NLRB judge: Amazon unlawfully fired warehouse employee | Target to offer office employees more flexibility | Positive energy a good predictor of great leadership
Amazon illegally fired warehouse worker Gerald Bryson, who participated in and led protests over COVID-19 protections for warehouse employees, and must reinstate Bryson and pay him lost wages and benefits, a National Labor Relations Board judge has held. Amazon says it will appeal the decision.
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Target will permanently adopt a hybrid model for the 8,500 employees who work out of the retailer's downtown Minneapolis offices, giving individual workers and their teams the flexibility to determine when and how often they need to be in the office, the company said. The new policy came in response to employee feedback, and Target has redesigned some of its office spaces to include flex areas with temporary desks and meeting spaces.
The pandemic has raised companies' focus on employee mental health, with an emphasis on combating burnout. Fighting stigma, investing in mental health resources and embedding the importance of mental health into workplace culture could be keys to battling employee burnout and to reducing costs related to high turnover.
Community colleges and public and private entities in some states are working together to launch workforce initiatives aimed at curbing labor shortages. For example, 10 state legislatures have expanded workforce training programs over the past two years.
Leaders can help their remote team work more efficiently by helping them set boundaries around their work and off time, providing asynchronous tasks, not tracking hours of salaried workers and modeling successful behaviors, writes Rashan Dixon, a senior business systems analyst at Microsoft. "If you send out emails at 9 p.m., your direct reports will assume they need to do likewise," Dixon writes.
“You not gonna have to work while you here, are you?” Mom asked.
“No. Well not every day, I –” I started to say before I heard the heavy sigh. I know that sigh. It’s my mother's annoyed, “Why does it have to be that way?,” sigh.
“Well, I hope you’re able to just, you know, be with us while you’re here. You always seem to have to work,” she said.
In years past, that statement would have irritated me and would have led to a snarky retort. (Immature, yes I know.) This time it didn’t aggravate me. She was right. Plus, four years of managing a team has given me a new perspective, and I now realize there’s nothing heroic about always being on.
“Not this time, Mom, I promise,” I reassured her. “I just have to check some things on my briefs Thursday and Friday morning and then das it. I’m pau.”
Remote work blurred the lines between home and work for some folks, as we see in today’s HR Leader story. You know who I mean. It’s the person sending emails at 9 p.m. or who will answer a Slack message on a Saturday morning while they’re at their daughter’s softball game. These folks have good intentions but struggle to set boundaries on their time and work.
Help them. I’ve had to have that conversation with some folks on my team -- reminding them that their personal time is for them to refresh and refuel from the rigors of our job. Sometimes the conversation has to go deeper. Is there an uneven workload? Are they running into hurdles causing a project to take longer to finish than it should? Or do they just want to do certain tasks on their own time? (I do this. I will often write or catch up on email during off hours because I have uninterrupted time.) An honest conversation can go a long way toward helping folks set reasonable parameters and enjoy their work more.
How are you managing this with your teams? Let me know! And if you enjoy this brief, tell others so they can benefit also.
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