Over the past decade, how has the population of the ten largest counties changed compared with the rest of the country?
Should All High School Students Have Part-Time Jobs?
What can teenagers learn from working?
Little Amal
Do you know what this image shows? What do you think of its message?
Lesson Plan: TikTok’s ‘Corn Kid’ and Viral Audio Memes
In this lesson, students will learn about Tariq, the 7-year-old TikTok sensation also known as Corn Kid. Then they’ll investigate what makes songs like “It’s Corn” so addictive.
International Week of Happiness at Work
We all want to be happy. Not just at home, but at work too. We spend hours at work so it’s only right that you experience happiness as much as possible. Happiness and creating happy work environments make for happier employees. This spills out into other areas of your life and as the saying goes, “happy employee; happy life”. Or something like that. The last week of September celebrates ‘International Week of Happiness at Work’. We’re going to show you why it’s vital and how you can work towards achieving happiness at work.
What is International Week of Happiness at Work?
International Week of Happiness at Work is a week dedicated to making efforts to make the workplace a happy place. This week is aimed at raising awareness about the importance of being happy at work and how it affects each one of us. Happy employees play a big role in how well a company performs and its output. This is true regardless of whether you work for a boutique company, family business, or large conglomerate. With so much time spent at work, it’s essential to cultivate a happy office environment for yourself and those around you.
Why You Should Celebrate International Week of Happiness at Work
We live in a culture that drives the “all work and no play” philosophy. We work. Get a side hustle. Pull long hours. And work overtime. It’s admirable and in exchange, we can live comfortable lives. This constant state pushes us mentally and physically – often to our own detriment and unhappiness.
Benefits of a Happy Workforce
It’s impossible for everyone to be happy all the time. Life and work have its challenges that can get you down at times. But it can be the exception. Happy employees make better employees. Here’s how investing in workplace happiness will give you a positive ROI:
- Increased productivity
- Optimistic thoughts and feelings about the organisation. Your employees will go the extra mile to help the company achieve its goals.
- Positive effects on mental health which results in less nonattendance
- Engaged staff. This means they’re invested in projects and tasks at work and willing to give time and energy to them – over and above mandatory
- A happy workforce will also result in a low staff turnover.
The commitment to happiness at work has been gaining prominence in recent years. Employers have come to realise its value and consequently, make efforts to foster a happy work environment. Happy employees are great for business.
5 Ways to Celebrate International Week of Happiness at Work
Happiness at work is not solely the task of an organisation. It’s a shared responsibility that everyone can contribute to. There are things you can commit to doing daily, weekly, and monthly to help you get to your happy place. We’ve put together a list of things you can do to kickstart happiness:
What A Company Can Do to Nourish Happiness at Work
- Have work events. Employees need to know that they just aren’t work-horses but are seen and valued as individuals too. Organise events to celebrate occasions, birthdays, holidays, engagements, graduations, and so on. This helps foster team morale and workplace engagement, which both contribute to workplace happiness.
- Provide feedback. When you give your employees constructive feedback, they know what areas to focus on and improve. The feedback and suggestions also make your team feel acknowledged and appreciated and ultimately, a happier workforce.
- Host after-work drinks or games. This will help strengthen relationships which will in turn allow people to loosen up. If your staff work remotely, let your team knock off 30 minutes early on Friday (provided all work has been completed).
- Host a webinar. Invite a guest speaker to give an inspirational talk about how to adopt mental and physical wellbeing.
- Send out a survey. Whether email, a box employee can slip in ideas anonymously or another method. And be open to receiving feedback from staff about ways the organisation can instil practices to ensure a happy workplace culture.
What You Can Do to be Happy
When you’re happy at work, you’re well on your way to having a healthy work-life balance.
- Help someone. There’s a proverb that says, “It’s better to give than receive.” Research supports this and shows that when you help others, it can help your self-confidence and boost your level of happiness.
- Set goals. Focus and prioritise your goals and tasks. This will help reduce your stress levels, which can add to feeling unhappy.
- Socialise. Have lunch with your workmates away from your desk.
- Take breaks. Long work hours can take their toll on you, both mentally and physically. It’s important to take regular breaks during the workday. Also take your annual vacation to rest, recharge, and feel rejuvenated. A rested mind, body, and soul lead to happiness.
- Invest in yourself. Study further if you want to advance at work. Exercise. Practice mindfulness and maintain a healthy and nutritious diet.
Happiness is an inside job that cannot be placed in the hands of someone else. Happiness is also not a destination, but a journey. Be intentional about cultivating a happy life – at home and at work. As the late Steve Jobs once said, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” That just may be where we can find the seeds of happiness.
Word of the Day: tectonic
This word has appeared in 75 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
Saul Kripke, Philosopher Who Found Truths in Semantics, Dies at 81
He published a landmark work at 32. Known for lecturing extemporaneously for hours without notes, he dazzled colleagues with the breadth of his ruminations.
Vocabulary in Context: Gen Z At Work
Ms. Ross, who identifies as L.G.B.T.Q., couldn’t imagine working a job that required her to downplay her identity or her skills, which is why she was thrilled when Legoland New York Resort, a theme park in Goshen, N.Y., hired her to be its first female master builder. Ms. Ross has been given wide to use Lego bricks to create miniature cities throughout the park, drawing on her artistic side and her desire to promote diversity and inclusion.
How Often Do You Text Your Friends Just to Say ‘Hi’?
New research suggests casual check-ins might mean more than we realize. Do you underestimate how much your friends would like hearing from you?
Finding Top Talent Outside of the Traditional Candidate Pool
By Leah Belsky, Chief Enterprise Officer at Coursera
Learning and technology leaders face greater challenges than ever. Global talent shortages have made it more difficult to hire employees, and the pressure building up as global economic activity weakens means leaders must rethink how they source the critical skills they need to sustain business growth and transformation.
A key part of the solution will be thinking outside the box, tapping into internal talent, and sourcing skills from non-traditional hiring pools.
Unleashing internal talent and untapping frontline teams
‘Talent matching’ is the bedrock of successful reskilling. It entails aligning existing talent with the skill gaps that need to be plugged in a way that creates the most value for the business. An effective talent matching process can be one of the biggest challenges leaders face.
But even before thinking about ‘talent matching’, organizations are challenged by not having enough talent to match in the first place. With economic uncertainty on the horizon, the urgency to drive competitiveness is only growing. Yet combined with a shrinking labor supply, this is leaving organizations worried that there aren’t enough people to accomplish the work at hand. Executives are wondering: Can we turn the “Great Attrition” into the “Great Attraction”?
For that reason, alongside recognizing where gaps are located and understanding that a talent-matching strategy can help address their issues, leaders need to explore how they can widen the pool of candidates for reskilling and upskilling programs.
Engaging frontline workers—which represent 80% of the world’s workforce—is one way to do this.
Too often these employees are in insecure roles which are overlooked for development. This is despite their clear motivation to grow and develop—70 percent have applied for career advancement opportunities with either current employers or different companies.
New Way
What if you could quickly and efficiently build career pathways for workers, and become the employer where everyone wants to work? What if, rather than worrying about how to hire employees externally, you could help the business perform in the long run with a stable headcount and improved morale—by creating a virtuous circle of internal talent sourcing that have the right technical skills? What if you could rapidly reskill existing talent for ten times less cost and in one-sixteenth of the time of traditional degree programs?
We have the answer. Targeted learning programs like Career Academy on Coursera can embrace the enthusiasm of frontline workers, enable businesses to plug skill gaps, and empower employees with growth opportunities, a win-win for businesses and staff.
Career Academy on Coursera is a new career training academy that enables any business to give employees—even those with no college degree or prior work experience—the opportunity to learn the skills to enter a high-demand, entry-level digital job. Created by the world’s leading companies and industry experts, Career Academy enables learners to explore careers, develop knowledge and skills, build a portfolio of hands-on projects using tools of the trade, and earn credentials to land good jobs.
Executing a better approach to workplace reskilling and upskilling
The skills shortage is limiting every organization’s ability to succeed. Instead of seeking to hire employees externally, we should recognize the opportunity to untap skills elsewhere. It’s time to think big and embrace new ways of sourcing the talent that underpins successful businesses. That should begin with your internal, and particularly, non-traditional talent pools.
This is just one example of how you can revitalize your talent strategies. If you’re ready to discover the full potential of workplace learning, download our full new e-book ‘Evolving Your Talent Strategy: The Urgent Need for Workplace Learning—and How to Execute on It’ now.
