Work From Home, Save the Planet
Most of you know that I’m an avid fan of tele-commuting. As fuel costs continue to rise, it just makes the whole work from home argument that much stronger. Recently I stumbled across a great post on the Rebel Dad (yeah, it’s a great blog name) blog that summarizes a recent study by Sun Microsytems, which essentially says that working from home, in addition to being great for employee moral, is also a very green way to work. Here’s the summary from the Rebel Dad himself. To read the entire article click here.
- Employees saved more than $1,700 per year in gasoline and wear and tear on their vehicles by working at home an average of 2.5 days a week.
- Office equipment energy consumption rate at a Sun office was two times that of home office equipment energy consumption, from approximately 64 watts per hour at home to 130 watts per hour at a Sun office.
- Commuting was more than 98 percent of each employee’s carbon footprint for work, compared to less than 1.7 percent of total carbon emissions to power office equipment.
- By eliminating commuting just 2.5 days per week, an employee reduces energy used for work by the equivalent of 5,400 Kilowatt hours/year.
- Working from home 2.5 days per week saved the employees in the study an average of 2.5 weeks of commute time (8 hours/day, 5 days/week).
I rest my case.
Until next time…
A-holes In The Workplace
My good friend Joyce Maroney who writes for the Workforce Institute recently featured a guest post entitled A**holes and Absenteeism. It was written by Dr. Steven Hunt, and based on his interview with Bob Sutton, Stanford professor and author of the popular book “The No A**hole Rule” (Business Plus press, 2007). The book deals with workplace bullying and it’s effect on office moral. It’s a great piece, I hope you enjoy it.
The following is a guest post by our board member, Dr. Steven Hunt. He recently had the opportunity to interview Bob Sutton, Stanford professor and author of the popular book “The No A**hole Rule” (Business Plus press, 2007). The title Bob chose for his book is provocative, but the topic is serious. Bullying behavior by bosses at work can degrade employee productivity faster than just about any other poor management practice. With Steve’s permission, I’ve taken the liberty of masking the potentially offensive “a**hole” term for readers. Here is Steve’s otherwise unaltered guest post:
One thing that really impressed me about Bob’s work is that, despite the somewhat irreverent title of his book, the book is based on a lot of in-depth, rigorous empirical research. A tremendous amount of time has been spent studying the notion of a**holes and how they impact business performance. Most of this research doesn’t actually use the term “a**hole”, opting instead for more socially appropriate terms like “bully”, “jerks”, or “emotionally insensitive”. But the focus is the same: what is the impact of having individuals in a company who treat others in a way that makes them feel demeaned, emotionally hurt, or otherwise hurts their sense of self-esteem? What is clear from this research is that a**holes have serious, lasting and damaging consequences to a company’s bottom line.
One item of research discussed in the “No A**hole Rule” struck me as being of particular interest to many of the readers of the Workforce Institute website. Hourly employees are much more likely to skip work if they feel their supervisor is an a**hole This by itself is probably not that surprising. But what is more interesting is that hourly employees who dislike their boss will not necessarily miss more work on a regular basis. Instead they will choose not to come in to work on those days when they have some reasonable excuse (for example, during a snowstorm). Of course, it is during these times when companies are likely to most want employees to make the extra effort to show up.
In sum, when a supervisor acts like an a**hole to his/her direct reports the way direct reports get back at this person is through not helping them out when they are most needed. This just another reason why companies should be serious about weeding out supervisors who treat employees in a cruel or demeaning manner.
It would be nice to live in a world where we don’t need research to justify to companies why they should not hire or retain a**holes. But sadly, as Bob also points out in his book, a great many companies tolerate a**holes rather than recognizing them for the damaging influence that they are.
This is just one of many very interesting facts and insights I gained from interviewing Bob and reading his book “The No A**hole Rule”. If you’d like to hear my full interview with Bob Sutton, you can check it out at the following site: http://www.successfactors.com/podcast/bob-sutton/
Steve
Until next time…
Watch Your Mouth Mister!
We’re all familiar with the phrase ‘you can’t unring a bell’. In the past few months it’s become common place for our leaders and other public figures to say just about anything, then if a backlash comes, they just apologize. Just in the past week we’ve seen former President Clinton call a Vanity Fair columnist a scumbag because of some sharp comments on the President’s extracurricular love life. We’ve also seen current Vice-President Dick Cheney make some off color inbreeding comments about West Virginians. In both cases apologies were quickly put our via their respective spokespeople. But, that bell’s still ringing.
Certainly these sorts of situations happen everyday in corporate America, but usually the repercussions are more severe. What would happen if you were in West Virginia and made an inbreeding comment during a meeting or if you publicly called someone a scumbag. Chances are your job would be in jeopardy regardless of the quality of your apology. I worked with a woman once who call a client a ‘bitch’ after she thought the conference call we were on had ended. Those were some tense moments. Reminds me now of the commercial where the woman thinks she’s on mute and tells the boss off only to have the phone repair guy show up and tell her the mute button doesn’t work on that phone. I love that. In real life she’d be a memory by the end of the day.
So why do we forgive and forget so easily with our leaders, yet we’re held to a much higher standard? I suppose in some cases the endings are quite so happy. Anybody heard from Michael Richards lately? How about Mel Gibson? As for President Clinton and Vice President Cheney are we really that shocked by either of these two? I’d say their current behavior is sadly all too indicative of who they really are, apologies or not. Which is why this sort of thing seldom works in the corporate world. If you make an off color comment, even if the apology works, chances are your career will still be negatively impacted. You’ll always be the person who said ‘xxx’ or called the client a bitch. Those folks usually don’t have long careers. So as Mom used to say, ‘Watch your mouth mister!’.
Until next time…
