Business – Page 3 – Impact Lab

Business, Coronavirus, Employment, Life Skills, Science & Technology News

6 secrets to getting hired during an economic downturn

August 14, 2020

Challenging economic circumstances should not dash your hopes to landing a job. Stick to these tips to catch a hirer’s eye during widespread uncertainty.

Unemployment is at an all-time high and right now, it’s harder to get hired than years and decades past. But all hope is not lost. There are ways to get noticed and separate yourself, and to get the job, even when job openings are scarce.

First, consider these encouraging statistics: According to a recent study by SHRM (the Society for Human resource Management), among 2,278 members, 17% of employers were expanding their businesses and 13% were hiring. In addition, according to its annual global CEO survey, PwC found 74% of CEOs are concerned about the availability of skills in their respective workforces.

The bottom line: Companies need great employees with strong skills to grow their businesses. Particularly those who are unafraid to take an unconventional and bold approach.

So how can you get hired when it seems no one is hiring? Establishing a strong start to your process is key, along with finding the best ways to leverage your network, your creativity, and your distinctive skill sets.

Here are six ways to get hired during an economic downturn.

Continue reading… “6 secrets to getting hired during an economic downturn”

Business, Current Events, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Why you need to plan for failure as much as you do success

August 1, 2020

Many champion a company’s ability to overcome failure. But how often do you recognize the need to build failure into your business plan?

There’s rarely a straight path from Point A to Point B, as any business owner will tell you. Creating a strong, marketable app might take three iterations and a major pivot between the second and third. Becoming the industry leader in customer service likely came on the back of a near-miss PR disaster, when a renewed focus boosted the team’s work.

What’s often missing in this discussion, of course, is the space needed to make those kinds of mistakes. For small-business owners, especially those getting started or struggling to get by, having enough in savings can be the difference between having to close or having another six months, year, or more to keep pursuing their goals.

According to a 2018 study, nearly 40 percent of Americans don’t have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense without selling an item or borrowing money. Even before a pandemic, a looming recession, and rental housing crisis highlighted the problem. In a tight financial spot, how can entrepreneurs avoid the worst while positioning themselves for the best?

Continue reading… “Why you need to plan for failure as much as you do success”

Aviation, Business, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Transportation, Travel

U.S. airlines face end of business travel as they knew it

July 31, 2020

Impact of virus threatens industry’s engine of sales, profit

Road warriors turn to video conferences while CEOs eye budgets.

U.S. passenger totals plummeted more than 95% at the peak of the pandemic-related travel collapse.

U.S. airlines hammered by the catastrophic loss of passengers during the pandemic are confronting a once-unthinkable scenario: that this crisis will obliterate much of the corporate flying they’ve relied on for decades to prop up profits.

“It is likely that business travel will never return to pre-Covid levels,” said Adam Pilarski, senior vice president at Avitas, an aviation consultant. “It is one of those unfortunate cases where the industry will be permanently impaired and what we lost now is gone, never to come back.”

Continue reading… “U.S. airlines face end of business travel as they knew it”

Analysis, Business, Coronavirus, Hot Issues, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

This is what chief economists think about the global economy right now

July 29, 2020

Successfully rebuilding the economy will be about far more than growth.

The World Economic Forum’s latest Chief Economists Outlook asks 40 chief economists for their views on the post-pandemic recovery.

It identifies three key emerging challenges facing governments and business leaders.

The crisis has made inequality worse – but it also provides unique opportunities to address it.

We need to broaden the set of targets we use to define success as we rebuild the global economy after the pandemic.

That view is among the insights from the World Economic Forum’s latest Chief Economists Outlook – Emerging Pathways Towards a Post-COVID-19 Reset and Recovery. For the report, the Forum asked its community of nearly 40 leading chief economists to assess the current economic outlook and consider how business leaders and policymakers need to respond.

Continue reading… “This is what chief economists think about the global economy right now”

Business, Science & Technology News, Shopping, Trending

DoorDash inks deal with Walgreens to provide over-the-counter medicine and snack deliveries

July 27, 2020

Walgreens signed a similar deal with Postmates in April

DoorDash announced that it’s introducing on-demand delivery services from Walgreens to provide “everyday essentials” to your doorstep. Customers in Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver can now order over 2,300 items from the pharmacy chain, including over-the-counter medication, groceries, snacks, and beauty products. DoorDash and Walgreens did not mention whether users can also have their prescription medication delivered, so you’ll probably still need to go to the store for that.

Continue reading… “DoorDash inks deal with Walgreens to provide over-the-counter medicine and snack deliveries”

Business, Coronavirus, Future, Science & Technology News, Trending

The future of commerce belongs to the frictionless

July 8, 2020

Striving for a frictionless experience for your customers, employees, suppliers, or other stakeholders isn’t just something that the digital era has enabled you to do. At this point, it’s a requirement.

The businesses that will survive after the pandemic are the ones who give us back our time.

FOR A MINUTE there, at the start of the global lockdown, it seemed to be an open question: Would we all be able to get everything we needed delivered? Three months in, while nobody’s getting two-day deliveries anymore, it does seem as if Amazon alone might be able to provide almost all of us with our commodity needs.

Way back before Jeff Bezos began delivering almost everything to everyone, there was another open question: Was ordering just a few things at a time from Amazon bad for the environment? The answer is a little surprising. While it’s obviously more wasteful and damaging to place several small orders as opposed to fewer larger ones, it’s also obvious that having Amazon deliver everything to everyone is a more sustainable option than going to the store ourselves.

Continue reading… “The future of commerce belongs to the frictionless”

2020 Predictions, Big Problems, Business, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News

Which jobs are coming back first? Which may never return?

June 29, 2020

Job postings in the beauty and wellness category rebounded at the job-listing behemoth Indeed.

A snapshot of who’s hiring now, plus a warning about employment predictions in an unknown COVID-19 recovery.

America’s job market added 2.5 million new jobs in May, as the economy began to wake up from what one economist called a “medically induced coma.” The new jobs are clustered in people-facing companies that have started to hire back workers they’d furloughed, so in reality many aren’t so new. We’re talking about places like bars and restaurants, hair salons, medical offices and car dealerships.

Spot a trend? Yep, it’s the service sector, the heart of the modern American economy and the epicenter of the recent jobs earthquake. A record 20.5 million jobs evaporated in April, some losses coming in surprising areas like nursing. We’re in a unique recession, prompted not by a housing bust or a market crash, but a virus with an unpredictable course. Sure, we have data from the 1918 flu pandemic, but it’s of limited utility for projecting jobs in e-sports or Starbucks. To be sure, jobs are growing right now in key spots we highlight below, but beware of forecasting too far out. As one economic expert warns us, don’t rely on economic experts. “The leading economic indicator is the virus,” energy scholar Sarah Ladislaw told us weeks ago.

Continue reading… “Which jobs are coming back first? Which may never return?”

Business, Coronavirus, Employment, Science & Technology News

The work-from-anywhere era changes everything about compensation

June 28, 2020

The work-from-anywhere era changes everything about compensation

Companies that say they’ll let people work where they want have yet to figure out what that means for pay. Here are the questions that need answering.

Some of the tech industry’s giants have been dealt a giant blow by the COVID-19 crisis, laying off thousands of employees in San Francisco in recent weeks. These companies—and many others—are now looking at a future that includes moving entirely remote, or shifting to a hybrid policy in which employees are in the office only on certain days.

Employee compensation is a company’s largest operational expense. Yet those announcing new remote work policies have yet to reconcile how the new rules impact compensation in the long term. Though some companies, such as Facebook, have already announced their intention to pay different rates for employees working outside an office, most have been holding back on making that decision. But once the dust settles and many or most employees have moved off-site, employers will be looking at shifting pay policies while employees reconcile how this affects their paychecks and plans.

Continue reading… “The work-from-anywhere era changes everything about compensation”

Business, Coronavirus, Employment, Science & Technology News

Survey: 49% of remote workers report a drop in productivity

June 25, 2020

Distractions at home and difficulty communicating with colleagues during the pandemic contribute to output declines, according to Globant.

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused companies to make the sudden and drastic shift to remote work, something had to give, and for US employees surveyed by Globant, that something was productivity.

Globant, a digital transformation company, surveyed 900 US senior-manager level and below employees in April and found that nearly half (49%) said they had decreased output, according to its report released this week.

Distractions from the home environment and difficulty communicating with colleagues were the top two contributors to decreased productivity, Globant found.

Continue reading… “Survey: 49% of remote workers report a drop in productivity”

Business, City Planning, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Shopping

How an Exodus from cities will reshape retail

June 22, 2020

The work-from-anywhere revolution will accelerate the coming of a post-digital age for shopping, argues Doug Stephens of Retail Prophet.

Throughout history, cities have played a central role in the evolution of retail. From the grand bazaars of ancient times to the opulent department stores of the 1800s to the venture-backed start-ups of the 2000s, cities have offered the stage, the audience, and ultimately, the financial prosperity to power retail through the ages.

But in major developed economies like the United States, we are set to see an outbound migration from cities the likes of which we have not experienced since the 1950s. Just as the IBMs and Microsofts of the world did 40 years ago, migrating to the boundlessness of the suburbs, today’s corporate giants are rethinking location once again, except this time encouraging their employees to live and work wherever they like.

On May 21st, Facebook announced that it would give its employees not only the freedom to work from home permanently, but also to spin a globe and point to wherever they’d like “home” to be. Mark Zuckerberg told The Verge, “We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale… I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently.” That same day, Shopify and Twitter both made similar announcements. Shopify founder and CEO Tobias Lütke said he expects most of the company’s employees to choose the work from home option, adding: “The choice is really, are we passengers on this tidal wave of change? Or do we jump in the driver’s seat and try to figure out how to build a global world-class company by not getting together that often?”

Continue reading… “How an Exodus from cities will reshape retail”

Business, Coronavirus, Health & Fitness, Robots, Science & Technology News

The most intimate areas of your vacation will be deep-cleaned by a freaky robot

June 22, 2020

Hotels, planes, and restaurants want your dollars back. Here are some of their plans to make it safe.

It’s something we look forward to all year: summer vacation. This time-honored tradition is an opportunity to get away from the stress of our daily lives and see new places, dip our toes in cool waters, or simply tune out the rest of the world for a few days. But this year, the continuing threat of Covid-19 has thrown that grand tradition for a loop, threatening to cancel it like a pool with bad pH levels.

And it’s not just wannabe-tourists who are suffering the loss of their vacations. As a result of Covid-19, 4 million people in the hospitality industry have lost their jobs. More than $21 billion in revenue has also been lost.

The question of “Is it safe to travel this summer?” is on the minds of many, and while there isn’t a clear answer yet, freaky googly-eyed robots are here to help us whenever we arrive.

Continue reading… “The most intimate areas of your vacation will be deep-cleaned by a freaky robot”

2020 Predictions, Business, Coronavirus, Employment, Science & Technology News

Why the office simply cannot go away : The compelling case for the workplace

June 20, 2020

The office is critical now for engagement, innovation and experience–and cannot go away.

We’re in the midst of the most significant reinvention of work in our time. We’ve proven people can work anywhere and the greatest social experiment—sending everyone home to do their work—has decimated barriers to working away from the office.

Some contend people are working with a reasonable level of productivity from home. And this is during arguably the worst-case situation for remote work: Being forced to work from home without choice, experiencing stress about the pandemic, sharing space with spouses or partners who are furloughed or also trying to work from home and finding time to educate children who would normally be at school—all of these create challenging conditions. Even so, people are getting work done—and could probably perform even better from home when the coronavirus abates, children go back to school and employees can return to a more typical way of life.

Continue reading… “Why the office simply cannot go away : The compelling case for the workplace”