Another day, another dollar and another round-up of the most popular, thought-provoking and maybe even unsettling articles going viral online. In case you missed it (ICYMI), check out the top articles setting off email chains and generating conversation around the Meridian watercooler.

#CommutingProblems

Who loves sitting in traffic? No one. It ranks among people’s least favorite things to do in the world. Long commutes crush your dreams. To shed some light on the cold, hard truth, NY Magazine recently wrote an article on the 11 Facts About Your Soul-Sucking Commute. We all know long commutes put a strain on your health and relationships, but a study by the American Time Use Survey, puts it all into perspective claiming, “Each minute spent commuting is associated with a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction.” Other alarming interesting takeaways include, commuters are more likely to have marriage problems, have less time devoted to exercise and are less politically active. But, hey, they also make on average 40% more than their telecommuting counterparts – that’s got to count for something!

#WorkingFromHomeProblems

Speaking of telecommuters, an Inc. article titled, How to Make a Remote Team WORK (In More Ways than One). There’s been a ton of speculation on the merits and disadvantages of working from home. As a virtual worker myself, I have a few strong opinions on the subject. The upside of embracing a virtual workforce is that you can expand your talent pool and offer people a more flexible work-life balance that fits their needs. The downside of working from home is you have to change the way you manage people. It requires trust, guidelines, communication, and time dedicated to virtual or in-person collaboration. Don’t forget, just because someone is a virtual employee doesn’t mean it’s assumed they can be on early-morning or late-night calls. They have lives too!

Moreover, working from home can lead to a lot more household chores than working an on-site job. For instance, first, the employee might have to set up a home office to ensure comfort and a perfect work environment to keep up productivity. Then people doing remote jobs may also encounter more household issues, such as plumbing leakages or broken heating systems since they are using these utilities more than usual. In those cases, the personal workload can increase on an employee or they may have to hire help like furnace repair in Concord, NH (or wherever they are situated) to get things repaired and renovated. Considering all these moot points, it can be better if you set an 8 to 9 hours long work schedule during work from home so that employees can have some personal time as well.

#WomenInBusiness

In case you missed it, March was National Women’s History month and March 8th was International Women’s Day. These two occasions sparked a lot of conversation and dialogue both on and offline. Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project released a study examining why there aren’t more women in the global workforce. The study found that, “women around the world are healthier and more educated, but no more likely to be collecting a paycheck than they were 20 years ago.”

 

Some crazy findings include:

 

• Men in North Africa and the Middle East are three times more likely to own a business than women
• Women born in Latin America are now 20% more likely to be part of the workforce
• In China, 64% of adult women work in the growing economy
• In Japan-despite a longer history of modernity and high education rates-only 49% work

 

On a very positive note, 200 million fewer women than men in developing countries have access to online technology than the previous study. Read more about the research in this Fortune article, here!

#ApatheticBoss

 

Gallup came out with a new study that sheds light on what many of us already know – your managers might be just as disengaged at work as you are. A Washington Post article features key findings from the study, which include:

 

• 51% of U.S managers are not engaged in their jobs, and another 14% are actively disengaged
• 35% of U.S. managers are actually absorbed in their work
• 30% of the overall U.S. workforce are engaged

 

Yikes!

 

The study explores what employees’ value in managers, why everyone isn’t always cut out to be a manager and why women are better managers than men. Another interesting piece from the Washington Post article states the study, “also showed that supervisors who reached their position not because of seniority or prior performance but because of their actual managerial talents – such as assertiveness, motivational skills and decision-making prowess – were twice as likely to really like their jobs than those who don’t excel in these areas.”

 

That’s all for now, y’all!

 

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