As the nation inches closer to this fall’s pivotal presidential election, the political climate appears to grow more divisive by the day. Central to the divides are topics connected to diversity, equity and inclusion—for instance, there was an “anti-woke” theme threaded throughout the recent Republican National Convention, while the Democratic Party is poised to nominate its first-ever woman of color for president, whom some Republicans have since called a “DEI hire.” READ MORE
Work from home could lead to more homes in vacant offices
Most Americans know the No. 1 rule in real estate: “location, location, location.” But for some developers, there’s a new winning strategy: “recycle, recycle, recycle.”
A growing number of office buildings have found second lives as apartments, boosted by the Covid-era work-from-home movement that slashed office attendance and thinned out cities’ downtowns. READ MORE
How the world’s tech crashed all at once
When computers and tech systems around the world went down Friday, snarling airports, closing Social Security offices and limiting jail operations, many people had one question: How on earth could this happen in 2024?
A software update from a single cybersecurity company, US-based CrowdStrike, was the root cause of the chaos, underlining the fragility of the global economy and its dependence on computer systems to which relatively few people give a passing thought. READ MORE
BIGGEST IT OUTAGE IN HISTORY MICROSOFT CRASH WREAKS HAVOC WORLD PLUNGED INTO DARK AGES
A Microsoft global outage has wreaked havoc across America, locking countless individuals out of their bank accounts, causing hospital cancelations and even grounding flights.
The notorious Blue Screen of Death is popping up everywhere, from banks to supermarkets and media outlets, causing widespread panic and confusion. All United, Delta and American Airlines flights were grounded amid the chaos. READ MORE
China Is Remaking Itself Into a Tech Behemoth
Any discussion of the Chinese economy in the past few years is likely to have touched on its property sector implosion, the catastrophic loss of life following its “Covid zero” reopening, crackdowns on the tech sector and a general failure to launch. But amid all his struggles, President Xi Jinping has been pursuing a long-term plan to turbocharge China’s new engines of economic success—with an eye toward catching and surpassing the world’s tech behemoths. READ MORE
CrowdStrike outage sparks global chaos with airline, bank and other disruptions
A wave of IT outages swept across the globe Friday morning, sending airports, airlines, banks and other institutions into a screeching halt as some Microsoft-based computers ceased to work.
CrowdStrike -- an American cybersecurity technology firm that provides cloud workload protection, threat intelligence and cyberattack response services -- said the outage, which sparked chaos for many, was not a cyberattack. Instead, there was an issue with software and a fix had been deployed. READ MORE
John Deere backs away from diversity and inclusion efforts after a conservative backlash
John Deere says it will no longer sponsor “social or cultural awareness” events, becoming the latest major US company to distance itself from diversity and inclusion measures after being targeted by conservative backlash.
In a statement posted Tuesday to social media platform X, the farm equipment maker also said it would audit all training materials “to ensure the absence of socially-motivated messages” in compliance with federal and local laws. It did not specify what those messages would include. READ MORE
Can we please stop talking about replacing employees with AI?
An online retailer recently underwent an AI transformation after it realized it no longer needed to employ an expensive local workforce to provide customer support. They split their customer support between AI bots serving as the first tier of support and an offshore team to which AI could escalate calls, functioning as a second tier of support. Its operational costs dropped precipitously, but so did the quality of service and sales.
This is just one example of the trendiest conversation in every boardroom, event and trade conference. More than anything, executives want to know when they can finally replace employees who require benefits, vacations, mental health programs, promotions and professional development and replace them with an army of AI bots. And we need to talk about this. READ MORE
Hot career trend ‘hushed hybrid' has managers choosing the employees who have flex work arrangements
With thousands of American businesses mandating back-to-office protocols, some rogue managers are apparently stretching their authority and going against company policy.
These rebellious managers are allowing staff to split their time between working from home and reporting to their workplace — even though their companies are now requiring in-person work. READ MORE
These are the top 5 states for business in 2024
A new winner has been crowned as the best state in America for business, but it is no stranger to the top spot.
The annual rankings conducted by CNBC scored all 50 states on a range of 10 categories, including infrastructure, workforce and economy, and determined these are the five best states for business in the U.S. READ MORE
EU accuses Elon Musk’s X of misleading users
European regulators have charged Elon Musk’s X with breaching its sweeping Digital Services Act, accusing the platform of misleading its users among other violations. READ MORE
Return-to-Office Mandates Are (Finally, Unquestionably) Dead
If you can't beat them, join them.
That will be the epitaph on the gravestone of return-to-office mandates. And to me, anyway, it's nothing short of ironic that the push to bring employees back to the office is going to go out with a whimper instead of a bang.
It's also fascinating to me that in the end, the productivity argument never really mattered. READ MORE
Biden Enforcing A 28% Corporate Tax Rate Would Make The U.S. 'The Most Uncompetitive Country In The G7' Says Kevin O'Leary
President Biden is pushing for significant changes to make big corporations pay more taxes and quadruple the tax on stock buybacks, which benefit wealthy investors and CEOs with low-tax payouts. He wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% and the corporate minimum tax to 21%. READ MORE
For better employee retention, why hybrid work may offer the most value
In the post-pandemic world of work, employee and employer expectations for where work gets done continue to evolve. In an effort to provide clarity around the business value of in-office versus hybrid work arrangements, Stanford University professor and work-from-home expert Nick Bloom led a research project at one company that yielded insightful results—particularly around the impact of hybrid work on employee retention. READ MORE
Car Rental Service Replaces Desk Agents With People On Video Chat
A car rental service in Charlotte, North Carolina has replaced its agents with virtual staffers on a monitor on video chat software. If a customer wishes to speak to a manager, they walk into an office and sit at a desk, upon which sits a computer monitor that also has a virtual staffer on a monitor on a video chat. This is the latest frontier in what appears to be a growing trend of virtual employees working at in-person offices. READ MORE
3 critical ‘moments of truth’ in rewards and talent management
In the fast-moving consumer goods sector, “moments of truth” represent the key points where consumers interact with a product, and their thoughts and opinions about it are formed. Ensuring that a consumer forms a favorable opinion at each moment of truth is key to the brand’s success in the market. It can also determine whether an existing customer leaves or remains loyal to your brand. READ MORE
Netflix tells managers to fire employees if they fail unusual test
Work culture is constantly evolving in the corporate world, with many companies rolling out updates to their policies that they believe will bring out the best in their employees.
While some policy changes are welcomed with open arms in the workplace, others can spark controversy such as policies that lay out ground rules surrounding remote work or hiring and firing practices. READ MORE
Another Contentious US Election Means a Worker Productivity Dip
As chatter of the first US presidential debate hit workplaces across the country, executives a got a stark reminder about what happens when a contentious election cycle invades their offices.
Once considered taboo, talking politics at the water cooler is now quite common: Three in five US workers have discussed politics with coworkers over the last year, according to a report published by Glassdoor Inc. last November. While the office has long been seen as a place where Republicans and Democrats set aside their differences to accomplish shared goals, that ideal is fading. READ MORE
The shadowy new way employees are cheating their way to the top
Remi never intended to secretly outsource her job. It sort of just happened.
After graduating from college in 2019 with a degree in education, the Gen Zer found work at a Chicago publishing company. She did not love it. Most of her colleagues were decades older than her, and their struggles to use basic software forced her to become a one-woman IT operation. The work itself was uninspiring and relentless: On most days she juggled presentation slides, managed spreadsheets and databases, and formatted page layouts. READ MORE
Elon Musk Pitches Advertisers on a Return to X, Months After Telling Some to ‘F’ Themselves
Seven months after declaring that advertisers pulling their ads from his social-media platform X could “go f— yourself,” Elon Musk took a more congenial tone onstage at the advertising industry’s most important annual festival.
Musk joined Mark Read, chief executive of ad giant WPP, in a session Wednesday at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, a five-day event that draws thousands of the industry’s chief marketing officers, tech leaders, creative workers and others from around the world. READ MORE