This Week
A new report from McKinsey Global reveals the future of America’s workforce — Forbes explores the 2017 state of AI — SHRM provides 5 unique interview questions that can really help you select the best candidate for your company — Entrepreneur posted an infograph that will help you end your day well – and, we bring you a classic video from WS Inet about the ‘if onlys’ of work.
Trends
McKinsey Global Institute reports that Making it in America is becoming increasingly difficult for some wage earners. There is a growing gap between workers whose incomes support an improving standard of living and those who barely get by. The report further indicates that U.S. manufacturers have lost their competitive edge. The report makes recommendations that include a focus on reinvesting, retraining, removing barriers, and re-imagining work to turn this tide.
Forbes posted the ‘State of AI in 2017,’ another McKinsey report that reveals the companies and investments shaping the artificial intelligence disruption. Nearly 90% of this 20-30 billion industry is being spent on Research & Development for things like driverless cars (BMW, Toyota, Tesla), virtual sales agents (Salesforce), and speech recognition (Amazon). The race is for patents and intellectual property rights at the moment, and High Tech, Financial Services, and Telecomm are the sectors investing most heavily.
HR
SHRM’s 5 Unique Interview Questions provides real help for getting beyond qualifications questions into an applicant’s real personality so you can make better judgments as to whether or not they’ll fit well into your company culture. The 5 questions focus on ‘self-awareness’ and ‘caring for others’; together, they add a dimension to interviews that can improve the quality of your hires.
Benefits
SHRM’s Why Employers Should Care Retirement Plans are Leaking Money presents findings from a recent research study that show company retirement plans are losing money due to employee loans and early withdrawals. These ‘leaks’ are affecting workforce planning and administration fees. Older employees are not able to retire as planned; and, younger employees are not advancing as expected. Smaller plan balances are causing increases in overall plan administration costs, too. The article includes several recommendations that center around education. For example, a chart shows employees how severely withdrawals and loans hurt the ability of their retirement accounts to increase over time – far more than they might expect.
Productivity
Now that you’ve almost reached the end of this article what will you do to finish out your day? Why not try some of the productivity hacks Entrepreneur has listed in its infographic, How to Spend the Last 10 Minutes of Your Work Day. Productivity experts know that how you end the previous day can have a real impact on the productivity of your tomorrow.
But before you go, share a moment of empathy with Jim, Bill and the rest of crew in WS Inet’s video, If Only it Were That Simple. Yeah, if only…
