Requiring employees to return to the office? Get ready for them to quit

Employers considering bringing their employees back into the office might want to reconsider.

A whopping 58% of workers say they would “absolutely” look for a new job if they weren’t allowed to continue working remotely in their current position, new data finds. According to FlexJobs, which surveyed more than 2,100 people who have been working remotely during the pandemic, 31% aren’t sure what they would do and only 11% say not being able to continue working remotely is not a big deal to them. READ MORE

Morgan Stanley to bar unvaccinated employees, clients from NY offices - Source

Morgan Stanley's staff and clients will not be allowed to enter the bank's New York offices if they are not fully vaccinated, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Employees, clients, and visitors will be required to attest to being fully vaccinated in order to access the bank's offices in New York and Westchester, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters late Tuesday. READ MORE

This is when the labor shortage will end

The economy would be booming, if only businesses could find all the workers they need. Employers report 9.3 million unfilled jobs, the most on record. But millions of workers remain on the sidelines, holding back growth and delaying the return to a normal, pre-pandemic economy.

Republicans argue that generous jobless benefits are more appealing than a paycheck, and 25 states with Republican governors have cut off those payments ahead of schedule. But this argument is overblown and there are other important reasons some workers are hesitant to return. Understanding the factors slowing the return of jobs and workers helps determine when the mismatch is likely to end, and what comes next. READ MORE

A Real Estate Mogul Has a $100 Million Plan to Save the Internet

Frank McCourt, the billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is pouring $100 million into an attempt to rebuild the foundations of social media. The effort, which he has loftily named Project Liberty, centers on the construction of a publicly accessible database of people’s social connections, allowing users to move records of their relationships between social media services instead of being locked into a few dominant apps. READ MORE

Your Tech Company Needs 'Startup IQ'

In the first season of the TV series Halt and Catch Fire, the young, rebellious developer Cameron has impressed with her coding abilities, but she is tired of her rigid superior and wants to prove she can lead the entire software team more efficiently: faster delivery, half the cost. She installs the text-based adventure cult game Colossal Cave Adventure on her colleagues' computers and organizes an old-fashioned LAN party for the developer team. The next day, she gathers the team and asks who completed the game by breaking the code. Some raise their hands. She nods and says that the developers who cheated can stay. The rest can leave. READ MORE

What Garry Tan Has Learned About Startups After Founding 2 Companies--and Advising More Than 700

Startup investors make their names by identifying the potential for wild growth. Garry Tan also has the ability to spot the precise way a company is likely to die.

Tan is known for his investments in Coinbase and Instacart--and before co-founding and managing his early-stage venture capital fund, Initialized Capital, he was a partner at Y Combinator, where he advised more than 700 startups. READ MORE

Uber to become the sole owner of grocery delivery startup Cornershop

Uber has reached a deal to become the sole owner of Latin American delivery startup Cornershop, just one year after acquiring a majority stake in the company. The ride-hailing giant said in a regulatory filing Monday that it will purchase the remaining 47% interest in Cornershop in exchange for 29 million shares. The transaction is expected to close in July.

Uber announced in 2019 plans to take a majority ownership in Cornershop. That transaction wasn’t completed until the third quarter of 2020 other than in Mexico, which closed in January 2021. This latest agreement, which was reached June 18 and reported Monday, will make Cornershop a wholly owned subsidiary of Uber. The deal is a logical next-step in the Uber-Cornershop relationship, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. READ MORE

Future-proofing performance management

‘Stability’ and ‘certainty’ are terms that are unheard of these days: organisations are battling with a runaway list of challenges: from agile working, artificial intelligence, Brexit trade rules, Covid lockdowns, to cybersecurity, hybrid work models and online business. All these are reshaping the fundamentals.

In stark contrast, performance management systems have often stood still, assuming that objectives once set are good until the next annual review. Yet today’s goals must rapidly respond to ever-changing needs: this has revealed many dysfunctions in traditional performance management systems.  READ MORE

More Americans are telling their boss to shove it

Quitting your job is hot this summer. More Americans quit in May than any other month on record going back to the beginning of the century, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For every 100 workers in hotels, restaurants, bars, and retailers, about five of them quit last month.

Low-wage workers aren’t the only ones eying the door. In May, more than 700,000 workers in the bureau’s mostly white-collar category of “professional and business services” left their job—the highest monthly number ever. Across all sectors and occupations, four in 10 employees now say they’ve considered peacing out of their current place of work. READ MORE

Worker shortage has sparked a rent-a-staffer boom in the food industry

Desperate to deliver their goods, New York Food suppliers are hiring mercenary truckers from Alabama — and they’re putting them up in hotels in the Bronx because they can’t find local drivers. 

It’s just the latest example of dire measures companies are being forced to take in response to a nationwide worker shortage that is plaguing the food industry. In addition to hiring workers from out of state and boarding them, businesses say they’re turning to middlemen to recruit them — a costly measure that’s also helping drive up prices for consumers, sources told The Post. READ MORE

How are women affected by the student loan crisis?

The student loan debt crisis continues to plague millions of Americans, with the average borrower holding a balance of $38,792. By and large, this means that many college graduates enter the workforce with a negative net worth while facing immense hurdles when it comes to buying a home, building wealth or achieving other financial goals.

But some Americans have taken a bigger hit when it comes to student loan debt. In fact, a recent analysis from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) shows that women hold approximately two-thirds of all student loan debt in the United States. Not only that, but Black women in particular graduate with more undergraduate debt than other women. READ MORE

Scrutiny mounts on Microsoft's surveillance technology

Microsoft is facing new pressure from investors over its development and sale of surveillance technologies to law enforcement and its efforts to shape the policies regulating their deployment.

Three separate shareholder proposals filed this week reviewed by The Hill are demanding Microsoft evaluate whether its business model aligns with the tech giant’s stated commitments to racial justice and human rights. READ MORE

Global minimum tax rate could drive business away from US

President Biden and leaders of the G-7 group of nations will endorse a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15% on Friday, a policy that could ultimately drive business investment away from the U.S.

That's according to the Taxpayer Protection Alliance (TPA), a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., which argues that a higher global minimum rate would ultimately be "passed on to workers and consumers through reduced compensation and higher prices." READ MORE

Want to get workers vaccinated? Try these 6 strategies

The COVID-19 vaccines are finally readily available, and infection and death rates are on the decline.

But despite the good news, it’s not all rosy: Vaccination rates are waning, and many Americans are still reluctant to get the shot. Health officials warn that without more buy-in, herd immunity won’t happen and COVID-19 infection will continue to linger. Since the beginning of the vaccine rollout, employers have been viewed as vital in helping to encourage employees to get vaccinated. Now, perhaps, their role is more important than ever. READ MORE

Economies in these states are actually stronger than they were before Covid

America is not yet back to its pre-pandemic normal, but some states are already doing better economically than they were before Covid, according to the Back-to-Normal Index created by CNN and Moody's Analytics.

South Dakota, Florida, Rhode Island, Nebraska and Idaho are all thriving, operating at or above where their economies were in early March 2020 before the pandemic forced businesses to shutter and workers and students to stay home. READ MORE

Senate passes bill to boost US tech industry, counter rivals

The Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill Tuesday that aims to boost U.S. semiconductor production and the development of artificial intelligence and other technology in the face of growing international competition, most notably from China.

The 68-32 vote for the bill demonstrates how confronting China economically is an issue that unites both parties in Congress. That’s a rarity in an era of division as pressure grows on Democrats to change Senate rules to push past Republican opposition and gridlock. READ MORE