WORKERS are in a phase of being footloose and fancy-free. The proportion of Americans leaving their jobs voluntarily is at a 17-year high. A survey by Gallup in 2017 found that around half of American employees were hoping to leave their current job. The Economist
Et tu, McDonald’s? Employees working under the golden arches in 10 states held a one-day walkout to highlight the issue of harassment in the workplace. In Chicago, they demonstrated outside the corporate HQ, raising the specter of Browning-Ferris (Is corporate responsible if an employee is harassed in a franchise? The NLRB is going to call it a “no.”), prompting McD corporate to issue a statement saying it has “strong policies, procedures and training in place specifically designed to prevent sexual harassment,” and admit those policies are evolving. A big part of the problem is that, in the restaurant industry (particularly fast food), most of the managers are men and most of the lower-paid workers are women who can’t afford to lose their jobs, according to the National Culinary Institute of America. The result is, 40 percent of women in the fast-food industry reported facing sexual harassment on the job. USA Today
Football fans were stunned on Sunday when Vontae Davis of the Buffalo Bills walked off the field at halftime, saying he was done. We’re betting HR pros out there noticed the same thing we did. It was Davis’s first season playing with the Bills after nine years with Miami. The week before, the Bills were demolished by the Ravens, 47-3. In this game, they were down 28-6 in the first 30 minutes. Instead of giving his all to turn that situation around, Davis walked away. Had it happened in corporate America, that spells utter disengagement. He just didn’t feel like part of the team. Every employee needs to feel engaged and part of the team from day one, and it’s HR’s job to make sure of it. Quartz at Work
When’s the last time you took a look at your maternity leave policy? An article in Fast Company this week might have you dusting off your employee handbook and rethinking specifically how you handle the first week a new parent comes back to the office. Fast Company talked to 13 female execs about the process of reintegrating into the workplace after maternity leave and got varied responses, from the thrill of putting on professional clothes again to the horror of leaking breast milk onto those clothes during a meeting. Returning employees can be exhausted, not only from the physical demands of being a new parent but from the emotional ones as well. For many career-driven women, creating a new identity that somehow blends motherhood with succeeding at their jobs requires adaptability, flexibility, and the ability to let things go. For HR, it’s about creating a way for new parents to ease back into their jobs and settle into their new normal. And a private, comfortable room for using a breast pump wouldn’t hurt, either. Fast Company
They’re not just good at delighting customers by recommending spot-on, binge-worthy shows. Netflix is delighting its current employees and job candidates as well. The entertainment giant was just named the top employer brand for tech workers in Hired’s 2018 Global Brand Health Report. According to the study, the factors in that ranking include Netflix’s compensation and benefits, culture, the opportunity to learn and grow, challenging tech problem-solving, and the team they’d be joining. In Netflix’s now-famous “culture deck” (a PowerPoint presentation that evolved over time), they wrote down key things like values, high performance, and honesty, ultimately evolving into a culture of freedom and openness. HR Dive
