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Keeping Your Skill Set Current Can Be Key to Keeping Your Job Small and midsize companies can’t afford to not keep up with technology, and neither can enterprise-level companies. This past fall, IBM notified employees, who it had determined needed additional training, they were required to step up their technological game, and that they would receive only 90% of their salary while embarking upon this additional training. Talk about an incentive to stay on top of changes in technology ! According to the article in the New York Times covering this move, some IBM workers received an email letting them know that an assessment had determined certain members of the team had “not kept pace with acquiring the skills and expertise needed to address changing client needs, technology and market requirements.” While some criticized the move, the reality is that employees can no longer be complacent when it comes to their grasp of technology and how to use it to help their businesses grow. That’s something to keep in mind, for sure, whether you’re just embarking on a career or whether you’re already in the workforce and want to make sure you have the skills you need to stay marketable.

The Modern Worker Needs to Be Constantly Learning

specific project often work for a specific number of weeks or months

They may or may not work at your location, use your equipment, or work full time on your project

an independent contractor should not be given set hours, told exactly how to perform his job, or be told he can only work for you.

funders do not invest sufficient funds in our organizations to build capacity because we don’t have enough capacity.

Yet we are constantly asked to do stuff, to sit at various tables, to help with outreach, to rally our community members to attend various summits and support various policies.

Because we don’t have capacity, we can’t get support to develop capacity.

beyond ~40–50 hours per week, the marginal returns from additional work decrease rapidly and quickly become negative. We have also demonstrated that though you can get more output for a few weeks during “crunch time” you still ultimately pay for it later when people inevitably need to recover.

My intellectual conclusion is that these companies are both destroying the personal lives of their employees and getting nothing in return.

This kind of attitude not only hurts young workers who are willing to “step up” to the expectation, but facilitates ageism and sexism by indirectly discriminating against people who cannot maintain that kind of schedule.

A recent study looked at more than 500,000 tweets about depression, took 4,000 tweets that mentioned a diagnosis or medication, and followed those Twitter users in order to create an app that predicts suicide. This use of tweets crosses a line, Peel said. "This is far more intrusive" than standard data-gathering from social media.

Medical data is also valuable to criminals

Criminals are after electronic medical records, as well as prescriptions and insurance information to pay for their own medical expenses or to acquire prescription drugs illegally.

According to Loftus, a job has five reward elements: compensation, benefits, work-life balance, career development and advancement, and recognition. While associations often can’t compete with the private sector on pay, they can usually meet or exceed expectations in the other four areas.

In 2004, Rockville, Maryland-based ASHA hired 37 people, and 16 of those people came through a Washington Post ad. A lot has changed in 10 years: “In 2014, we hired 34 people, and one person came from The Washington Post,” says McNichol.

staff referrals, which isn’t a new tactic but has been made much easier with the proliferation of social media.

And as Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad says “Marketing is the price you pay for being unremarkable”. What is necessary is to define what will be the key focus of the company and what it should be renowned for e.g. how should the intended customer experience look and feel like. Unless you do that there won’t be enough of a common ground to smash the silo thinking and deliver a consistent and deliberate customer experience. Take for example the way Paul O’Neill made the turnaround in Alcoa (the biggest aluminium producer in the US, manufacturing everything from the metal for the Coca Cola cans to bolts that hold satellites) as presented in Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit”.

Dr. Rohini Anand, Chief Diversity Officer, Sodexo Ron Glover, Chief Diversity Officer, IBM Kathy Hannan, National Managing Partner, Diversity & Corporate Responsibility, KPMG LLP

Make it Real or Lose Your Authenticity

Executives are Still Short-Sided

His new book The Power of Habit explores the science behind why we do what we do — and how companies are now working to use our habit formations to sell and market products to us.

every habit starts with a psychological pattern called a "habit loop," which is a three-part process. First, there's a cue, or trigger,

third step, he says, is the reward: something that your brain likes that helps it remember the "habit loop" in the future.

The bill not only gives cable companies and wireless providers free rein to do what they like with your browsing history, shopping habits, your location and other information gleaned from your online activity, but it would also prevent the Federal Communications Commission from ever again establishing similar consumer privacy protections.

When you make a voice call on your smartphone, the information is protected: Your phone company can’t sell the fact that you are calling car dealerships to others who want to sell you a car. But if the same device and the same network are used to contact car dealers through the internet, that information — the same information, in fact — can be captured and sold by the network. To add insult to injury, you pay the network a monthly fee for the privilege of having your information sold to the highest bidder.