This morning we're discussing technology companies who have made diversity a priority. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin set up Google, they made diverse hiring a goal. It wasn’t for the sake of being politically correct — they thought it would be good for business. We speak to Marissa Mayer, vice president of search product and user experience at Google (and one of Google’s first employees); along with Xerox’s chief diversity and employee advocacy officer, Philip Harlow. We also look at how minorities lag behind at research universities with Donna Nelson, a chemistry professor at the University of Oklahoma, who authored a report: "A National Analysis in Science and Engineering Faculties at Research Universities (opens a PDF)."
Incivility in the workplace is an unfortunate side effect of the recession, where jobs are scarce and everyone is aiming to hold on to whatever work they have. Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner says there are ways to stay in-the-know without being a gossip at work. We also talk with Will Marcum, a former GM plant worker of 20 years in Pontiach, Mich., to hear about his story of office politics during the economic downturn.
"Nine times out of 10, politics – not the best person – is going to be promoted. And this, I think, is what's killing America and killing the workforce right now."
—Will Marcum, former GM plant worker in Pontiac, Mich., on why politics should not play a role in workers getting promoted
Flu season starts officially on Sunday, and while the government has been urging schools to close only as a last resort in the battle against H1N1, there have already been at least 187 school closures since the school year started last month. Ross Hammond from the Brookings Institution discusses his new report that reveals that the true cost to the nation of closing schools and day care centers could be as much as $47 billion. Kathleen Murphy is a registered nurse and the health services coordinator for the Milwaukee Public Schools; she tells us what her school district is doing to prevent closings. We also speak to Dr. Faheem Younus, the medical director of epidemiology and infection prevention at the Upper Chesapeake Health Center in Bel Air, Md., who has some practical advice for parents who can't take the day off of work.
"Approximately 75-80% [of students] eat two meals a day at school, so right there, when schools close, there's an impact on their nutritional status and a family's ability to meet that child's needs."
—Kathleen Murphy, registered nurse and health services coordinator for the Milwaukee Public Schools, on a side effect of closing schools in case of an H1N1 outbreak
American culture has always valued high worker productivity; it’s hard to encourage people in the U.S. to take time off from work. But one company thinks it can make more money by forcing employees to get out of the office and work fewer hours. For our weekly work segment, we talk with our contributor Beth Kobliner, Boston Consulting Group's Grant Freeland and Harvard Business School's Leslie Perlow about time off's benefits for employers and employees alike.
"By working as a team to try to create that predictable time off, it forced them to actually think about how they were doing their work, as a team, and to challenge some very deeply held assumptions about how work had to be done, and to realize things could be done differently."
—Harvard Business School's Leslie Perlow, on an experiment in which business groups were required to take regularly scheduled hours off work every week
If you've ever sat down to do work on a computer, you know that "productivity" and "access to the internet" frequently fight each other tooth and nail. When you're supposed to be writing a proposal, you're tempted by YouTube highlights of Tom Brady’s game winner against the Buffalo Bills. Or maybe it's new pictures of your friend’s baby shower on Flickr, or your Twitter feed. A number of new software applications try to act as traffic cops, shielding you from distractions. New York Times and Slate writer Farhad Manjoo tells us about some of these productivity tools. We also speak to Tony Wright, who founded a productivity and analytics company that created an application called RescueTime.
Read Farhad Manjoo's article in The New York Times
Find out more about the other applications mentioned on air:
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As the unemployment rate climbs, more people are having to relocate in order to find work. Almost 20% of Americans who took new jobs in July moved in order to get them. The Takeaway's finance contributor Beth Kobliner talks about the challenges — and opportunities — of a national job search. We also hear from Jeff Gilbert, who moved last year from outside Detroit to Wyoming, Ohio to take a job as general manager of a commercial manufacturing company.
Call it Big Brother or call it being a conscientious employer, but there's a new kind of software that monitors your use of email and online messaging: how many messages you send, how often, and when. It's called Cataphora and it also looks at instant messaging, word processors, and keycard use, to find out how useful an employee you are. We talk with Cataphora's CEO, Elizabeth Charnock, along with Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner, author of Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties and Thirties.
When are you friends with somebody at work — and when are you just friendly? Sometimes it's hard to tell. And when it comes to office friendships, how much do you have to watch what you say or do with your colleagues, both face-to-face and online? We try to figure out the rules of mixing friends and family with work by talking with Kate Dailey, who writes The Human Condition blog for Newsweek, and Tina Wells, CEO of Buzz Marketing, who has employed a number of her siblings over the years.
And, speaking of office friends, here's The Office, Friends-style:
From acetaminophen to gargling with salt water, most people we know will do anything to recover from being sick... except skip a day of work. But this attitude won't jibe with the H1N1 virus: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are recommending that Americans who catch swine flu take at least 3-5 days off of work to prevent the illness from spreading. Even the thought of one hour of isolation from our cubicles gives us the jitters, so today, we're sitting down with clinical psychologist Robin Kerner to try to understand exactly why it is that Americans have such a hard time just staying home.
Need additional proof that Americans just don't vacation? Read Why we don't vacation like the French in the American Prospect, Please don't make me go on vacation in the New York Times, and Money vs. Time Off: Why we don't take vacations from The Digerati Life.
The U.S. Labor Department just released productivity numbers for the spring quarter and they are on the rise—productivity is the highest in six years. We talk to Kelly Evans, economics reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
I tried to remove some of the age indicators from my resume...I definitely updated my resume to reflect the newness of the MBA and tried to play down some of the other dates.
—Susan Price, 49 year old laid-off professional trying to find a job
Eric Jones, director of IT at iPass in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, hasn't taken a vacation in a long time. That wouldn't be the case if he worked for Eric Berridge, co-founder and CEO of Bluewolf, a global IT services company, because his company offers unlimited vacation. The company doesn't even track the number of days. As long as work is done, the company is happy. Is that the wave of the future? Kari Henley thinks so. She's director of the board at the Women and Family Life Center in North Haven, Connecticut. Only 14 percent of Americans took two weeks of vacation last year and the number of Americans taking family vacations has dropped by a third in the past generation. Are we just too busy to take a break?
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