticals.
If you’re a voracious reader of new business titles, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Blinkist, the app that sells condensed versions of top-selling books.
You’ve probably heard the advice to change up your commute now and then as way to take your brain off of autopilot and give your synapses a little exercise. Here’s another activity that might feed your grey matter: Put a new lens on your daily travels by contemplating the symbolism embedded in the modes of transportation you use.
It was a terrible Monday morning for thousands of Deutsche Bank workers in London, New York, and elsewhere. Over the weekend, the company announced 18,000 layoffs. As the work week got underway, it assembled entire teams in auditoriums or cafeterias to deliver the news. Employees affected by the cuts were given a couple of hours to collect their things and leave. In London, the deadline for departure was 11 am.
Any journalist tasked with writing a remembrance of Lee Iacocca in the wake of his passing late yesterday (July 2), will have one particularly delicate issue to grapple with: the legendary Chrysler chairman’s history of hurling sometimes savage insults at Japan.
It’s almost anyone’s guess whether we ought to prepare for more boredom at work in the future (because we will become robot-sitters), or less (because the robots will take care of the grunt work). But one thing that feels true is that we’re not supposed to be bored at work these days—nor, for that matter, should we have much downtime anywhere. Our phones, smart watches, and endless notifications help us avoid it.
The co-founders of Wayfair, the online furniture retailer, have a history that makes for a sweet company backstory. Steve Conine and Niraj Shah met in high school in New Jersey and were magically reunited in college, finding themselves in the same dorm as freshmen at Cornell University. They failed at several joint projects before building Wayfair in 2002. Now they’re billionaires.
Google’s data-driven approach has long applied to its own workplaces. It has crafted onboarding and maternity leave practices around insights derived from employee statistics, gathered figures to investigate what makes the best teams, and designed its cafeteria around finely documented observations, like the importance of making dried figs easier to reach than chocolate.
At the end of May, TIAA, the financial services and investing giant, rolled out new gender-identity awareness guidelines for its client-facing consultants. The guidance included: “Never assume someone’s gender identity” and “Be aware that a person’s pronouns can change over time. They may also change based on context.”
