Workplace trends
Women in Iceland, including the Prime Minister, went on strike
Schools, shops, banks, and Iceland’s famous swimming pools closed last Tuesday as women across the country, including the prime minister, went on strike to end unequal pay and gender-based violence. That day, all-male news teams announced shutdowns within the volcanic island that led to public transport delays, understaffed hospitals, and more. Trade unions, the strike’s main organizers, called on women and nonbinary people to refuse any paid and unpaid work, including household errands and child care. Interestingly, while for the last 14 years, Iceland has been ranked as the world’s most gender-equal country by the World Economic Forum, the pay gap between the median earnings of women relative to the median earnings of men there is 21% – indicating that the world still has a long way to go in achieving gender equality.
The U.S. is funding tech hubs outside of Silicon Valley
The Biden administration has chosen 31 regions – out of roughly 400 applicants – as potential recipients of federal money that would seek to fund technology innovation in new parts of the country. This is part of a larger initiative to establish tech hubs around the U.S. across a variety of cutting-edge industries, like quantum computing, precision medicine, and clean energy. The program is intended to test the idea that science and technology funding should not just be concentrated in Silicon Valley along with a few coastal regions. In the coming months, the selected regions will compete for a share of $500 million, with between five and ten of the projects receiving up to about $75 million each. Advocates of the program say these investments can unlock the potential of large pools of workers and economic resources, while improving America’s economy and technological abilities at the same time.
The AI corner
OpenAI is tripling its valuation in less than six months
OpenAI, maker of generative artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and DALL-E, is in talks to strike a deal involving the sale of employee shares that would boost its value to $80 billion. This would bring the company’s valuation to triple what it was in January, and position OpenAI as the third most valuable private company in the world. OpenAI would also become the most valuable startup in San Francisco, as many race to integrate artificial intelligence into their products. OpenAI has been in talks with investors to sell $1 billion worth of employee shares, per the Financial Times, which would enable employees to cash in on the company’s success and help OpenAI compete for top engineering talent.
AI didn’t lift tech stocks like Meta as much as expected
Investors are concerned that artificial intelligence isn’t propelling tech stocks as much as expected. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell to a five-month low last week on the back of a steep sell-off in Alphabet, Google’s parent company – which saw its worst one-day drop since early 2020 – after it reported lackluster results in the cloud computing customers use to power AI initiatives. While Meta reported impressive second quarter earnings, driven by healthy ad sales, user growth with Threads – its new entrant in the war with X (formerly Twitter), and steep cost cuts, its stock still went down amid investor fears that the ad business faces a slowdown. Additionally, the company’s “year of efficiency” appears to be ending as Meta prepares to hire more engineers, particularly those with AI. expertise. Experts remain uncertain as to how investors will react this the end of cost-cutting to focus on AI.
When and how to give promotions - part 2
By monday.com
Last week’s newsletter unpacked when it’s time to hand out promotions, so this week is all about how to give promotions.
The way in which you go about promoting an employee can significantly influence their sense of loyalty as well as how the rest of your team reacts. In fact, according to research by Harvard Business Review, when employees believe promotions are managed effectively, they’re more than twice as likely to give extra effort at work and to plan a long-term future with their company.
Unfortunately, the reverse is true as well – when not handled the right way, promotions can drive greater turnover and resentment. In a recent ADP research study, 29% of workers left within the first month of receiving a promotion.
That’s why, beyond getting necessary approvals and budget allotments, when you plan to promote a team member, it’s essential to be thoughtful about your approach and delivery.
So, what’s the right approach to employee promotions?
Get input from others
While your experience working with and managing your employees should weigh heavily on your decisions to promote them, it’s essential to do some digging in order to understand how others feel about them as well. Without being too direct, make space for your team members to share feedback about their team members – both good and bad. For example, after you know a few of your employees collaborated on a project, be sure to ask about how it felt working with the others on your team. By embedding this practice into your general check-ins, you can start to gather insights into each of your team members that should certainly be factored in when considering promotions. If there seems to be agreement that a certain employee is an excellent colleague and a pleasure to work with, it’s a great indication that your team would be receptive to and supportive of their advancement.
Come prepared
When you announce a team member’s promotion, make sure to come prepared with some of the reasoning that led to the decision. Emphasize the employee’s growth and impact in order to convey the kinds of skills and behaviors that are valued and to demonstrate how hard work and leadership skills are rewarded within your team. Additionally, even if there’s agreement that the individual is deserving of their promotion, your team members may still be wondering what it means for them and their own career paths. So, knowing that other employees who are seeking promotions may have questions after the fact, it’s important to feel ready to provide thoughtful and useful answers. If there’s lingering confusion about how this decision was reached, it’s a missed opportunity to set a positive standard and motivate others to work towards their own personal development goals.
On a similar note, when possible, address how this promotion is beneficial for the team and company as a whole by highlighting the needs and gaps that it helps fill. By emphasizing the benefits to the business of this employee taking on additional responsibilities and leadership, you give necessary context to the promotion, which enables others to more easily process the changes and understand why this was the right decision.
Compensate fairly
In order to ensure that employees who receive title bumps don’t turn their heads when enticing senior offers from the outside start to trickle in, you need to make sure their salary increase is aligned with the market rate for their new role. If they could be earning significantly more for the same position elsewhere, you’re less likely to keep them around long-term. While there’s certainly something to be said for the fact that you’re “hiring” them without experience in this more senior position, ultimately if after a few months they could see serious hikes to their compensation for the same role somewhere else, you’ll risk losing them altogether to more appealing offers – so make sure your compensation adjustments are competitive in the market.
Convey a meaningful growth path
In order to increase the likelihood of your star employees, whom you’ve just promoted, wanting to stick around, you need to show them their larger growth path within the organization. Explain how this promotion is the first step in a meaningful career trajectory within your team as well as in the company at large, and emphasize that there are more growth opportunities to come from success in this new role. This effort will help the valued employee picture a real future at your organization and feel more committed, knowing that you have their long-term growth and success in mind.
Encourage team celebrations
A recent survey by Workhuman and Gallup revealed that when workers receive social recognition at their organization, they are 3.7x more likely to be engaged and 55% less likely to seek a new job. So, use internal promotions as an opportunity to celebrate as a team and help your employees feel more connected to one another. This can be as simple as sending a message in the group chat about this exciting promotion and asking others to join you in recognizing the team member’s excellent work, or you can take it a step further by organizing a team gathering to voice appreciation and support. Regardless, frame individual promotions as team wins and try to build a culture in which employees feel empowered to celebrate the successes of their teammates as well to increase that sense of connectedness.
Water cooler chatter
Tinder has added a feature that lets users’ friends and family members weigh in on matches. The new capability aims to make it easy to get other people’s opinions on various contenders and even allows them to recommend potential matches within the app.
The oldest dog ever passed away in Portugal at age 31 (~217 in dog years.) Bobi the guard dog was born on May 11, 1992 and lived on a farm in the village of Conqueiros with his owner and four cats.
Question of the week
Last week’s answer: January
This week’s question: Where is the world’s biggest office building?
Just for laughs
