For freelancers and self-employed consultants, managing meetings is also an art. Full-time professionals get into habits of meetings regularly. They even do check-in meetings where all team members exchange updates about their latest strand of work. This apparently works well for full-timers as they simply need to hop on to the next room but for those working remotely as is the case with independent consultants, this practice is unfeasible due to the major travel time considerations. In fact, constant meetings do not serve even fulltime professionals much benefit but at least the loss is lower as no travel time gets involved. There are broadly two kinds of meetings- “manager meetings” and “maker meetings”. The former is a tightly packed schedule of several meetings one after another while the latter facilitates unstructured creative time to work on business innovations. A freelancer needs to do both, so must insist on the agenda of the meeting before agreeing to any. It is advisable to have one to three meeting days in a week where all such interactions can be done away with. The locations must be chosen accordingly to optimize time. As those few days will involve several back-to-back meetings, in order to avoid fatigue, clear templates must be set in place to prioritize the topics.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/03/scheduling-meetings-effectively-when-youre-self-employed?referral=00203&utm_source=newsletter_management_tip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tip_date&spMailingID=17564017&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1042302188&spReportId=MTA0MjMwMjE4OAS2

Uploaded Date:05/07/2017

As per a study conducted by JLL, it has been found out that the workforce in France and Japan are the least engaged on average while those in the USA and India have the best rates. Nearly ninety percent of those surveyed responded that they would prefer a workplace with a dedicated role towards employees’ happiness. This designation is known as the Chief Happiness Officer. Professionals no longer crave just the security of a job and the compensation, instead they want engagement and collaboration at work. Majority of respondents also claimed that games were unnecessary, instead dedicated space for employees to work together on business innovations was a more productive method of raising engagement levels. This trend is particularly true for the millennial generation under age of thirty-five. In spite of the surge towards a startup culture, majority of employees wanted to get attached to large firms or brands.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/bisnow/2017/06/20/chief-happiness-officer-sounds-like-a-bad-sitcom-title-but-its-what-your-workers-want/#327f404e31be

Uploaded Date:05/07/2017

Automation is seen as a major threat to jobs in the future with its repercussions already started to get felt. There are a lot of jobs in the US today which do not pay well or offer much dignity with unpredictable schedules. These jobs however could transform into the good jobs in the future depending on conditions. An example of this could be retail jobs as that is a line requiring a lot of communications and dealing with people, skills difficult to be replicated by machines. Automation could end up serving customers, employees and investors better if used in the right manner. For this specific skill building needs to take place. Spanish retailer Mercadona for example leverages employees’ inherent creativity to suggest improvements in packaging, transportation and product features. At another retailer, Costco, an algorithm has been developed that provides business intelligence on storing. This utilizes employees’ critical thinking and problem solving abilities for future proofing. Automation may also be seen as complementary to human abilities and not a challenge as evidenced by the game of chess where combined teams involving humans and computers tend to outsmart pure computer driven teams. Deliberate corporate training needs to be provided to employees so that they are ready to implement new technologies at the workplace. This is what Home Depot got wrong as they only invested on the technology part but ignored the human part that Mercadona successfully did.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/06/transforming-todays-bad-jobs-into-tomorrows-good-jobs?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date&spMailingID=17437754&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1040925860&spReportId=MTA0MDkyNTg2MAS2

Uploaded Date:01/07/2017

Information overload is a constant right now. Newsfeeds and emails clog up the human brain, but the best of professionals have evolved ways to manage this deluge. Some such methods have been listed down. A mental vacuum cleaner needs to be put in place so that the default mode can be changed to suit present, most critical of needs. Even un-focus breaks help at such times. A filter on a container is also helpful as it weeds of unnecessary short term information. The concept of Too Much Information (TMI) leads to reactive filtering but a more proactive approach is needed. The brain must also mend disparate data to connect the data and develop meaningful innovations. It must process something of data warehousing by cementing relevant memories. A garbage disposal is also needed to weed out items that need to be forgotten, yet the brain normally refuses to. This is particularly troubling as one gets older. Another important task the brain should be able to process is recycling. Frequent exercise such as yoga can prove to be the stimulus the brain requires as it takes up a fifth of the body’s energy in spite of only using a mere two percent of the its volume.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/06/the-ways-your-brain-manages-overload-and-how-to-improve-them?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

Uploaded Date:01/07/2017