All About Working

What is your preferred search engine for inquiries?  Yahoo or Google?

Google has been sweeping the market up the last few years.  In fact, the term for searching, “googling” has now become a part of our lingo.   “I need to google that” is often heard.  So the brand has become the item now.

I continue to prefer Yahoo over Google for several reasons.  So imagine my surprise when I found an article by Gina Trapani on Lifehacker.com on this topic.  In “Break Google’s Monopoly on Your Data: Switch to Yahoo Search, the author points out the major feature that keeps me coming back to Yahoo.  That feature is Search Assist.

Search Assist: Google’s got Google Suggest and Yahoo’s got “Search Assist”—that helpful drop-down of words you’re likely to be looking for based on what you’ve typed already. Google Suggest has one thing that Search Assist doesn’t—the number of results each suggestion will yield—but Search Assist offers an “Explore related concepts” area that shows other searches related to the one you’re doing.

I find this feature to be a tremendous time saver.

To see more of the article, go here to read it.

What happens when you walk into work one day and you’re told “thanks for all your hard work, but we have to let you go.” You might be given time to pack up your possessions, but what about all the things you have on your computer that the company owns?

In a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Wiped Out: Along with Jobs, Laid-Off Lose Photos, Emails,” Joseph DeAvila addresses this issue:

Michele Wallace had worked for Medialink Worldwide Inc. for 18 years when the New York video-distribution company laid her off last May. When the company’s information-technology staff quickly shut down her computer and her BlackBerry, the senior vice president of client services lost family photos and every personal and business contact on her cellphone and computer.

“I couldn’t even call my sister because I don’t know her number off the top of my head,” says Ms. Wallace, now a 47-year-old managing director at Mega Media Worldwide and living in Asbury Park, N.J. “I know you shouldn’t even have that stuff on the computer,” she says. But in the course of working 10- to 12-hour days for several years, “you don’t pay as much attention as to how much is personal on your computer.”

We normally don’t cover articles about being laid off on this blog, but we covering this one, because it involves work practices that can be followed when someone is employed that will help avoid the scenario described above.

This article can be found here and it is well worth a few minutes of your time to read.

This was just too amazing not to post on this blog. It seems as though Joe Paradiso and Yasuhiro Ono of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have just patented a system for a roving cone of silence, so that you can walk around your office building without anyone ever eavesdropping on you.

Sound like something out of a future shock movie? Well it’s real and it’s here now!

The problem the inventors worked on was how to stop the sound of conversations in an office from being heard. For example, if you are talking on the telephone, how can you prevent everyone within a certain range from hearing your conversation?

The solution they came up with is a sound-damping sensor, comprised of an infra-red motion-detector, a speaker and a microphone. These would be scattered around the walls of an office. Employees can then activate a personal mute button from their computer. The system locks onto you, identifies anyone close enough to eavesdrop, and hits them with a murmur of white noise so they can’t hear you.

Wow – that is amazing.

Sound masking systems have been on the rise in popularity lately. Babble and Accumask already are on the market. They shroud voices by mixing them with randomized noise. But this one allows it be controlled on demand by a single system.

Initial word is that the downside that the system required a lot of infrastructure.

This was just too good to let it pass without a mention. It seems as though Bryan Benilous, a historical newspaper specialist at the digital-archive company Proquest, said he and his colleagues came across a Boston Daily Globe article from August 24, 1902, titled, “Face Book The New Fad,” describing a party game where revelers sketch out cartoony caricatures for fun.

“I think it is interesting to note the similarities with this first iteration of Face Book as a shared social experience,” said Mr. Benilous. “It’s almost like having friends write on your wall in a much less tech-savvy way.”

According to Ellen Gruber Garvey, a professor at New Jersey City University:

Drawing games and versions of the Surrealist parlor game Exquisite Corpse were popular activities. . . . it was common for Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries to keep guestbooks in which visitors and friends could scribble thoughts or jokes -– not unlike a MySpace or Facebook profile page. One notable version was kept by Amy Matilda Cassey, an abolitionist from Philadelphia.

Mr. Benilous and his group also discovered what appears to be an emoticon in a transcript of a speech by Abraham Lincoln, they’ve uncovered a 1942 Washington Post article titled “Think Before You Twitter” about gossiping and a 1903 article referring to the first “pocket telephone.”

Goes to show, there is nothing new under the sun!

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal online, a growing number of employers are resorting to salary cuts as the recession drags on.

A January survey by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that of 100 human-resource professionals surveyed, 27.2% reported that their companies have imposed a salary freeze or cut. A February survey of 245 large U.S. companies conducted by human-resource consultants Watson Wyatt Worldwide found that 4% of companies plan to reduce salary over the next year, with 7% already implementing pay cuts.

. . .Other companies have imposed cuts but also added incentives to recoup lost salary.

Some companies are trying to make up for the salary loss by other means.

At Momentive Performance Materials Inc. in Albany, N.Y., a chemicals and specialty materials company with 4,600 global employees, any worker forced to take a pay cut will receive an extra week of paid vacation for each quarter that the reduction remains in place.

Similarly, nonunion New York Times Co. employees were forced to take up to a 5% pay cut, effective this month, but were given 10 vacation days in return. Vail Resorts is granting full-time, year-round employees stock-based incentive compensation on a sliding scale. “It’s partially to ease the blow, but it’s also giving people some ownership to participate in our future success,” says Mr. Katz, the CEO.

This full article can be found here.

Here’s an article from today’s Wall Street Journal that is a good selection to read if your organization is working on job planning for the future. Titled, Some Employers See Hiring Opportunity, it provides a variety of viewpoints about how some organizations are handling the over abundance of job applicants and how they are already starting to look towards future needs:

. . . some employers are seizing the recession as an opportunity to strengthen their talent pool, poach stars from rivals or rebuild after layoffs. Every opening attracts dozens of qualified, and overqualified, applicants. Unemployment is 8.1%, the highest since 1983, and 12.5 million Americans are out of work. Yet the Labor Department says there were fewer than three million job openings in January, the fewest since it began tracking the data in 2000.

Strategically hiring skilled, productive employees can help employers boost efficiency and save money, says DeLynn Senna, executive director of permanent placement services for North America for Robert Half International Inc., a professional staffing firm. Good hiring decisions now may allow companies to best competitors when the economy rebounds, she says.

Many of the employers that are hiring are in sectors such as healthcare, government or utilities, which are still adding jobs.

This article can be found here.

How did you and your office do with April Fool’s Day? Did a provide an opportunity for a little levity in this ever present climate of stress and uncertainty?

Here is an article from ReportonBusiness.com by Wallace Immen on this topic. He says:

Just 11 per cent of 6,940 respondents to an online Globe and Mail poll said they intended to play an April Fool’s Day joke this year.

Even in sunnier times, just 29 per cent of workers said they had initiated or been on the receiving end of an April Fool’s Day prank at work, according to a survey of 6,800 U.S. employees by job site CareerBuilder.com last year.

But that rubber chicken might not be such a bad idea after all, career experts say. Times of gloom like these present a perfect opportunity to try to inject a little mirth into the office, the pros say.

“You need a little insanity to preserve sanity in your office when the mood is as down as it is right now,” says humour-in-the-workplace consultant David Granirer, president of Vancouver-based Tune-In Counselling Services Inc.

Cutbacks, heavier workloads and worries about job security have become the new realities. Left unrelieved, the pressures associated with them are destined to lead to higher stress levels, lower job satisfaction and even physical illness, Mr. Granirer says.

His prescription: “Laughter can be the cure. It’s like a dose of cod liver oil for the soul,” he says.

Read the rest of this article for some good ideas.

Yes, you read the title of this post correctly! And you just knew it was going to happen someday. Somehow, some way, a study would be done to show that all that time you are spending watching YouTube selections and checking your Facebook page would pay off! Well, maybe you didn’t, but here’s the data:

MELBOURNE (Reuters Life!) – Caught Twittering or on Facebook at work? It’ll make you a better employee, according to an Australian study that shows surfing the Internet for fun during office hours increases productivity.

The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.

Study author Brent Coker, from the department of management and marketing, said “workplace Internet leisure browsing,” or WILB, helped to sharpened workers’ concentration.

“People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration,” Coker said on the university’s website (www.unimelb.edu.au/)

“Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days’ work, and as a result, increased productivity,” he said.

According to the study of 300 workers, 70 percent of people who use the Internet at work engage in WILB.

Among the most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, reading online news sites, playing online games and watching videos on YouTube.

Coker also said Coker said the study looked at people who browsed in moderation, or were on the Internet for less than 20 percent of their total time in the office.

“Those who behave with Internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without,” he said.

So perhaps companies need to update their policies on blocking certain Internet sites and reevaluate their use.

This article came from reuters.

From today’s New York Times online:

Spam, that annoying but ignorable scourge of the Web, has finally recovered from the jolt it received last November, when Internet backbone providers cut off McColo Corp., a California Web-hosting service that spammers were using to coordinate e-mail attacks.

The average seven-day spam volume during the latter half of March is now at roughly the same levels as October of last year—around 94 percent of all e-mail—according to anti-spam company Postini, a division of Google.

Read the entire article Spam Back to 94% of All E-Mail for more details.

If you’re reading this, be forewarned: tomorrow is April Fool’s Day…It’s always a good thing to know about ahead of time so you can BE PREPARED.

This year we might need some little prank or laugh more than ever before. So here’s a nice little suggestion from FoxBusiness.com.

A new book from Adams Media, THE ULTIMATE OFFICE PRANK BOOK by Mae B. Fired promises to make cubicle life more fun this April Fool’s Day — no matter how dire the economic outlook might be.

Whether it’s filling the vending machine with a coworker’s desk supplies, attaching fishing wire to phones and keyboards, or putting gelatin in the toilets, a good office prank can lighten the mood quicker than your boss can utter “cost-cutting controls.” Split into chapters labeled Entry-Level, Middle Management, and Executive, jokesters are entertained with over 200 increasingly dangerous pranks. A collection that is bound to improve any April Fool’s Day, THE ULTIMATE OFFICE PRANK BOOK saves the recession-dreary day.

Mae B. Fired is the pseudonym of three notorious office pranksters who found that setting out on their own business ventures was safer than risking a long career of pink slips in the corporate world.

Read the rest of the article at your own risk! And from the description printed, um, try stuff at your own risk. Please don’t say you read about it here!!!!

But seriously:

HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY!