Category: great places to work

Will women stay in the workplace?

Sarat PratapchandranLeave a comment

The lines have been blurred between work and home for most women, especially working mothers since the pandemic began early last year. According to the “Women in the workplace 2020” report by McKinsey, nearly 2 million women are considering leaving the workplace, setting back any progress made in employing women by at least 5 years.

For every 100 men promoted as managers only 85 women get promoted and this falls to 58 for black women and 71 for Latina women.

Women now play the role of parent, caregiver, always on employee, teacher and spends 1.5 times more time on housework and children than men. The pandemic has disproportionately affected black women who already had an unequal workplace.

The loss of women leaving the workplace will have detrimental effects on the economies of developed and developing nations. Considering where we are now, this might go on at least until late 2021.

Take challenges headlong: 7 lucky tips to boost efficiency

Sarat PratapchandranLeave a comment

Kristin Romaine runs CO+FOUNDATION , the world’s first coworking space that provides resources for for-profit and nonprofits to work on a shared space. Located in downtown Phoenix, Romaine is charged with securing resources for this vibrant start-up and she practices “fanatic discipline” to take it to the next level. Romaine and her colleague, Kay Transtrum recently shared a few tips that can make us more efficient at work. I’ve used some of these and they will help you get things done and end your day well. They are all free tools for collaboration that we can easily use and I’ve mixed some of my ideas and Romaine’s to offer a few tips for the work week.

  1. Plan your day the night before. Choose 3 major things that you can do well. If you have others, do it after the first three major ones are tackled. Try to do work in increments of 30 minutes.
  2. Follow success guru, Brian Tracy’s “Eat that frog,” concept that will help you prioritize. I’ve tried it and it really works. Here is a video to get you started.
  3. Invest a couple of minutes between major tasks to play some Web games. Play small games for a couple of minutes and this will interrupt patterns in your brain and help you work efficiently. A friend’s company encourages employees to play ping pong inside the office to get them distracted amid tough projects and tight deadlines. Find something that will work within your space and it does not need to be fancy.
  4. Use Boomerang from GMail to schedule your emails. According to Romaine, the basic service from Boomerang will help you schedule a sizeable number of emails at different times of the day. This will help you work on them at your leisure and have them go to different constituents at different times. The tip here is to use your downtime to take care of emails that you can easily schedule.
  5. Use Google Keep to calendar your tasks and priorities. It is easy to use, free and very intuitive.
  6. Meditate for ten minutes, twice daily. This will help you get refocused and take on challenging tasks with ease. This will also offer you good ideas to deal with conflict and manage people better.
  7. End your day thinking about impact and on a positive note. Romaine and her colleagues follow their own rule: #LDTNMW (Let’s Do It No Matter What).Think of how much your work has moved your organization forward and let’s do it no matter what!