Did Bezos feel the Bern? Looks like he did. Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 this week, a move that will impact 350,000 full time and seasonal workers. Bernie Sanders has been (loudly) criticizing Amazon for its poor working conditions and low wages in its warehouses, making the $1 trillion company look like something out of Dickens. Not a great picture in this job market, where companies are struggling to fill minimum-wage jobs. On Tuesday, Bezos said he listened to his critics and made these changes because he wanted to lead in this area, even saying he’s going to lobby Congress to raise the federal minimum wage… in partnership with Sanders. Bloomberg
CHROs are increasingly proving they’re jacks and jills of all trades, changing the way others in the C-suite view this pivotal corporate function in the process. Take Mark James, CHRO for Honeywell. When the global engineering, aerospace and consumer products giant decided it needed to cut costs, that project landed on James’ desk. He worked with other C-suite execs to identify more than 200 money-saving moves, and wound up running the company’s procurement operation in addition to all things HR. To him, it made sense because the line between HR and finance is blurry at best, considering the fact that HR knows everything dollars-and-cents about every employee, including salary, benefits, expenses, training, you name it. He’s calling his role a “boundaryless CHRO.” Not a silo in sight in that C-suite, and Honeywell isn’t the only company doing it. HR Executive
Interesting article in The Economist this week about the future of work. It begins with a snapshot of a “working vacation” of a couple that traveled from New York to Sydney, financed by freelancing through Expert360 while down under. With Uber considering expanding benefits for drivers, the gig economy is evolving into a powerful force that will be poised to change the future of work. The Economist
Cielo’s 2018 Talent Acquisition 360 study released today finds that the competition for talent is causing major shifts in corporate strategy, as well as significant disagreements among business functions regarding their companies’ approaches to finding, recruiting, interviewing, and hiring new employees. Nearly 70 percent of business leaders surveyed worldwide believe the existing talent pool is shrinking while the competition for talent is increasing, and 54 percent say their company has more open positions than ever before.
Business Insider
