Government Executive - Authors - Vickie Elmer

Why Employers Favor Dads Asking for Flexibility

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 14:00:00 -0400

Introducing…the “fatherhood bonus.”

New research shows working dads receive an advantage over working moms when they request flexible hours to care for their kids. Christin L. Munsch, a Furman University sociology professor, coined the term in her new research paper presented at the American Sociological Association’s conference this week.

Dads were more likely than Moms to be granted a work from home request, and they also were deemed to be more likable, Munsch reports in Flexible Work, Flexible Penalties: The Effect of Gender, Childcare and Type of Request on the Flexibility Bias.

Some 69.7% of dads would be likely to be approved for their request, compared to 56.7% of moms. The figures are based on the evaluation of 646 US residents who read a transcript of a conversation between an HR person and a worker who was seeking schedule changes or work from home.

What’s the reason for this gender divide? “People draw on cultural beliefs about gender to help define flexwork and evaluate flexworkers,” Munsch writes, continuing:

“Not only did I find evidence of a fatherhood bonus, I also found that men who made flexplace requests for childcare reasons were perceived as more respectable, likeable, committed, and worthy of a promotion than women who made the same request. Again, this suggests that cultural notations of parenting influence how flextime requests are perceived.”

Munsch’s research also found that workers with children are more likely to be granted flexible work arrangements than those who ask for other reasons. She notes flexible work decisions are “inherently subjective” because they decided case-by-case by supervisors. Men who work full-time while caring for their children may receive what professor Kenneth Kolb called the“progressive merit badge” while women still largely face the “motherhood penalty.”

So this report gives parents some encouraging news and a mess to sort out too. It may make it more likely that dads – like millions of working mothers – may master the diaper change during a conference call moves. But it could help foster a new gender gap as the Washington Post writer put it: “What if flexible work makes men look good and continues to hold women back?”

(Image via Dubova/Shutterstock.com)

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Employers, You Should Not Be Selling the Job in the Interview

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:43:30 -0400

There’s only one person who should be doing the hard sell during an interview—and it’s not the employer.

That’s the finding of a recent paper titled “Do interviewers sell themselves short? The effects of selling orientation on interviewers’ judgments.” Jennifer Marr, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Dan M. Cable whose research at the London Business School focuses on cultural fit and career success, conclude:

The more interviewers adopt a selling orientation, the less able they are to make judgments that accurately predict applicants future success as newcomers.

This runs counter to previous research, which has found job candidates like to be sold or pitched to on a job, and interviewers feel they are being effective and landing the candidate. But spending so much time in sales mode often means neglecting to dig into the candidate’s work style or other details that would show if she fits in the job and the corporate culture.

“We can’t be focusing on two or more goals at once,” Marr told Quartz. One of the motivations—selling or seeing whether values and skills match—will dominate the interview. Even very competent interviewers experienced the same difficulty and could not simultaneously evaluate and encourage the candidate to join their organization, Marr says.

In instances where the candidate is highly regarded and the organization is most enthused about them, the interviews are the least effective, she added.

The consequences may be high: A new hire who doesn’t mesh with staff, whose reputation does not meet the organization’s reality, or who leaves the organization quickly, causing lost productivity, staff unrest, plus the cost of recruiting a replacement.

Instead, employers may want either to have two people in the interview—one to pitch the organization and job and one to evaluate the candidate, Marr suggests. They also could schedule two interviews, one to determine if the person will work and the second to sell her on the job and place. They could push critical thinking as the foundation for interviews, and recruit separately before and afterward.

That sounds smart, though it would mean for hiring managers to slow their decision-making. Half of them said they know within five minutes whether they plan to offer a candidate a job.

Reprinted with permission from Quartz. The original story can be found here.

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Americans Are Doing Less of This One Thing That Will Help You Get a Job

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 10:13:30 -0500

Volunteer work can be incredibly valuable to your career, whether you’re seeking your first professional job or a move into management. That message has been sent out by career bloggers and documented by Deloitte and LinkedIn among others. A 2013 study even found that volunteers are 27% more likely to get a job than non-volunteers.

Then why then are so few young people and jobless individuals signing on to volunteer?

New data on US volunteering shows a decline in the volunteer rate for the year ending in September 2013, bringing it to its lowest level, at 25.4%, since data were first collected by Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2002. And 20- to 24-year-olds have the lowest levels of volunteer activity, with only 18.5% giving time to causes.

Only 24.1% of the unemployed took a volunteer spot, and among unemployed men, it was 19.7%. That is below the 26.8% of full-time workers and 31.7% of part-time workers who make time for charity or causes. The share of jobless volunteers has actually inched up a bit since the recession of 2009, when it stood at 22.9%.

The report did not give a reason for the overall decline in volunteering, or show why women are more active volunteers than men. “Almost always, the most compelling reason for people to continue to volunteer is that they’re parents,” Diana Aviv, president and CEO of Independent Sector, told US News. People aged 35 to 44 and parents with children under 18 were most likely to volunteer.

Maybe career prospects should be the volunteer fuel. Three-quarters of HR workers will consider an applicant’s volunteer experience when making a hiring decision, and 81% said skilled volunteering would improve a college graduate’s chance of landing a job, according to a Deloitte survey.

LinkedIn added a section for volunteer experience and causes to its professional profiles in 2011, and said 41% of managers said they value volunteer experience as much as professional experience.

What if you have a job and want volunteer work that will advance your career? Join a nonprofit board of directors or serve as a business or career coach.

Reprinted with permission from Quartz. The original story can be found here.

(Image via spirit of america/Shutterstock.com)

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American Men Work From Home More Than Women

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 11:41:36 -0500

It’s time to get over the notion that most people working from home are moms who squeeze reports and conference calls in between children’s games and Cheerios.

A new survey shows that men vastly outnumber women in remote work—either from home, a coffee shop, a co-working or business center. And the Flex+Strategy Group survey also found that childless workers and parents almost equally commute down a flight of stairs to work.

“I have always known that flexibility itself is gender neutral,” says Cali Williams Yost, CEO of Flex+Strategy, a firm that consults with employers. “But the primary work-remote person is very much more likely to be a man.

Its research shows 36% of men say they do most of their work from remote places including home, compared to 23% of women. (Men represent about 53% of the US labor force and more than two-thirds of all commuters, according to Flex+Strategy’s survey.) The telephone survey by ORC International queried 556 full-time US workers.

Other surveys show similar results. A Harris Interactive poll last year indicated 37% of men and 31% of women spent some time working from home—though women were more likely to agree with positive statements about telework. Almost two-thirds of workers told Harris that working from home improved productivity and work output.

“It’s easier to say flexibility’s about moms, about women, then we don’t have to deal with it” at larger companies, Williams Yost says. She thinks women may be reluctant to request work from home arrangements, fearing they will be shunted onto the “mommy track.” Her survey results show women are more likely to work in open floor plan and cubicles in workplaces, the same group that said they were least likely to use flexibility.

One Harvard economist believes the flexibility, especially in traditional fields,comes at a high cost. Yet telecommuting jobs are growing and plentiful, especially at companies such as Xerox and Aetna.

The message to business leaders who are not sold on the fundamental shift to more flexible work arrangements: “Flexibility, including telework, is not a policy; it’s not perk or a program,” says Williams Yost, the author of two books Tweak It and Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You. “It’s a way of operating your business, and increasingly a core strategy” that applies to all.

Reprinted with permission from Quartz. The original story can be found here.

(Image via Tomasz Trojanowski/Shutterstock.com)

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What Top Executives Can Learn From Career Setbacks in Major League Baseball

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:00:00 -0500

The higher up the ladder you climb, the more it hurts if you fall—and the harder it is to regain your standing.

Based on three studies of university students and baseball players, researchers concluded that high achievers who hit a major career setback also “experience more self-threat and subsequent difficulty performing well.”

Their paper, “Falling from Great (and not So Great) Heights: Initial Status Position Influences Performance after Status Loss,” appears in the February/March issue of the Academy of Management Journal. Authored by Jennifer Carson Marr, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Georgia Institute of Technology and Stefan Thau, formerly of the London Business School and now at Insead, the findings are based on one study of salary arbitration in Major League Baseball and two behavioral experiments with university students.

Marr’s conclusion: “Even top performers—in fact, especially top performers—are prone to make mistakes and suffer poor performance in the aftermath of status loss.”

How does this apply to the workplace? Because star performers and executives may come to rely on the respect and accolades they receive, they may have trouble regaining their momentum and strong performance after a setback. This could derail not only their careers but projects or people they still oversee. Impaired performance could hinder decision-making and efforts to regain their status, the authors say.

The only way to win after a career misstep is to stage a comeback. And yet the reverse occurs in the year after a baseball player’s fall: Both on-base and slugging percentages, two measures used to measure players’ performance, declined more for high-status players than others in the year after lost status. The authors find this “particularly interesting because our sample is a group of professional athletes whose livelihood and future status depends on their performance on the field, and so they should be particularly motivated to play well to regain status.”

The study relied on data on each baseball player (except pitchers, who have different performance criteria) who went through salary arbitration from 1974 to 2011—there were 199 in all—and looked at their key statistics in the two years before and one year after winning or losing arbitrations. To measure status, the authors found how often players were chosen for All-Star Games or won awards such as the Golden Glove.

High status players’ performance “declined significantly” after losing status in an arbitration over salaries, while low-status players performances were unaffected by similar setbacks.

Marr’s research looks at how motivational goals and loss of status influence behavior and cognitions. Her other research indicates gains or declines in status as well as rank may affect others’ judgments and concludes that social status is “more nuanced and dynamic.”

In the two university studies, students randomly were assigned high- or low-status projects in small groups, and lost their status arbitrarily, so that could be distinguished from other factors. Afterward, students who started with a high-status position then lost it performed more poorly on a word exercise than other participants, including those who had lower status and lost some.

There are ways, though, to mitigate the fall. ”You can reduce the harm from status loss by taking some time to think about a valued relationship and, in general, by recognizing the value of meaningful relationships or aspects of one’s life outside of work,” Marr said, sharing lessons she drew from her research. “These elements can compensate for threats to the self that loss of status can entail. Another way to achieve this may be by looking to change jobs, to find work at another organization where you feel respected.”

Reprinted with permission from Quartz. The original story can be found here.

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Women Pay a Steep Price for Their More Flexible Work Schedules

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 12:26:28 -0500

One big reason women make less than men is because they tend to demand more flexible schedules. And new economic research shows that if more workplaces adopted a more team-oriented, job-sharing approach—like physicians in a group practice—the cost of flexible work would dissipate and the premium for long hours would too.

“That’s how physicians have been able to not be 24/7, not be on call all the time, to have lives of their own,” says Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor of economics. Her new paper, A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter (pdf), is to be published soon in the American Economic Review, and explores the reasons behind pay differential between genders even as women have caught up with men in education, experience, and other measures.

The bottom line: The way work is structured and rewarded, especially in traditional organizations, must adapt to changes in society and technology. Many companies still richly reward people who are available and work long, continuous hours, Goldin says. They give premium pay to certain key players—mostly men who don’t take time off for children or aging relatives. So women or men who need flexible schedules obtain them ”at a high price, particularly in the corporate, finance and legal worlds,” Goldin writes in her paper. Technology and science fields are better off in pay equity, as are certain health care careers.

She does not quantify the exact cost of flexible work schedules, though she has studied the pay gap that develops over time for women in other research. “What happens within each occupation is far more important than the occupations in which women wind up,” she writes.

She asks: Why should someone who works 80 hours a week be worth more than two people who work 40 hours a week?

“It isn’t quote a women’s issue,” says Goldin in an interview with Quartz. The pay disparity shows up equally when male MBAs need reduced schedules or time off for personal or family needs.

Men’s and women’s occupations, education and roles at work have converged in the last decades, and equal pay could be the last cornerstone. It’s already near equal when women and men start their careers, then starts diverging after five years and is wider by 15 years of experience.

Government intervention will not help, but economic incentives such as lower costs could. “Some things simply occur organically,” Goldin noted.

Goldin’s research and papers have focused on education and women’s careers, and she’s previously singled out pharmacists as “The Most Egalitarian of All Professions.” (pdf)

“Pharmacists have become very good substitutes for each other. …Being good substitutes for each other means it doesn’t matter who does the last hour,” she says.

In workplaces where staff have no “perfect substitutes” people may be penalized if they work shorter hours or must depart for a few hours during the work day, she writes. Those who have a “perfect substitute”—someone who can pick up when you leave off, or take the last few hours so a parent can put their child to bed—will not earn a premium in earnings and their pay increases are linear, based mainly on hours worked and experience levels.

Goldin saw the “perfect substitute” up close recently when she had a minor surgical procedure and a team of doctors took care of her. “That’s how physicians have been able to not be 24/7, not be on call all the time and have lives of their own,” she said admiringly, noting that 36% of pediatricians work very low hours.

So go ahead and groom your “perfect substitute”—preferably before your next vacation or baby arrive.

(Image via Kzenon/Shutterstock.com)

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After Disclosing Employee Salaries, Buffer Was Inundated With Resumes

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 17:00:00 -0500

A funny thing happened after Buffer, a social-sharing app and site, decided to publish every single employee’s salaries on its website: Applications soared and the quality of candidates improved. “It kind of feels like this is somewhat of a movement bubbling up here. That’s kind of surprising,” CEO and co-founder Joel Gascoigne says in an interview with Quartz.

For the record, Gascoigne earns $151,800 at the helm of the company that works with Twitter and other sites to schedule your social media shares. Now, an array of companies want to follow the same radical transparency that Buffer practices.

Its salaries formula, used to calculate what each worker will earn as they join the company, has become more nuanced and is being emulated by startups such as Groove and CustomerIO, says Gascoigne. Buffer also plans an “open equity” program where everyone knows how shares are divided.

The strategy is part of a broader movement toward workplace transparency, embraced by Buffer and an increasing number of companies trying to build trust, with an eye toward strengthening the foundation of teamwork. It takes a certain kind of person to work at Buffer, Gascoigne says, listing traits such as empathy and gratitude—in addition to being very good at the core job skills.

“The percent of people who were a good culture fit was a lot higher” after all themedia coverage of sharing the salary of every person on the payroll,” he said. And of workers turned off by it, he says, “it scares the right people away.”

Buffer received 2,886 applications for job openings in the month since the Dec. 19 news of its salary transparency showed up on its blog, compared to 1,263 in the 30 days beforehand, Gascoigne said. “We’ve never been able to find great people this quickly in the past,” he says.

The company expects to grow from 15 workers to 50 by the end of 2014. Among current openings: a weekend warrior to handle customer service on Saturdays and Sundays and a happiness hero to “champion for the customer.” Gascoigne spoke to Quartz about hiring and transparency. Edited excerpts:

Q: Where did the idea of disclosing salaries come from?

JG: I had a previous startup [OnePage] before Buffer. It wasn’t a success, but I learned a lot of key lessons I needed for Buffer. While working on that, I was sharing things that I was learning, just not in such a detailed or disciplined way that we have going on now. I realized quite early that was really quite useful. People were invested in what I was doing and where I was going.

Since the early days, I’ve always shared growth charts: how many people signed up; growth revenues. It became a theme before we actually took a moment and put into words the nine values of Buffer—[transparency] was like a key theme of ours.

When we raised our seed rounds, me and Leo [Widrich, the co-founder and COO] thought about it. We had 19 investors in our $450,000 seed round. We met each person in such a different way. We shared each one [with staff], partly because we were so grateful with each person who became a Buffer investor. Also to help other people see how that works. It’s normally quite a secretive thing, actually.

Someone asked on Quora how much equity we gave up and I answered it. I just decided to step in and answer it—about 14% we gave up. The answer went kind of crazy.

Q: Tell us about the negotiating process to hire an employee.

JG: The negotiating process is very alien to us at Buffer—because there is no negotiating. We have a really high focus on cultural fit to the point that if they didn’t know about the formula before they applied, they probably wouldn’t be a good fit. One bonus of transparency: You just search and learn. Generally, people are just really exited about the culture and they apply based on that.

They [job candidates] have three separate interviews and one is focused on cultural fit. Then if we all agree we want the person to join the team, we make an offer letter with a 45-day trial period. One person recently replied “I would love to be on the team. I was thinking that that would be my salary.” He’d seen the formula and done the calculations himself.

The ratio of people who make it from Buffer Boot Camp to totally on board is maybe 70%.

Our values are listen first, then listen more. It’s really about empathy. In some ways, someone who is negotiating would not be a good fit for us. Someone who is really trying to push to getting potentially more for their benefit than for Buffer’s. Our salaries, we try to make very fair and above market.

Q: So what do you do when someone gets another higher offer.

JG: We’ve been around three years, and it’s not happened yet. Or if it has happened, I don’t know about it. My intuition with that one is we aim with salary a little bit above market. We want them to be comfortable enough and not worry about money. I would hope that salary is not the highest, the key thing for people. In a way if they got a higher offer and that was something that swayed them, I would be happy to say good luck and thank you. And I would be happy for them if that was what they felt best. I wouldn’t try to negotiate. It could be a learning point for us. Is that something we need to adjust in the model or approach?

Q: How do you control jealousies among the team?

It’s not been a big issue, but we have had one or two situations, So for example, we have a location aspect of the salary formula and the experience portion as well. Those are areas where it’s not exactly an exact science. We use a service called Numbeo for the cost of living piece—the average rent on a one-bedroom apartment . We have four brackets for locations. A is New York, San Francisco, London, Syndney, Hong Kong. B covers smaller cities where it’s little bit cheaper to live.

Where is that line between A and B and C? One case where someone was in B and they wanted to talk about whether they would be in A [for the salary differential it would bring].

After quite a bit of change to the salary formula, we added seniority as an aspect.

We have one-on-one sessions to discuss it. People know how they could make more if they wanted to. We’re open to discussing those things. Does someone feel they’re not in the bracket? How can I get to A? Salary is a cultural thing. It can be similar with expenses; they can expense anything as long as it is at the right levels.

Our team focuses on empathy and gratitude. For example, people had kept their laptops far too long. One of them, Mary, was visiting San Francisco for the week. We hadn’t met her in person. She had along her laptop. And we said, “Let’s get you a new laptop now.” We visited the Apple store.

Everyone has that level of empathy. Generally, jealousy’s not an issue because of the forces of all the values in the company. If jealously or entitlement did show up, it would be a bigger issue and we would discuss it right away.

Q: Is this just Buffer’s belief in salary transparency or part of a larger trend?

JG: It does seem to be a trend. It’s not only us. It seems like people have wanted to do it and not thought about how until now. I really enjoy meeting people, having coffee, to discuss transparency. Last week I had coffee with a guy doing similar things—his company’s called Balanced Payments. It’s open source, on the business side they share everything as well. I have had Google Hangouts with someone who values transparency. At Unbounce.com, they encourage their staff to share everything they’re passionate about. I’m definitely seeing a trend emerging here.

There are a few companies we’ve been inspired by who are already very successful and have a culture of transparency: Moz, SumAll, and Semco.

Sometimes other adapters write in their blog posts “thanks to Buffer and Joel.” Sometimes they cite Buffer when they disclose their salaries or other transparencies. Keith Rabios, the former COO of Square, said the key reason transparency works for managers is they want them [their team] to make the same decisions they would make. How could they make it without the same information?

Q: What advice do you have for others just starting in on transparency?

JG: Just do a little bit. Experiment with transparency in a small way. You don’t have to go as far as posting everyone’s salary on the blog. There’s some cool things you could do. Every email between two or more people, any email in the team you cc a list. We have a bunch of different lists. I’m emailing who I’m going to meet. We’ve found some really incredible benefits of that. So share something that’s not your most critical information. See how that feels—and just build from there.

(Image via David P. Smith/Shutterstock.com)

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Here’s How to Make It Through a Speech Without a Teleprompter

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 08:00:00 -0500

Even a famous Hollywood director can flub his lines when he has no clue what he’s supposed to say.

But Michael Bay, who walked off the stage of the Consumer Electronics show this week after aborting his Samsung presentation, is not alone. Many leaders, including President Obama, rely on devices when making speeches, in part, because it allows for greater eye contact with the audience. However, speech coaches discourage their use because they can freeze or fail. “They think it will save their butt, and they [devices] will not,” said Mikki Williams who runs a speakers school for executives. Other experts say audiences can tell when a speaker is reading and it diminishes the rapport.

What works instead? Williams teaches executives to develop key words for the main sections of their talk and memorize them. Each one should trigger a story you want to share or a point you want to make. “You do have to remember your opening and your closing,” she said, comparing a great speaker to a great dancer like Fred Astaire. “You’re looking at the finished product, not all the practice and the lessons.”

Some people spend days or even weeks preparing for speech or presentation.

George Aye, founder of the Greater Good Studio, which uses design methods to solve social problems, says he practiced his TED talk 50 times before giving it to TedXDePaulU in Chicago. “Eighteen minutes is a surprisingly long time to speak when it’s from memory!” he wrote in a post on preparing for a TED Talk. “Just like any good stand-up comic knows, making it look like you’re telling a joke for the first time takes practicing it hundreds of times in advance.”

Read more at Quartz.

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Why You Should Move All Your Meetings to Jan. 7

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 14:08:09 -0500

If you’re trying to make every minute count, focus your efforts on Tuesdays. It turns out that is the most productive day of the week.

That’s according to an Accountemps survey—a conclusion it has made four times before: 1987, 1998, 2002, and 2007. Yet again in this year’s survey by the temporary staffing agency, more human resources managers still see Americans revving up efforts on Tuesdays in particular.

Some 39% of the 300 US HR managers surveyed said workers are generally most productive on Tuesdays, while 24% named Monday. Indeed, Mondays gained some momentum compared to previous surveys, while HR managers scaled back on on Tuesday. In 2007, 57% named it the best day to accomplish something.

So what are the worst days for workers’ output? Thursdays and Fridays, each chosen by 3% of HR managers.

The information comes in handy for bosses as they figure out deadlines and set goals and rewards for maintaining momentum later in the week, says Kimberly Stiener-Murphy, the Accountemps branch manager in Sacramento, California. “‘Mr. Worker, if you finish this on Friday, you can go home early,’ “

Meanwhile, if workers want to rev up their productivity at the end of the week, they may want to sign out of email and social media and give their full attention to the task at hand, Accountemps noted. Also focus on one important project, and don’t bop back and forth between four or five.

She noted that the next two Tuesdays—the day before Christmas and New Year’s Eves—may be exceptions. She suggested managers strategize and set some clear goals for the week—or else every day next week could feel like a Friday.

Read more at Quartz.

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The Most Overused Buzzwords on LinkedIn in 2013

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 17:42:08 -0500

It’s time to stop labeling yourself as “responsible,” “creative,” and “driven.” Those are the most overused words on LinkedIn profiles worldwide, according to a new list published by the company.

LinkedIn checked the profile summaries of 259 million members for English and other languages, based on 81 buzzwords that were compiled last year. It ranked the most commonly-used words for members in 20 countries.

Many of the words are overused year after year, but one seems surprising and new: “patient.” In the US, it’s used more often than “creative,” “driven” or “innovative.”

“I never expected it…in this economy, with such a sense of drive and forward movement,” said Nicole Williams, LinkedIn’s career expert and and author of several books. (Yes, she uses expert in her profile despite its appearance on the list.) If you’re truly creative, show it and give some examples in your designs, the projects you’ve tackled, in links to your articles, she told me.

Read more at Quartz.

(Image via iluistrator/Shutterstock.com)

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The Complete Guide to Writing Office Memos

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 15:00:00 -0500

A recent all-staff internal memo from two senior Yahoo executives addressed its readers as “pilgrim,” then “sailor,” and mentioned “T-Rex,” “The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl,” the “hippocampian wagons” and “Ayn Randian Objectivism” all in one paragraph.

That widely ridiculed email served as a reminder that internal memos matter as much as any marketing brochure or press release—especially given how likely they are these days to leak online. ”What we write in memo form is going to become our business persona,” says Sandra Lamb, author of How to Write It.

That persona could be someone who speaks in jargon and “stilted business-school gobbledygook”—as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did in a memo announcing leadership changes. It could be brutally matter-of-fact, as former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was in a wake-up call to staff. Or it could be funny and endearingly honest, as Groupon CEO Andrew Mason was when he announced his resignation. Here are some tips to ensure that your memo is clear, effective, and memorable—for the right reasons.

1. Keep it short

“A word-heavy memo is likely to be less inviting to your time-crunched co-workers and upper management, who have limited time to quickly assess whether or not to save, read or delete your memo,” says Jane Dvorak, who’s worked in public relations and business communications for 30 years. Longer, in-depth documents can be shared as a follow-on.

2. Start strong

Show some style in the subject of your email and make your first sentence strong and compelling. ”Your initial sentence is your most important,” says Robert D. Behn, a Harvard University lecturer and author of a well-regarded memo on writing memos. It should make readers want to keep reading.

A memo from the CEO of deals site LivingSocial begins with: “This email is important so please read it to the end. We recently experienced a cyber-attack…”

3. Choose the right tone

Many memos are meant merely to inform. But some need to leave their readers feeling something—inspired, or confident, or (as in the case of Elop’s Nokia memo) scared.

If you want to inspire, get beyond the basic “what” to the “why’s” and “how’s.” Share some details or a story that engages, impresses or conveys your values or your vision. When Tim Cook took over as Apple’s CEO in 2011, his memo showed his emotional commitment to Apple’s culture, values and “the best products in the world.”

But if there’s no particular feeling you’re aiming for, stick to a factual and professional tone. Otherwise, too much tone (we’re looking at you, Yahoo) will merely distract your readers from your message.

Read more at Quartz.

(Image via Bartek Zyczynski/Shutterstock.com)

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To Get Promoted, Women Need Champions, Not Mentors

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 12:00:00 -0400

Instead of adding a mentor or more Twitter followers this fall, women need someone far more powerful for their career if they want to succeed: a sponsor.

As a ticket to the top, a sponsor will work equally well whether you’re climbing the corporate ladder or a working as an entrepreneur, a writer or activist, said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and author of the new book Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor. A sponsor—basically a power broker who will endorse you in closed door meetings and support you in stormy moments—could also be valuable for executives established in their careers.

Women are too passive about finding a sponsor. ”Women have twice as many mentors as men, but half as many sponsors,” said Hewlett.

Going Shoeless at Work Could Make You Less Stressed and More Productive

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 16:30:00 -0400

Kick off your shoes and work a while.

Working barefoot may not be mainstream yet, but it’s spread far beyond the street performers, yoga instructors and writers, especially in the summer months. Some librarians and college professors, entrepreneurs and marketing managers wear nothing on their feet. So do some politicians, including British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who removed his shoes during a recent heat wave, much to some Brits’s consternation.

About one in four US companies adopt a casual dress code in the summer months, according to the Society of Human Resource Management, and another 36 percent go with casual year-round. Whether that gives people permission to skip shoes altogether, or just remove them once they’re in their workspace, isn’t clear. It’s difficult to say how many employers allow workers to go barefoot but shoeless staff may feel less stressed and work more productively. There’s a growing movement of adopting a barefoot lifestyle, people who hardly ever don boots or shoes.

“Now there’s a moment: Get out of our shoes,” because they are unhealthy for our feet, said Daniel Howell, a professor of biology at Liberty University who wrote The Barefoot Book in 2010.

“We need to rethink shoes the way we rethought cigarettes,” he said, adding shoes are not as bad as say tobacco on individuals health.

Read more at Quartz.

(Image via Valeriy Lebedev/Shutterstock.com)

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How to Boost Collaboration at Work: Sit at Round Tables

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 12:40:00 -0400

Pre-school teachers have been right all along: sitting in a circle is the best way to encourage sharing, even among 30- or 50-year old professionals.

The round table approach may work to foster collaboration for corporate boards, at workplace meetings or at restaurants, new research from two Canadian business school professors shows. By contrast, those who sit in an angular arrangement—think Donald Trump’s The Apprentice—display more maverick, self-centered attitudes.

The research is applicable to situations where communication matters, from family gatherings to restaurants and airports, according to Juliet Zhu, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.

In the study, about 350 undergraduates were asked to sit down in one of seven chairs and evaluate advertisements and other things. Those who sat in a circle reacted favorably to ads that showed groups of friends or family members, and conveyed a sense of belonging. Those sitting in rectangular formations favored ads portraying go-getters and cutthroats.

More than 40 Percent of Managers That Are Sent Abroad Fail

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 13:00:00 -0400

Getting a job placement overseas sounds like a dream until it’s not.

The failure rate of expatriates is amazingly high, and experts blame a lack of corporate support and an abundance of family issues.

Some 42% of overseas assignments are judged to be failures by senior executives in a new Right Management survey. That ratio is consistent whether the manager is leaving a company based in Asia, Europe or North America. Executives used their internal targets or perspectives in judging the ex-pat assignment a success or failure. These include whether the worker hit her sales targets or returned early.

“You would think in the globalization of business, of workforce of talent mobility that clearly is at its peak today that companies would smartly invest and think and plan on how to do this,” said Bram Lowsky, group executive vice president for Right Management in Toronto.

The Shorter Your First Name, the Bigger Your Paycheck

Vickie Elmer, Quartz — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:00:00 -0400

Shorten it to Bill, Bob, Marc or a Cindy, if you want to work in the executive suite.

That’s the messages from a new study by TheLadders, an online job matching site, which says every extra letter in a person’s first name may reduce her annual salary by $3,600.

Since short and sweet may equal a bigger salary, the Christophers of the world who want to raise their net worths may want to change their professional designation to Chris, TheLadders’ Amanda Augustine said. That may work well for those who go from Michelle to Michele.

TheLadders tested 24 pairs of names—Steve and Stephen, Bill and William, and Sara and Sarah, and in all but one case those with shorter names earned higher pay. (The exception: Larry and Lawrence, where the longer moniker made more money.) Its research is based on finding a linear trend in data from 6 million members, with 3.4% of them in CEO or other C-level jobs.

It found that eight of the 10 top names for male C-suite jobs had five letters or fewer, and that that group earned on average 10% more than others in similar jobs. The most popular names: Bob, Lawrence and Bill.

For a CEO, going with a nickname may make you more approachable and “more human,” said John L. Cotton, a professor of management at Marquette University who has studied the perception of names in hiring. “They can be overly impressive, overly intimidating” and a nickname may reduce that.

Though Cotton said he’s somewhat suspicious of TheLadders findings since it’s not a “typical sample.”

“I don’t think you can pick a name to get more money, but you can pick a name to get less money,” he said. Unusual names such as Apple or Moonbeam and names that sound African American such as Tyronne, Jamal and Latoya were not viewed as positively in the Marquette professors research compared to more common names like John and Susan.

In 2011, LinkedIn reported that American CEOs do often have short names, or nicknames like Peter, Jack or Tony. Elsewhere longer names landed the power position and paychecks: in Europe Wolfgang, Xavier and Charles were among top CEO names and Roberto and Rajiv made the final decisions in Brazil and India. TheLadders’ research is based on US members, though many of them come from all over the world, a spokeswoman said.