Several years ago, I was summoned to a meeting with three of my editors. At the time, I was working in a satellite office and I had little idea of what was going on at the main office. But when my boss, her boss and his boss called me to a meeting, I knew it wasn't good. They set up a meeting at a restaurant and we agreed to meet there at noon. All I ... [full story]

A healthy workplace requires that mutual respect exist between management and the individuals doing the work. Productivity, efficiency and profitability depend on that respect. Yet, sometimes, mutual respect is forgotten. That seems to be what happened at the Orange County Register when the newspaper's editor circulated a memo in early August that layoffs were imminent. The memo documents the business challenges the Southern California newspaper is having in hanging on to readers and advertising dollars. ... [full story]

It seemed like only moments after a Madison Square Garden got slapped by a New York jury with an $11.6 million penalty for sexual harassment that two more women decided to sue the company. Ah, obviously gold diggers. They sense the easy prey and are swooping down. Not so fast. If you know anything about sexual harassment complaints in the workplace, you know that things often are pretty out of control before they are filed. ... [full story]

Good news is surfacing on the future of the American labor force. The national average ACT composite test score increased this year for the third time in the past five years and the percentage of high school graduates ready for college-level course work continued to grow as well. The Iowa testing company said scores for graduating high school students improved on all four required subjects - English, mathematics, reading and science. "These upward trends show ... [full story]

Some co-workers in the office were just talking about their 401(k) investments and how much money they had lost in the stock market's recent upheaval. I listened to what these educated and intelligent people were saying and my jaw dropped. I realized how little they knew about investing. I shouldn't have been surprised by that. When it comes to financial literacy, the citizenry of the world's biggest economic engine seems to know very little. Although ... [full story]

I agreed to have a cup of coffee with Larry because he said he was desperate and convinced I could help him. Larry was frustrated in his job search and even though I told him I don't find people jobs, nor do I have special expertise in that field. Nevertheless, he sounded like he really needed help. "I haven't been able to find a job in a year and a half," Larry started out the ... [full story]

A lesbian gets disillusioned because her company offers pet insurance - even for unusual pets such as pigs, rats and snakes - but doesn't offer same sex domestic partner benefits. A female Asian attorney makes a typo and listens as her supervisor tells her, "There is an English problem here." The manager of a Latina information technology worker tells his employee that she is "too ethnic looking to be taken seriously." These things happen every ... [full story]

If I ever get the point where I believe my job was a dead end - that I could do nothing to succeed no matter how hard I tried - I would quit. I would go find another job or figure out a way to create my own business or career opportunity. Women apparently feel the same way. Every year, you read about the swelling ranks of female entrepreneurs and women who take jobs as ... [full story]

Everyone seems to know someone who can walk into their workplace, disrupt it, create turmoil and calmly walk away while the blood pressure of others soars. Often the perpetrator has no idea of the problems he or she has created, or the long-term damage that results from that. Now, think about that disruptive individual, and instead of thinking of them as a person, think of them as a company. The inability of companies to understand ... [full story]

Nobody will be surprised to learn that American companies are less likely to provide fixed-rate pensions to their workers today than in the past. Everyone knows this has been a trend for the past three decades and that more companies are supporting worker retirements by contributing to 401(k) savings plans. Seems like a bit of a wash on the surface. But not without risks. The Employee Benefit Research Institute recently said that only four in ... [full story]

Nobody likes a quitter, but why do companies keep hiring them? That's one of the questions industrial-organizational psychologist Ryan Zimmerman has been asking himself lately. Zimmerman, a management professor at Texas A&M University, has been studying employee turnover and the personalities of workers, and discovered that some people are more likely to quit their jobs while others are likely to remain employed. "There is proven research that shows certain people are more likely to be ... [full story]

Every year about this time, people look at hiring forecasts for college graduates as a measure of how well the economy is doing. This spring, the National Association of Colleges and Employers reported that the number ofcollege graduates being hired is soaring. Its most recent study claims that employers will hire 19.2 percent more college grads than last year. Things must be booming. But don't get excited just yet. There are reasons for this hiring ... [full story]

OK, maybe you didn't just discover a magic lantern with a genie in it, but we're still going to give you five wishes for your job in the new year. You can ask for whatever you want and you're probably going to be granted all five of your wishes. What do you ask for? That's probably a tougher question than it seems at first. I'm sure most of us would immediately ask for a substantial ... [full story]