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When “Made In China” Means Sustainable, Ethical, And Expert

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Les Lunes, a fashion label headquartered in Paris and San Francisco, makes its clothes in a factory in the Qingpu district, on the outskirts of Shanghai. If you happen to drop in on any given weekday, you might find the seamstresses’ children playing in a little nursery set up for them. At lunchtime, workers gather in a sunlit room to eat and chat. Many are close friends, having worked in this factory together for decades. They visit each others’ families during Chinese New Year. When someone is out sick, coworkers stop by that person’s home with hot food. It’s a world away from the typical image–and reality–of factory life in China.

“Unlike other parts in China, where workers migrate from other cities to work in factories, all 50 of our employees come from the village where our factory is located,” says Anna Lecat, Les Lunes’s founder and CEO. Lecat says she checked retention rates and spoke with employees before working with this particular facility. “I know the workers’ spouses and children. This is a community where people are looking out for one another,” she says.

Anna Lecat

Every few months, a new scandal about the bleak working conditions in the Chinese manufacturing industry makes headlines. Foxconn, the Taiwanese company with industrial parks across China, Asia, and Europe that manufactures products for companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell, has become shorthand for the long and grueling hours of modern Chinese factory work, in part because of a spate of suicides at its Shenzhen factories. Just last month, the Washington Post revealed that the factory making Ivanka Trump’s clothing line compels employees to work 57 hours weekly, for just $62 a week, near or below China’s minimum wage.

But Lecat is adamant about showing that this isn’t the only reality inside Chinese factories. After more than two decades inside manufacturing facilities all over the country, Lecat is keen to change the perception that “Made in China” inevitably translates to poorly treated workers and poor-quality products. And she’s not alone. A spate of Western fashion startups that focus on ethical manufacturing–including Grana, Ellie Kai, Everlane, and Caraa–are now shedding light on a new generation of Chinese factories that pay workers fairly, offer pleasant working conditions and reasonable hours, and produce beautifully crafted clothes, shoes, and accessories.

American consumers are increasingly conscious about where their clothing is made and how workers were treated in the process. According to Marshal Cohen, a retail analyst at the NPD Group, shoppers will pay a 10 to 15 percent premium for clothes that were made ethically. Over the last few years, a number of fashion startups have chosen to make their products in the U.S. to offer customers more transparency. It’s a move that dovetails with a larger effort to keep manufacturing back home, amid populist sentiment–exemplified in Brexit and the U.S. election–driven in part by a growing frustration over the loss of manufacturing jobs to overseas workers. Still, as market economics (think of the prices that consumers are willing to pay for their clothes) keep most manufacturing overseas, some companies are making the case that Chinese factories aren’t so bad, and that “made in China” shouldn’t imply “low-quality” or “sweatshop.”

Grana: Huzhou, China Silk Factory [Photo: Igmirien, courtesy of Grana]
Understanding the manufacturing system, and helping to nudge it forward, is far easier when you’re immersed and speak the language, says Lecat. Though originally from the Ukraine, she’s made China her adopted home. She first started learning Mandarin in university in the late ’90s and for the last 32 years, her life has involved traveling between Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the U.S. “If you were to talk to me over the phone, you wouldn’t be able to tell I wasn’t Chinese,” she says. “Learning Mandarin was my ticket out of the Ukraine.”

It was also her ticket into the growing world of China’s smaller, more expert factories. In 2000, Lecat founded a company called Streamline Alliance that connects U.S. brands with artisanal factories in China. Five years ago, she launched a new venture: Les Lunes, a fashion brand that creates elegant outfits out of bamboo fabric, often embellished with lace. “Bamboo comes from China, so I didn’t see the point of moving production somewhere else if we have highly trained seamstresses making product there,” Lecat says.

Over the years, Lecat has always found it easy to locate factories that match her values in Shanghai. She explains that higher-quality manufacturing is sometimes–though not always–tied to better working conditions. In Shanghai, a thriving city, it is harder to find factory workers, so employers must compete for talent: this means offering better salaries and benefits. This leads to lower turnover and, by extension, workers tend to be more experienced at their task. In the case of Les Lunes, this means that the seamstresses are skilled at sewing delicate fabrics and handling complex lacework. “There is a stigma that Chinese manufacturing will inevitably lead to poor quality,” she says. “We battle stigma with beauty.”

Working conditions in Chinese factories have been on an upward trajectory, according to Keegan Elmer, a labor researcher at the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin, an organization that supports workers’ movements in China. But that’s not to say they are universally ethical. “One of the problems with assessing the state of the Chinese factory is that things are very uneven,” Elmer says. “China has some of the biggest high-tech factories in the world that are the opposite of a sweatshop, but might be right next to factories that pay very low wages and give workers very poor food in the canteen.”

Workplace standards can vary by province and region, for instance. Take the Pearl River Delta–home to Shenzhen and Guangzhou, as well as Hong Kong and Macau–which is perhaps the country’s best known manufacturing hub. Back in 1980, Beijing designated the region a special economic zone, providing Chinese entrepreneurs tax incentives to set up factories and inviting foreign investment. Companies from around the world saw an opportunity to take advantage of an inexpensive labor force, and many American and European brands began outsourcing their manufacturing to China. These days, the area accounts for only 5% of the country’s population, but it produces a quarter of its exports and has attracted more than one trillion dollars in foreign investment over the last four decades.

To keep up with this volume of production, Shenzhen’s factory owners depend on the constant flow of workers from nearby regions who leave family farms in search of better opportunities. Most of them work for a short while, then move into the cities in search of higher-paying, less-menial jobs–or else they return to their families with slightly more money in the bank. This culture of short-term migrant workers means that factory owners tend to treat employees as replaceable, so they don’t bother investing in good salaries or pleasant workplaces. And without much training or experience, it’s no surprise that the products that they make tend to be of poor quality.

Les Lunes

Lecat also makes the case that shoddy manufacturing is what some brands are looking for. “That’s what demanded by their buyers,” Lecat says. “Some companies demand planned obsolesce from a factory. They say, ‘Sell me something for one dollar that will break in one year, so my customers come back to replace that product.'” Fast-fashion conglomerates and large discount stores, which have strong buying power, are particularly guilty of this approach, and are able to dictate low prices for these low-quality goods.

But even in Shenzhen, the culture in apparel factories is beginning to change. Many workplaces have become cleaner, safer, and more professional. The work itself tends to be less strenuous and workers tend to work fewer hours. After years of strikes–and after three decades of the one-child policy have limited the size of the working-age population–migrant workers have seen their bargaining power grow slightly, as a better educated and more assertive generation has entered the labor force.

According to Benjamin Cavender, a principal at the China Market Research Group, which advises brands doing business in China, factories are also increasingly automating their production lines, which means fewer labor-intensive tasks for workers. “The market was fairly low-tech, run by small operators,” he explains. “There’s been a hell of a lot of consolidation over the last couple of years. Since most of the smaller factories did not have the margins or the cash to be able to update their operations, they’ve closed down.”

Big international brands are also increasingly applying pressure to factories they partner with to make their buildings more environmentally sound and to ensure workers are treated fairly. “There’s been a push by a lot of the international brands to force the Chinese [manufacturing] companies to clean up their act,” Cavender says. “If you’re Nike, for example, you don’t want to get attacked in the U.S. because consumers are unhappy that you’re being unethical about how you source product.”

The Chinese government has also taken pains to create stronger protections for workers, including written contracts and compensation upon firing. However, according to Elmer, many factories don’t pay workers all the benefits they are legally owed. “There are universal problems even in some of the best factories we see,” he says. “In reality, in many cases, these social insurance is underpaid or unpaid. This regularly leads to worker strikes and protests.”

Of course, fighting for benefits packages is, in some ways, a sign that things are improving. These days, most workers are fighting for a better quality of life and the right to move up the socio-economic ladder, rather than basic workplace safety. Elmer points out that Chinese workers still can’t use working at a factory as a stepping-stone into the middle class. “Wages have been on an upward climb but the cost of living has eaten up all those gains,” he says. “After 20 years of industrialization, the average factory worker can’t hope to buy their own house and settle down in the city.”

When it comes to actual workplace conditions, however, Aaron Luo, the founder of luxury bag brand Caraa, says he’s seen drastic improvement over the course of his own lifetime. Luo’s family has owned factories to the northeast of Shenzhen since the ’80s; 20 years ago, the factory dorms were packed to the gills with workers, but these days, factories generally abide by the rule of having four or fewer workers in each room–generally. “Is China ever going to get to Western standards?” Luo says. “I’ve already seen factories that are up to par with [U.S.] OSHA standards. Who knows how long it will take for all the other factories to get there, but it’s important to note that the government is trying to do something about it.”

This kind of progress is one reason why Liz Hostetter was able to find a charming sewing factory in Shenzhen when she launched her women’s clothing brand, Ellie Kai, five years ago. Hostetter had been living in Hong Kong since 2008–she’d relocated to accommodate her husband’s job–and noticed the thriving tailoring industry in the city. “I’m 5’11” and I couldn’t find anything that fit me,” she says. “I would actually walk into stores and I’m pretty sure [the salespeople] were giggling at the idea that this Amazon would find anything to wear. But then I discovered the city’s tailors.”

Hostetter would regularly take a dress silhouette that was in fashion, then ask her favorite tailor to make tweaks to it: add two inches to the hem, make it sleeveless, add a pink trim, and so on. Hostetter wanted to make a similar service available to American consumers. So she founded Ellie Kai, which allows women to pick from a selection of outfits and fabrics, then customize it to suit their tastes. Products arrive at the customer’s home three weeks after placing the order.

Liz Hostetter

Since Hong Kong is right next to Shenzhen, Hostetter spent months driving across the border in search of the perfect factory partner. She located a workshop in Shenzhen that ordinarily helps brands create sample garments that will eventually be sent to other factories to be made in bulk. Hostetter carefully explained her business plan to the factory owner, enlisting her to create customized clothes for the American market.

She spent day after day at the factory, working closely with the manager and seamstresses, helping to make the production line as efficient as possible. For instance, if several orders come in for a dress in the same size, workers cut those dresses at the same time and fabric is purchased based on real-time demand to avoid waste. In the process, Hostetter got to see the inside of many local factories, and saw the conditions she wanted to avoid. At the facility she’s working with, seamstresses make 50 custom garments a day in a brightly lit, clean, and air-conditioned room and earn a good wage. They work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a two-hour lunch break in the middle.

A year after the business had launched, she and her husband packed up and moved back to their home in Cape Cod. “I would have never thought that one of the more emotional parts about leaving life as an expat was leaving my China team, because I realized we had worked together so closely every day,” she says.

Liz Hostetter and an employee at Ellie Kai’s Shenzhen facility

Bucking A Global Trend

Unfortunately, the movement toward more ethical factories in China does not signal a global trend. Increasingly, Chinese companies are themselves seeking out cheap labor in other parts of Asia and the rest of the world, perpetuating the standards that once ruled in Shenzhen. The collapse of the Rana factory in Bangladesh in 2013, which killed 1,129 people, was a brutal reminder of how low those standards can be.

“The major factory owners in China that have scale–the big guns–have moved all the low-value manufacturing offshore,” Cavender says. “They’ve started buying factories in Vietnam, India, Malaysia, or Sri Lanka. They’re having the cheaper production done there, then reimporting the product back to China to do the high-tech finishing.”

In 2010, China was making 42% of apparel exports and 51% of footwear exports around the world, but those figures have been steadily declining. Meanwhile, developing countries in Southeast Asia have seen an uptick in clothing and shoe manufacturing in that same time frame. While China doesn’t release data about factory relocations, one study showed that then number of factories owned by Hong Kong companies in the wider Shenzhen region fell by a third to 32,000 in 2013, from a 2006 peak. Many of those moved to lower-wage countries.

Hoping to stem the tide of factory relocations to other parts of Asia, the Chinese government has also started to offer subsidies for companies to move to other regions in China, where wages can be up to 30% cheaper. “Factories use the threat of brands moving overseas to do their manufacturing as a way to wave a flag in front of policy-makers to get more tax cuts or subsidies, or to keep workers’ wages lower,” says Elmer, the labor researcher. “This has been happening for a long time.”

Still, amid the offshoring, a subsection of Chinese factories are steadily establishing a culture of premium workmanship, says Luke Grana, the founder of Grana, a clothing company based in Hong Kong. As he set up his brand–basics made from premium fabrics, shipped around the world within two days–he sent samples off to be made in different factories around Asia. Chinese factories did the finest work. “The manufacturers are very skilled and they’ve been doing it for a long time,” he says.

This is important for Grana, because its entire business is based on offering consumers very high-quality clothing at reasonable prices, much like Everlane. (A silk shirt goes for $49, a cashmere sweater for $99.) Grana purchases linen from the century-old Baird McNutt mill in Ireland, merino wool from the Albini group in Biella, in the Piedmont region of Italy, and poplin from a family-run mill in Avignon, France. He ships these to a pair of factories in Huzhou and Guangdong, not far from Hong Kong, where garment makers know how to cut and sew these expensive materials properly. “They’re really experts and skilled technicians,” Grana says.

China’s expertise comes, of course, at a higher cost. “Our experience is the prices the China factories charge us are creeping up” in comparison to other Asian manufacturing zones, says Grana. “They’re getting quite high, especially compared to other nations like Vietnam, Bangladesh, or Cambodia.” But for him, the rising costs of manufacturing aren’t a deterrent at the moment because the only other places where the quality of garment-making is comparable–Europe and the United States–have significantly higher labor costs. Grana may be well positioned to afford the higher price in China: It just picked up $10 million in Series A funding, on top of a $6 seed round, and is growing at a rate of $15 every month.

Of course, for fast-growing brands like Grana–and its U.S. counterpart Everlane, which also manufactures in China–its calculus of ethics versus cost might change as it scales.

Grana in Kojima, Okayama, Japanese Denim [Photo: @edwardkb, courtesy of Grana]
In some ways, the shift in Chinese textile manufacturing reflects a broader change in the market away from low-quality fast fashion. Brands like Zara and H&M, which churn out up-to-the-minute styles at rock-bottom prices, are now in decline. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs like Lecat and Hostetter are garnering attention for opting to create classic garments that are meant to be sustainable–to be both long-lasting and made under quality conditions–and customers are willing to pay a small premium for them. In the process, they’re riding a broader trend in Chinese manufacturing, and nudging it along too–one that will change the notion of “made in China.”

“I look at this as a global issue rather than one country versus another,” says Hostetter, about making clothing in China. “To me, a great job in a safe environment that pays well is just as important in Shenzhen as it is in Western Massachusetts.”


Why I Left My Job As An IT Exec To Work In Cybersecurity

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Marten Mickos, the CEO of cybersecurity firm HackerOne, says the key to succeeding in security is “pessimism or cynicism.” However, Mickos doesn’t have the traditional background of a security boss; he was previously the CEO of database firm MySQL and cloud software firm Eucalyptus, as well as a high-ranking HP executive.

Those very traditional IT companies are a long way off from HackerOne, which offers cybersecurity researchers “bug bounties” to find flaws in the products of customers like Adobe, Dropbox, Square, and Uber.

Fast Company recently spoke with Mickos, a native of Finland, about switching over to cybersecurity, what it’s like to interview for CEO with the CEO you’re replacing, and the difference between Silicon Valley and Europe.

Here’s how he explained his career switch:

I joined HackerOne in November 2015. I was contacted by Bill Gurley of Benchmark, who was one of their early stage investors. I know Benchmark very well, and I have led two companies in their portfolio, in fact. 

Bill called me and said, “Hey Marten, I heard you’re ready for your next step, and boy do I have this amazing opportunity for you . . . ” At that point, it didn’t trigger any particular reaction in me.

Interviewing With The Person You’re Replacing

I was actually thinking to myself, ‘Okay, this sounds like a small cybersecurity company, and who would ever want to do cybersecurity?’ I wasn’t sold at all based on the call, but I agreed to meet with one of HackerOne’s founders, Merijn Terheggen, who was CEO at the time.

I think it’s a sign of a healthy company that a founder who is CEO can do the recruiting him or herself. They realize the business is starting to grow, and that they need a pair of hands that have done it before. There was no doubt about what they needed, so it was the CEO who recruited the CEO.

I liked that nobody was being sidestepped or sidelined–it was a decision among all the founders to look for an experienced CEO. It really helped me get sold on the idea; I wasn’t being brought in from the side. I was talking directly to the founding CEO.

In my career, if I get really interested in an opportunity, I will do my own research. I sort of test myself by seeing if I can write a strategy for the company. If I cannot do that, it isn’t a good fit. But if I can write the beginning of a strategy, that’s a sign I understand the business strategy–I wrote some ideas and showed a few drafts [to the hiring board], and asked if it made sense. That was a way for them to test me, and for me to test them, to make sure there’s a good alignment on what the company needs to do.

What The Security Industry Is Like

There are industries that have very strong behavioral patterns and norms. Security is one of those. For most people in this segment in the past, for many years, it hasn’t been easy to come from the outside in. But it’s changing.

Security used to be more of a closely knit group of people who did just that, and were a little bit separated from the rest of the software industry. It’s now opening up, and more welcoming to anyone from an adjacent space like myself.

It’s interesting for me. To be good at security, you need to be paranoid, suspicious, doubtful, and sometimes a little bit cynical. 

Especially in tech, there are so many opportunities where it’s just the upside. It’s very positive and happy, and success is based around building something new. But in the security space, it’s about protecting, defending, and removing threats and weaknesses.

I think in the past, the security industry perhaps overcorrected on being cynical. Now, it’s a more balanced view where you have to be paranoid and defend yourself, but you can also take productive, constructive steps to get to your goal.

There’s a difference between large companies and small ones. But you can also look at similarities, and know that any organization has a mission. They have a goal and results to produce, and when you focus on what needs to be done, you can get a small team to operate very well inside a large one.

When MySQL got acquired by Sun Microsystems, it was a beautiful example. Sun Microsystems was a giant corporation at the time with lots and lots of employees–I think maybe 30,000? In we came in with about 500 employees.

But as an incoming group, we decided that the moment the acquisition closed, we weren’t MySQL employees. Instead, we are Sun employees, and we need to do what makes Sun successful.

So we ran our own database business, but told ourselves to change our mind-set on that day to be useful for the whole corporation and vice versa.

I think Sun, as an acquiring company, did a phenomenal job of assimilating us and letting us do the business we do. We gained a lot of connecting tissue immediately with people working in other places; we didn’t remain isolated, but we also weren’t crushed.

Business Culture In Finland Versus Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is completely unique in the world. In Finland, or broadly in Europe, an hour is not a long time, but a million is a lot of money. In Silicon Valley, it’s the opposite–a million is not much money, but an hour is a very long time.

When you come here, speed of action and agility is paramount. The number of dollars you make or spend or burn or get is less of an issue.

Of course, you always need money, and money plays an important role, but the bottleneck is not money, it’s time. Whereas in other parts of world, the bottleneck is money but not time.

Another difference is the sheer positive mind-set. Americans say, “Good for you,” very concretely. I previously thought they didn’t mean it, but they mean it. Especially in Silicon Valley, people truly are generous to each other about success, and genuinely want each other to succeed. That’s just a wonderful source of generosity, spirit, and inspiration.

I find it extremely rewarding and healthy. You build a healthy society when you’re generous to people you do not know.

Out of Development Hell: How Must-See Show, “Shrink,” Got Made

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He was surprised when his mostly improvised pilot won Best Comedy and Critics Award at the New York Television Festival, and when a network eventually bought it. What was most surprising of all, though, is what happened next: Tim Baltz spent the next four years not quite making the show.

“We got served up a cold, hard Hollywood lesson,” he says, evenly, about the experience.

Shrink [Photo: courtesy of Seeso, NBC]
Things didn’t end up going so bad for Baltz in the end. His show, the striving psychologist sitcom, Shrink, recently premiered on streaming service Seeso to rave reviews. The series only saw the light of day, however, after a hurry-up-and-wait marathon with the now-defunct network, Pivot, which gradually cut it loose. But the extended stint in development hell taught Shrink’s co-creator and star both the value of vigilance, and of not putting all your creative eggs in one basket.

Shrink is the story of Baltz’s Dr. David Tracy, who graduates from medical school but does not end up with the surgical residency he’d been headed toward. Instead, saddled with half a million dollars in debt and no prospects, David ends up on a quirky quest to conduct 1,920 hours of clinical therapy in his garage to avoid defaulting on loans. The premise was borne from Baltz and his fellow Chicago improviser, Ted Tremper, looking to do an unscripted web series with improv friends. Baltz played the downtrodden but optimistic shrink-in-training, and friends like 30 Rock’s John Lutz and SNL’s Aidy Bryant took turns as his desperate patients.

“This type of show is a weird thing to unlock because you have to have the right structure for it,” Baltz says. “The improv has to naturally allow for plot and narrative–but with improv, you’re not really supposed to worry about plot.”

Tremper suggested the Dirtbag Frasier idea and Baltz, an avowed fan of therapy, glommed onto it immediately. They made a dozen short episodes in 2011 and were so excited about how they turned out that they decided to shoot a pilot. On a budget of about $200, they recorded a prototype of Shrink and submitted it to the New York Television Festival. Doing so meant incorporating more story elements along with the garage-set improv sessions. Back in Chicago, Baltz had written several plays for The Annoyance Theater, but this was his first attempt at TV writing. It was a hit. He and Tremper left with multiple awards and a meeting with producer Patrick Daly (August: Osage County).

Shrink [Photo: courtesy of Seeso, NBC]
The next six months were a crash course in storytelling. Baltz, Tremper, and Daly worked closely together on developing a pilot to shop around at networks. Some writers create a show bible before their series gets picked up. (Paul Feig’s massive document describing the world of Freaks and Geeks is industry legend.) Baltz and Tremper developed an eight-page outline, along with another couple pages worth of potential episodes that could be in the first season. In May of 2013, they pitched all over LA, getting to second-level meetings at FX and IFC before Pivot eventually bought the show. It was a landmark moment for the pair–their official christening as television creators. And then for the next two and a half years, nothing happened.

Baltz and Tremper both moved to L.A. the following January and began what turned out to be a glacially paced wait for the greenlight to get to work. They bided their time acting in bit parts and making short films, respectively, until finally, near the end of 2014, they were given the go-ahead to start writing Shrink.

If this network blessing, and the tennis match of notes that followed, seemed encouraging, Pivot’s announcing the show on its development slate for the upfronts made it seem sacrosanct. As of spring 2015, they wanted 10 episodes. However, each time the question turned to when these episodes would actually begin pre-production, the answer always seemed to be “two weeks.”

“I went on vacation,” Baltz recalls, “and at the time I kept thinking I might have to come back at a moment’s notice to start.”

Shrink [Photo: courtesy of Seeso, NBC]
Behind the scenes, things were tumultuous at Pivot. The network hired a new director of scripted programming soon after acquiring the show, and then around the time of the upfronts, CEO Kelsey Balance left Pivot, along with another executive from the scripted division. The pair behind the show soon read the writing on the wall, and both got longer gigs–Baltz booking an acting role on Seeso’s real estate parody, Bajillion Dollar Propertie$, and Tremper becoming a field producer for The Daily Show.

Toward the end of 2015, Pivot finally delivered the anticlimactic news: Shrink was not going to happen.

Fortunately for Baltz and Tremper, the Pivot executives let them keep the show and pitch it elsewhere. Even more fortunately, Kelsey Balance, formerly of Pivot, was now the CEO of Seeso, and looking to expand the nascent digital network’s offerings. When word got around that the guy who played “Glen” on the streaming service’s show, Bajillion Dollar Properties, had a whole show of his own ready to go, Baltz had an opportunity to pitch once more. In March of 2016, Seeso ordered eight episodes to begin production immediately.

“After this had been in our head for years, it was so much fun and such a relief to finally sit down in a proper writers room, look at everything, brainstorm ideas, and put the show together,” Baltz says.

Shrink [Photo: courtesy of Seeso, NBC]
It was a tortuous path to carry Shrink out of creative purgatory, but it ended with the show premiering earlier this year to positive reviews. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been the same show if it had premiered years earlier when it was originally expected. If Baltz had it all to do over again, however, he would only do one thing differently.

“If someone had told me ‘It’s gonna take you four years to make this,'” he says, “to be honest, I’d probably have started working on another show. You have to have a lot of spinning plates because you never know which one is gonna pop up and get served.”

Emotional Intelligence Is The Real Secret To Getting Promoted Faster

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There was a time not too long ago when the person with the most technical knowledge got promoted fastest. But that’s often no longer the case.

Once someone gets promoted, technical skills become less necessary, and interpersonal ones become more critical in their place. You’ve probably already heard that emotional intelligence is a top factor in companies’ hiring decisions, but it plays a major role in how employers choose to promote their team members, too. This isn’t exactly news; in a 2011 Career Builder survey of more than 2,600 hiring managers and HR professionals, 71% said they valued emotional intelligence over IQ in general, and 75% said they’re typically more likely to promote an employee with high emotional intelligence and a comparatively lower IQ than one where that ratio is flipped.

So when you’re gunning for your next promotion, your main objective might be to dial up those so-called “soft skills” in order to show your boss you’ve got the emotional intelligence it takes to excel. Here are a few skills you’ll want to make sure your boss can give you high marks for.


Related: Exactly What To Put In Your LinkedIn Profile To Get A Promotion


1. You Can Manage Your Emotions Under Pressure

As your responsibilities increase, so will the pressure and demands on you. That means you’ll need to stay calm, keep your feelings in check, and avoid reacting impulsively to every crisis (or perceived crisis) that pops up. Your boss needs to expect that you’ll handle tough situations smoothly and calmly. Anyone who’s reporting to you will need reassurance and support when the stress starts to increase, so if you want to show that you’re management material, it’s smart to model that poise and composure early on.

2. You Listen In A Way That Makes Others Feel Heard

Lots of workplace crises can be avoided simply by making people feel heard and understood. That one reason why hiring managers cite listening as a critical job skill. Even if somebody’s idea or advice isn’t acted upon, they need to feel like their contribution is valued, and you don’t need to bend over backwards or condescend to your colleagues to do that–you just have to listen actively to them. As a manager, your team’s productivity depends on how motivated they feel to do their best, and that begins with making them feel heard. It never hurts to brush up on those listening behaviors.

3. You’re Quick To Show Empathy

Everyone has a life outside of work that can affect their performance on the job. Family members and friends fall ill, relationships end, and lots of other life events can crop up. The best bosses aren’t those who just shepherd projects along with ruthless efficiency–they’re ones who treat their team members as actual people. Fortunately, it takes no technical training whatsoever to show your coworkers a little empathy. Being sensitive to the things that affect them in the office can make all the difference between helping somebody through a really hard week and leaving them angry, resentful, and looking for a new job.

4. You Take Responsibility For Your Mistakes

Emotionally intelligent people are good at taking their missteps in stride. That helps them learn and improve faster after a slip-up. Why? Because they’re less likely to see the mistake as a personal failure–a potentially powerful mind-set that employers look for in up-and-coming leaders. Instead of fearing criticism and rebuke, you’ll want to show your boss that your bigger fear is not taking the initiative to try something new. So try not to wallow in failure the next time you make an error–own up to it as quickly as you can, and take the reins in finding a solution. That’s exactly what emotionally intelligent managers are expected to do.

5. You’re Always Open To Feedback

Keeping your ego in check can also help you stay open to constructive criticism–especially the kind that less emotionally intelligent people might find hard to take. Make sure you show your manager that you’re always looking to improve, even in small ways. Companies are more willing to promote employees who see feedback as a chance to grow, not a risk to their credibility or as some kind of personal slight. Demonstrating this is actually pretty easy; it all starts by assuming that your boss has good intentions whenever they critique your work.

6. You Can Work Through Conflicts

Getting promoted means you’ll have to deal with the inevitable conflicts among the people reporting to you. Even the most serene workplaces occasionally have mini power struggles and squabbles–that’s only natural. But the most effective managers aren’t fazed by these disputes. They can approach them without become emotionally involved themselves, look for common ground, and listen to all sides with an eye toward the bigger picture. That isn’t always easy, but if you can show you’re an effective mediator, you’ll likely show that you’ll also be an effective manager.

7. You Earn Others’ Respect (For The Right Reasons)

This last factor is the sum of the previous six skills. People who are able to keep their emotions under control, listen to others, and treat them fairly and authentically earn the respect of those they work with. They don’t intimidate, condescend, or hog the spotlight in order to attract their colleagues’ attention. Being approachable is actually a hugely undervalued leadership skill, but it’s one emotionally intelligent people find natural. It’s just about seeing your own role as helping others succeed. If your boss notices that’s the approach you’re taking to your work, they’ll be more likely to consider you for a promotion–and they’ll have few reasons to regret it afterward.

Redesigning Hospitals, With Grieving Family Members In Mind

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Just north of Dublin’s city center, the Mater Hospital is one of Ireland’s busiest medical complexes. The large facility holds over 650 beds, and there’s a constant influx of patients.

But around six years ago, staff at the hospital realized there was a disparity between the quality of care provided to the patients and the experience of their family and loved ones who had to wait anxiously for hours in the hospital to receive updates, often devastating ones. St. Brigid’s Ward contains the hospital’s acute stroke unit, and for families with relatives in treatment there, it was a grim situation: The family waiting area was housed in a cramped, dimly lit room used mainly for on-the-fly staff meetings and storage; mismatched chairs and plastic tables crowded up against the walls. Their comfort, visitors said, felt like an afterthought.

“What are the core elements of a family room? Would that be a burden on the staff? What do relatives really want?” [Photos: Irish Hospice Foundation]
In 2011, the Mater Hospital received a grant through the Design & Dignity Programme, developed by the Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF) and the Health Service Executive (HSE) in 2010 to physically enhance the spaces in hospitals that are especially important to end-of-life care, like family rooms, intensive care unit waiting rooms, and mortuaries. Design & Dignity grew out of a larger supportive program for end-of-life care, the Hospice Friendly Hospitals Program, which The Atlantic Philanthropies funded for around $6 million between 2007 and 2012. (The organization also funds Fast Company‘s coverage of the future of philanthropy.)

That program, and Design & Dignity after it, aimed to draw attention to the fact that while hospitals remain committed to providing the best possible health care to patients, they are often not set up to care for patients at the end of their life–and especially not their grieving loved ones. As Susan Parker, a consultant for Atlantic Philanthropies wrote in a recent case study on the Design & Dignity Programme:

In Ireland, 43% of people who die each year will do so in an acute hospital. While end-of-life advocates argue that one of the key jobs of a hospital is to provide support for dying, death, and bereavement, the reality is that the focus of many hospitals is still on curative care. And the reality is that hospitals can be a difficult place to die.

The revitalization of the St. Brigid’s Family Room in the Mater Hospital was one of those initial pilots. Diarmuid Ó Coimín, an end-of-life and palliative care specialist, lead the initiative at the hospital; he told Parker in the case study that while some of the Mater Hospital staff immediately saw the benefit of investing in these spaces, others were skeptical that the revamp would have an effect. That skepticism,?” Coimín said, was not helped by the fact that in the program’s early days, the answers to many key questions remained elusive: “What are the core elements of a family room? Should it have seating spaces for three people or eight? Is a kitchenette really necessary? Should there be a sofa that converts into a bed so relatives can stay overnight? Would that be a burden on the staff? What do relatives really want?”

“The reality is that hospitals can be a difficult place to die.” [Photo: Irish Hospice Foundation]
Lacking specifics, Coimín forged ahead, soliciting input from family members in the hospital and looking into research on family rooms in hospitals. Over the course of six months and with a budget of around $50,000, they developed a calm space, clearly delineated from the rest of the hospital with a fresh color scheme, gentle lighting (as opposed to the harsh fluorescents characteristic of medical wards), artwork on the walls, and a breakfast bar. The update generated a positive response from hospital visitors through surveys conducted by the IHF, and following its completion, Mater Hospital staff are fundraising to create a similar family room in each of the complex’s 20 wards; each room will cost between $5,600 and $67,000 to complete.

The Mater Hospital project is just one funded by Design & Dignity, starting in 2011. The organization, through a partnership with the National Lotteries, provided initial funding $2.7 million to 24 hospitals around Ireland to revamp spaces necessary to end-of-life care, including Nenagh Hospital in County Tipperary, where end-of-life conversations with patients’ loved ones were held in a supply closet. The program has proven a success, and to date, 34 projects have been funded; Mary Lovegrove, the Hospice Friendly Hospitals Program coordinator for the IHF, tells Fast Company that by 2021, grants from the program will be distributed to all public acute hospitals in Ireland, with 60 projects being completed, and the Design & Dignity Guidelines developed to supplement the program will be applied to all future health care buildings constructed in the country.

The 24 initial projects, Parker tells Fast Company, “were sort of exemplars–they were meant to show what this work could mean, and get other hospitals participating in the program.”

Work like what is happening under the Design & Dignity program in Ireland, says Yuhgo Yamaguchi, a principal at the Boston-based design firm Continuum, reflects a broader industry shift toward engaging all stakeholders in the process of developing these spaces. The health care industry, Yamaguchi says, has a reputation for being clinical, but “health care is actually very emotional, and certainly what’s going on in these hospital spaces is very emotional,” Yamaguchi tells Fast Company. “The design needs to take that into account more carefully.”

“Health care is actually very emotional, and certainly what’s going on in these hospital spaces is very emotional.” [Photo: Irish Hospice Foundation]
In other aspects of the health care industry, sensitive design is proving to have measurably positive outcomes. In a piece for Harvard Business Review, Yamaguchi illustrates the benefits of overlaying health services with quality aesthetics and amenities. A study of two McGill University hospitals in the Montreal area found that when they redesigned its ICU from shared to private rooms, the spread of infection dropped by 50%, and the average length of stay by 10%. The need for antipsychotic drug injections at an acute psychiatric clinic dropped by 70% when realistic nature posters were hung on waiting-room walls.

“If you can demonstrate the value of design, and show the outcomes of good design, then you can make a case for investing in design,” Yamaguchi says.

That’s certainly the hope as the Design & Dignity Programme rolls out in Ireland. While the efforts there are more focused on comfort than on improving patient outcomes, the significance of that effort, Yamaguchi says, should not be downplayed: A study from the University of Southern California found that good-quality amenities are a larger factor in driving traffic to hospitals than clinical quality. While the revamps outlined through the program are not prohibitively expensive, they do require an investment, but Yamaguchi’s research suggests that such an investment will benefit the hospital’s bottom line as much as the patients and families themselves.

Online Therapy Shows Promise But Raises Plenty Of Ethical Questions

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Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.

A young man anxious about his career path finds renewed strength in his faith. A woman gets help dealing with her guilt over seeing her childhood abuser prosecuted. Another woman overcomes a breakup and learns to practice mindfulness.

These were some of the “success stories” posted this month on the website of Sunnyvale-based BetterHelp, one of a handful of online therapy companies that substitutes the often hard-to-access office visit to a therapist’s office with a suite of online offerings. Billed as the world’s largest online therapy platform, BetterHelp is also turning therapy into a U.S. export, with “members” in countries around the globe.

After starting several ad tech firms, company founder Alon Matas suffered a depression that, he told Mixergy’s Andrew Warner, led him to harness his marketing prowess to advance a greater good and launch BetterHelp in 2013. After all, more than 43 million adult Americans suffer from mental illness, but fewer than half reported receiving mental health services over the course of the year, according to a 2015 survey by the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Administration. Many who need mental health care can’t afford it, while many regions suffer a severe shortage of mental health professionals, and even in counties rich with therapists, many lack the time to make the visit. And there is often stigma associated with asking for help.

However, BetterHelp and its competitors are also raising ethical questions about what it means to put technologists in charge of a mental health care platform with unique privacy and safety challenges. Will, for example, people suffering from depression or suicidal urges be considered as patients or consumers by the new startups? And what does it mean for American therapists to practice their profession across cultures and international borders?

BetterHelp is growing at a rapid clip, with membership doubling “year over year,” according to Jeff Williams, the company’s senior director of business development. BetterHelp was acquired by publicly traded Teladoc in 2015 in a $4.5 million deal, and is expected to exceed revenues of $27 million this year, according estimates provided on a recent quarterly conference call with analysts. Two months ago, the company launched Terappeuta.com, a Spanish-language version of the site.

View the full infographic here.

Some Therapists Are Skeptical

There seems to be little doubt that BetterHelp–and firms like it–are reaching new people with their offerings, and there are some promising preliminary studies on the benefits of online therapy. However, the state of research has not kept pace with the growth of companies like BetterHelp, say experts interviewed for this story, and some therapists question the ability for clients to make real therapeutic progress in an exclusively online format.

“Not only can the client curate themselves, but they can definitely run when things get tough,” reports Loma Linda psychologist Nina Barlevy. “Of course, they can also bolt with traditional therapy, but it is far easier online.”

Kesha Martin, a Texas-based BetterHelp counselor, has felt ill-equipped to provide the kind of support needed by her clients who had experienced trauma. “I think it’s for more people going through an adjustment–career stuff, nothing super intense, she said” Martin, like Barlevy, is no longer actively counseling patients through the site.

Todd Essig, who is a Forbes columnist, psychologist, and a relentless critic of online counseling companies, has taken particular aim at BetterHelp’s competitor, Talkspace, for exaggerating its effectiveness and sending conflicting messages as to whether it is a health care provider or merely a platform without legal obligations for the services its contracted therapists offer.

“The problem is a confused, misleading set of messages about the relationship between therapy as it is widely understood, researched, and practiced, and the text-only activities that take place on the Talkspace platform,” writes Essig.

Unlike Talkspace, BetterHelp does not offer a text-only package, but BetterHelp’s terms-of-service policy also disavows responsibility for the quality of the counseling provided through the platform.

“High-quality, online counseling is a viable alternative to face-to-face counseling and in some cases could lead to better outcomes,” according to the press release from the Berkeley Well-Being Institute, which released a BetterHelp-funded study in early May. The study found that 78%t of those who reported symptoms of “severe depression” before using BetterHelp were no longer classified as having severe depression after using the service.

The study’s results are “interesting” but “not definitive” and “needed to be interpreted carefully,” in part because of deficiencies in the methodology and, in part, because the developers of a treatment typically report positive findings, writes Lynn Bufka, associate director for practice research and policy at the American Psychological Association, and who reviewed the study at Capital & Main‘s request.

Real Promise, But Plenty Of Questions

Bufka says that online therapy shows real promise–and a feature article published on the APA website cites two academic studies supporting the benefit of an exclusively online approach–but it also raises a host of questions, including a patient’s ability to secure the privacy of their device and the ability of therapists to adequately diagnose patients remotely.

Inspiring anecdotes were posted this month on BetterHelp’s website as part of a marketing push, as mentioned earlier:  A young man anxious about his career path finds renewed strength in his faith, thanks to work with a BetterHelp counselor. A woman receives help dealing with the guilt arising from seeing her childhood abuser prosecuted and learns she suffers from attention deficit disorder. Another woman overcomes a breakup and learns to practice mindfulness.

The cost of counseling through BetterHelp ranges from a relatively affordable $35 to $70 per week, depending on the package selected. After completing an online form, members are typically matched with a therapist in less than four hours. They can communicate through texts, live chat, phone calls, or video conferencing.

Sonya Bruner became BetterHelp’s clinical director in April and oversees a network of more than 2,000 licensed therapists who have contracts with the company. She describes an “extensive vetting process” of analysts that includes a written exercise, background checks, and an interview. She worked for a year as a BetterHelp therapist to make sure the company provided a legitimate service before joining the 30-member staff.

“In some ways, having the ability to have more touch points with the person that you are working with actually enrichens the therapy process,” said Bruner. With face-to-face therapy, the client typically is only seen once a week.

The “mere prospect of leaving the house” can be “overwhelming” or “simply unattainable” for people in severe distress, says Jay Swedlaw, a BetterHelp mental health counselor from Texas, who makes online therapy his full-time job. In these cases, having a licensed therapist on the phone can be an important lifeline. In some cases, the anonymity of the format may allow clients to actually open up, he adds.

He discovered BetterHelp a year and a half ago when he was making the move from Florida to Texas and needed some transitional income. Now his work with 88 clients on the platforms of BetterHelp and its New York-based rival, Talkspace, comprise almost his entire income–about $6,000 to $8,000 a month.

Swedlaw likes the hassle-free nature of online therapy–no office, no overhead. “I can reach and help a lot more people and that’s the most important thing,” says Swedlaw.

Some of his BetterHelp clients have been as far away as Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, and his clients include not just U.S. citizens abroad but also residents of those countries. It could be that those seeking out BetterHelp have a strong familiarity with American culture, but, in any case, Swedlaw seemed so far undaunted by cultural barriers, which he says can “fall away” when the medium of communication is text.

“If I’m ever unsure of something, I will certainly not just guess at it,” says Swedlaw, who said he will draw on his training or do additional research.

The question of whom the platform is for remains open for interpretation. The website’s front page directs people in crisis away from the site and toward various hotlines and resources. Its FAQ makes clear that the service is not for people with a “severe mental illness” and also warns that BetterHelp “is not capable of substituting for traditional face-to-face therapy in every case.”

But BetterHelp by no means limits outreach to those suffering from mild anxiety or dealing with life transitions. The company provided Capital & Main with the “presenting problems” that members report on their questionnaire. The top five issues have to do with depression, stress and anxiety, self esteem, relationships, family, and anger. Also on that list are bipolar, trauma/abuse, and addiction Issues.

The vast majority of members (81%) are women. Perhaps not surprisingly, 84% are under 45. Forty-five percent of BetterHelp members report no history with therapy at all, suggesting that the company is, indeed, reaching new people with its offerings.

Access And Adaptation

There is also the question of access for the therapist. In an emergency, a therapist in private practice would have immediate recourse to a patient’s personal information, but in an online environment the company holds that information and decides what personal information to collect. Last year The Verge published an anonymously sourced investigative piece in which an independent contractor therapist for BetterHelp’s rival, Talkspace, alleging she was unable to contact a client whose child she believed was being endangered.

Client contact information is readily available to the BetterHelp therapists, according to Williams, “just as if they [are] in the offline world,” either through the “help” page of a client’s account or through communication with the company. Either one could arrange a “wellness visit” from a local police department.

The protocol for helping an at-risk international clients may be more of a work in progress.

“I’ve never had a crisis with an international client,” said Swedlaw, one of the more active BetterHelp therapists. “But if it did come to that point, I would just hop online and get the number for the local emergency department or try to find out if that particular country had something equivalent to the suicide hotline that we have here in the states.”​

At a Talkspace conference held inside the San Francisco Jazz Center last month, its CEO, Oren Frank seemed to push back on online-therapy critics, even as the company sought external validation from the medical establishment by announcing plans to launch a randomized controlled trial–the gold standard study in which people are chosen at random to receive one of several clinical interventions.

“Every psychoanalyst above the age of 60 thinks that this is blasphemy,” Frank told the auditorium from behind a plexiglass podium emblazoned with “#workhappy.”

The subject of the gathering of venture capitalists, telehealth, pharmaceutical, and human resource executives was expanding mental health care in the workplace.

Traditional therapy, Frank argued, has “not really been structured as a process that is measurable and manageable and repeatable.”

The psychotherapy profession does need to be shaken up, said Kathryn Salisbury, executive vice president at the nonprofit Mental Health Association of New York, who attended the Talkspace conference.

At the same time, she hopes to see the industry to evolve in a way that online therapy products and services get integrated into the health care delivery system as a whole.

“If people are feeling in crisis or desperate,” she said, “they’ll try anything. We have a responsibility to expect new products and services [to] be evidenced-based, to be studied and proven to be effective.”

5 Email Templates For Handling The Most Annoying Parts Of Your Workday

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I’m obsessed with being as productive as humanly possible, whether that’s setting better deadlines or finding the most effective way to schedule my days.

But my inbox was still a huge time suck. And the kicker is: I was sending a lot of the same emails over and over again.

That’s when I started using canned responses. If you’re not familiar with them, you can save a response you craft, and then, instead of constantly retyping it, you can click and insert it into your email, saving you time and effort.

Not sold yet? I’ve written five common, time-saving templates to get you started that’ll convince you this makes sense. (But first, you need to get set up. If you’re a Gmail user, you’ll find instructions here. And if you’re an Outlook user, they’re called “Quick Parts,” and you can see them here.)

1. To Put Off Answering

Sometimes you can fire off a quick reply. But other times, your response will require extra thought or legwork. Since you don’t want to ignore the person in the meantime, send this to let them know you’ll reply when you can. It looks like this:

Hi [Name],

Thanks so much for your question about [topic].

I just wanted to let you know that I’m looking into it and will get back to you before the end of week with an answer.

If you need me to get back to you sooner, please let me know!

Best,
[Your name]

2. To Defuse A Situation

You know that one of the very worst things you can do when tensions are running high is tell someone how you feel over email. Instead of risking it when emotions are strong, use a pre-created template to be sure you’re using a workplace-appropriate tone. It looks like this:

Hi [Name],

Thank you for your honesty and constructive feedback. I understand where you’re coming from, and think it would be helpful to discuss further.

Do you have time to add a call or cup of coffee to your schedule this week? I think it would be helpful for us to talk about next steps, and how we might avoid similar miscommunication in the future.

Best,
[Your name]

3. To Share Instructions

Are you constantly telling people how to navigate your website or use your database? Instead of retyping the instructions time and again, type it once and you won’t have to worry about missing steps when you get stressed or super busy (or replicating work all week long). It looks like this:

Hi [Name],

Thanks for reaching out with questions about [procedure]!

We prefer to use [program], and I’ve outlined the process for [project] below:

[Insert numbered list]

If you have any questions along the way, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best,
[Your name]

4. To Punt Low-Priority Work

Got too much on your plate? Keep your email concise and honest, while offering alternatives. Try this:

Hi [Name],

Thanks for thinking of me for this project. Unfortunately, my schedule is jam-packed this week.

I do have a coworker who has helped out with similar tasks in the past. I’d be happy to reach out to her and see if she has time to work on this.

How this sound?

Best,
[Your name]

5. To Send An Attachment

“Please find attached . . . ” has to be one of the most common email replies, which makes it a perfect candidate for a canned response template. (Just be sure to actually attach the file before you click “Send!”) Try this:

Hi [Name],

I hope you’re having a good day.

Here’s that document I promised you. Please find it attached below.

If you have any questions, please let me know and I’d be happy to answer your questions.

Thanks!
[Your name]

Saving email responses will help you manage your inbox–and your time. This way, you can write them when you’re feeling level-headed and thinking clearly, and have them handy for that stressful, time-crunched day.

Finally, don’t forget that just because they’re saved doesn’t mean they’re set in stone. Feel free to change them if you need to, so they’ll truly work for you moving forward.


This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.

More From The Muse:

Trump’s Proposed Parental Leave Budget Falls Short For Working Families

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Yesterday the Trump administration released its budget proposal, “The New Foundation for American Greatness,” which boosts defense and security spending and includes $54 billion in reductions to non-defense programs such as Medicaid.

The budget also makes good on another campaign promise to provide paid parental leave. The proposal, which appears in the analysis from the Office of Management and Budget, offers some more details about the plan and how it will be funded.

As a candidate, Trump proposed six weeks of paid leave for birth mothers whose employers didn’t offer a benefit. As president, he told a joint session of Congress that he wanted new parents to have access to paid family leave, but hadn’t offered a proposal. In the absence of one, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced the Family Act to Congress that proposes that a nationwide insurance program be created to offer up to 12 weeks of leave for family and medical purposes with partial pay to workers of any gender.

Trump’s budget now states:

The Administration proposes establishing a new benefit within the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program to provide up to six weeks paid leave to mothers, fathers, and adoptive parents. States are expected to adjust their UI tax structures to maintain sufficient balances in their Unemployment Trust Fund accounts.

So the benefit extends to all gender birth and adoptive parents, which is an improvement over the original. It’s paid for through existing unemployment insurance programs, as well as by cuts to other social programs. With the responsibility on the states, an NPR report points out that it could require some states to raise taxes “to build up their trust fund balances.”

The NPR report also notes that eliminating improper unemployment insurance payments and implementing programs to get people back to work more quickly could bring in as much as $6.2 billion to offset some unemployment insurance taxes.

Ellen Bravo, co-executive director of Family Values @ Work notes that there are several problems with the proposal, not the least of which is that unemployment insurance offices are already understaffed and ill-equipped to handle this kind of program.

Other issues include:

  • Half of FMLA (unpaid leave) recipients currently take it for their own health, which would not be covered in this proposal.
  • In 22 states, the average Unemployment Insurance benefit is less than one-third of the state’s average wage. 
  • Unemployment Insurance disproportionately excludes some workers most likely to need family leave and least able to afford unpaid time off. Currently only 14% of the U.S. workers have access to paid family leave through their employers, and the BLS finds that less than 40% have personal medical leave through an employer-provided temporary disability program. Hourly and part-time workers may not be eligible for unemployment.

Bravo notes that successes in California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island (as well as in new models being developed by other states) are helping pave the way for a sustainable, affordable federal proposal. However, letting states design their own plan and determine who is eligible could exclude same-sex or unmarried couples, she adds.

As such, Bravo suggests creating a federal proposal that “meets the ‘Triple A’ test: accessible, affordable, and adequate for all workers who need time to care for themselves, a new child, or for a seriously ill family member.”  The FAMILY Act, which is before Congress now has the potential to meet those benchmarks, she says.


This Short Film Perfectly Captures The Promise of ’90s-Era Online Flirting

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WHAT: Lovestreams, an ode to the early days of online flirting

WHO: Los Angeles-based animator Sean Buckelew.

WHY WE CARE: Can it be that it was all so simple then? Back in the ’90s, when the possibilities of the internet were just coming into focus, people were amazed at how easy it was to digitally connect with a stranger. That part where the two would have to meet in real life was complicated as all get-out, but the instant ease of finding a potential love interest was brand new and shimmery with promise. This new animated short, which has been screening at film festivals throughout 2017, immortalizes the promise of that moment–partly with the use of a legendary Final Fantasy VIII dance sequence–and also telegraphs some of the heartache that would follow, as online dating evolved into . . . whatever exactly it has become now.

Despite Promises Of Job Growth, Trump’s Proposed Budget Actually Hurts Workers

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President Trump campaigned on promises of helping the average American worker, but his proposed budget aims to cut benefits for many, including the poor, new grads, and young workers.

The new fiscal directive calls for sweeping budget cuts and increases in national security spending–including $1.6 billion to build Trump’s infamous border wall. To pay for it, entitlement programs for poor and working-class people are being slashed. Looking at “anti-poverty and safety net” programs alone (which include Medicaid, food stamps, and earned income tax credits), Mother Jones reports that over $935 billion is set to be cut over the next decade. The document also proposes more than $66 billion worth of educational program cuts, which includes federal literacy grants and student loan assistance.

The budget projects that these cuts will help bring about 3% economic growth,  but which experts say is anywhere from”improbable” to “ludicrous.”

These cuts will hit the poor the hardest, but several proposals in the budget plan also don’t look great for the average U.S. worker. Young workers stand to be especially hard hit. Here’s a look at a few examples of how Trump’s proposed budget will hurt American workers.

Student Loan Reform

President Trump wants to cut $143 billion in the name of reforming the federal student loan program. He proposes a more “streamlined” income-based repayment plan, which would give loan forgiveness to undergraduates after 15 years of repayment and to graduates after 30 years.

One of the most popular repayment programs, however, would be cut: Public Service Loan Forgiveness. This forgave public servants’ student loans after 10 years of repayment and service. The program was enacted in 2007 as way to encourage more Americans to work for the public good. But now, for example, if a social worker gets his or her MSW and agrees to work for the government, that student’s loan won’t be forgiven until 30 years of repayment. In short, public servants–teachers, social workers, public advocates–who have masters degrees will be paying back their loans until the end of their careers.

What’s more, the new budget proposes to slash a vital loan program aimed at low-income people getting their degrees. This allowed the government to pay certain students’ federal loan interest while they were in school and then six months after. The loan assistance made it more feasible for low-income people to get a degree and then enter the workforce.

Social Security And Medicare

The new budget makes no changes to Social Security’s retirement program or Medicare, which the administration uses as an example to show that popular programs will continue relatively unscathed. But even this puts workers in peril. And it does make cuts to the Social Security disability insurance program.

Specifically, recent projections say Social Security’s trust fund will run dry in 2034. This means that if no significant changes are made to the Social Security, in just a few years Americans will not be able to receive full retirement benefits. By not making any changes to this part of Social Security, Trump is implicitly handicapping it.

The same can be said for Medicare–its trust is projected to run out by 2028. This means that poor people receiving medical coverage from the government will likely see reduced benefits in the coming years. Essentially, not changing either of these programs means that workers in the next 10 to 20 years will see a reduction in benefits and likely little help from the government.

The Bottom Line

The good news is that this is just the proposed budget and it’s unlikely to be passed in its entirety. As more analysts describe the budget’s unfeasibility, the more of a fiction it becomes; one former budget director under Reagan described it as “dead before arrival” to the New York Times.

Still, a budget will be passed soon and it remains to be seen whether or not it will look out for American workers. And until low income people are offered more equitable student loan access and necessary entitlement programs aren’t slashed or left to die, that simply won’t be the case.

Athleta’s CEO On Balancing Strength With Softness

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This spring, when the women’s athletic lifestyle brand Athleta launched the next iteration of its “Power of She” campaign, the company included an ad featuring a 98-year-old yoga teacher, who says, “Anything is possible. Nothing is impossible,” as she strikes a yoga pose with a younger yogi.

Nancy Green, Athleta’s CEO, describes the campaign as a deliberate effort to “break the stereotypes of health and wellness, and what strength and beauty look like by showing much more body-type diversity and age diversity.” In doing so, Athleta, a division of Gap Inc. with 135 stores in the U.S., is joining the ranks of companies, like Dove and Always, that have been fighting how women are portrayed in advertising, “Women are not portrayed well in the fashion media. It causes serious body dysmorphia, psychological problems. I believe we can be a force for good in the world in changing that,” says Green.

“I didn’t think I could do the job because I didn’t see other women that were doing the job as mothers.”[Photo: courtesy Athleta]
Green points out the campaign is also about “supporting and empowering women,” and sharing the stories of nonprofits like I Am Water and Girl Ventures–that are helping women and girls build resilience and confidence. The response to the campaign has been overwhelming, “We’re getting thousands of comments and letters,” says Green. “We heard from a third-grade teacher, who said ‘I took your catalog to the class today, and we were talking about empowerment and bodies and self-imagery. The girls loved it.'” For Green, this is part of changing how a brand can matter in people’s lives. “I’m hoping that we’re going to influence the fashion industry through our success. Because beauty does not come in one size two.”

Working Mother

When Green joined Gap, Inc. in 1986, she was 25 and pregnant with her first child. “Nobody had kids back then at the company. I didn’t think I could do the job because I didn’t see other women that were doing the job as mothers,” she says.

There was one exception–a mother, who worked on the team, pushed Green to come back to work to realize her potential. She persuaded her to just give it a month. It worked, and Grene continued to grow at the company leading to her appointment as CEO of the Athleta brand four years ago, succeeding a series of male predecessors in the role and now leading a team that is 95% female.

Green, in turn, has made it her mission “to make sure I helped everybody I could to be successful at work and in being a mother.” As a manager, she encouraged women to have families but also come back to work and not give up their careers. “I made sure that we got our work done and we were all able to walk out the door when we needed to walk out the door.”

The company offers, Green says, offers a 5-month maternity policy, and makes sure to include planning for mothers to transition back to work. In many other ways, Green says she has tried to build a culture that actively supports families, “We understand that sometimes people need to work from home. We want moms to take kids to their doctor appointments. So we empower our managers to create the flexibility and support that our teams need.”

Green admits that working in a nearly all-female organization has perhaps made it easier to embrace this leadership approach, “It gives everyone an appreciation for the complexity of demands and fulfillment. Things can be complex when you blend family, business, and life.”

“I can be very demanding and I have extremely high standards, but I understand that people are human.” [Photo: courtesy Athleta]

Balancing Strength With Softness

To help maintain authentic relationships and stay connected to her team, Green wanders the halls of their new headquarters in San Francisco when she has open time on her calendar. She will bump into people in their cafe and ask if she can join them for lunch.

The day prior to our interview, Green says she had one of these spontaneous lunches with a woman on her team who was about to go on maternity leave. Green checked in on how she was doing and the two talked about what having a child teaches you. And Green shared her own experience of how having her first child taught her about “endless love.” “You can never imagine loving anyone more than you possibly could when you have a child,” she says. But then her second child taught her about “infinite love” as she found that as endless as her love was for her first born it had not diminished her ability to love her second one.

Green says her approach to leadership is to constantly balance strength and power with softness: “I can be very demanding and I have extremely high standards, but I understand that people are human. I think it’s a combination of accepting that women can be strong and powerful and soft at the same time.”

“I think it’s a combination of accepting that women can be strong and powerful and soft at the same time.” [Photo: courtesy Athleta]

From Headquarters to the Factory Floor

“If you go out to factories in Asia,” Green says, “most of the management is men and the factory workers, the sewers, the cutters are women.” In order to help fix this disparity, Athleta, as part of Gap Inc., has launched a new program to help grow women into management positions at its factories. More than 50,000 women in 12 countries have participated since the program was launched in 2007.

Earlier this year, Athleta also launched a new partnership with Fair Trade USA through which factory workers can earn an additional financial premium for the sale of Fair Trade Certified products. The workers vote and collectively decide on where to invest the money. “It could be anything from bicycles for transportation, childcare, or women’s health programs. The workers decide how they want to use the money. It’s a community fund.”

Connecting to Impact

Every Monday at Athleta, the company shares a feedback letter. “It’s always an extraordinary story about an impact we made that week on somebody’s life through an experience that they had in our store,” Green says.

I asked Green to share a recent story with me. “We have an employee in one of our Florida stores who is just returning from her second battle with cancer. I think it was her first week back on the job when a young girl came into the store, who was in a wheelchair, with her mom. Our employee asked if she could help lift her out of the wheelchair to try on some clothes. Here’s a woman who just returned from a double mastectomy and she is lifting a young teenage girl out of her wheelchair to help her try on some clothes. The letter was about how the mom felt. She had not had an experience like this before,” Green says, choking up as she tells the story. She reached out to the employee to say, “We are so fortunate to have you here . . . what you have done for this customer is unbelievable so thank you.”

It’s moments like these that help her stay inspired and connected to her purpose. “Sometimes you’re reading these letters and you’re just in tears because you just cannot believe you’re reading this. That reminds me of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and the care and nurturing that goes into it.”

This New Cheap Method Of Generating Hydrogen Could (Maybe?) Make Fuel Cell Cars Feasible

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If you want to buy an electric car in the U.S., there are more than a dozen options. If you want to buy a fuel cell car, there are three: the Honda Clarity, the Toyota Mirai, and the Hyundai ix35. But more are coming–and a new discovery in the lab might help the market expand faster.

Fuel cell cars run on hydrogen, and making hydrogen is a challenge. The traditional method of producing hydrogen (which is now typically sold to manufacturers for everything from refining metal to making margarine) starts with fossil fuels. If you heat up coal or natural gas you get hydrogen–but you also get carbon pollution. As an alternative, it’s possible to make hydrogen from water by splitting water molecules with electrolysis. It’s a clean process that produces zero pollution, but it also takes a lot of energy, and the resulting hydrogen is expensive. Catalysts like platinum can speed up the reaction and help save energy but are also expensive.

“Ultimately, the cost of delivered retail hydrogen is a big challenge.” [Illustration: sky_max/iStock]
Physicists at the University of Houston have discovered a way to make the process more efficient for little cost. Their catalyst, made from cheap nickel instead of the pricey precious metals used today, helps one part of the reaction happen more easily. And if it is eventually used in production, it could mean hydrogen fuel that costs significantly less than it does today.

The cost of fuel is one of the hurdles for the technology. “Ultimately, the cost of delivered retail hydrogen is a big challenge,” says Mark Duvall, director of energy utilization at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit that has studied the technology in detail. The average cost at the tank in April 2017–from one small sample of fueling stations–was $14.10 per gallon of gasoline equivalent.

That cost for consumers also depends on factors beyond production, such as compressing the gas, transporting it, and the cost of building new stations. But if the new catalyst is used to make hydrogen from water, after more development, it could eventually help bring the cost of making it down to the level of making hydrogen from fossil fuels, and lower the total cost at the pump.

“Basically, this whole process is about finding new, cheap catalysts for an environmentally friendly process to produce hydrogen from water,” says Zhifeng Ren, a physics professor at the University of Houston and one of the authors of a new paper about the technology.

In general, fuel cell cars are less efficient than battery electric cars. If you use a solar panel to charge a battery, the process is roughly 85% efficient. Using a fuel cell takes more steps–electrolysis, compressing the gas, and then running the hydrogen in the fuel cell–each of which makes the system less efficient (roughly 30-40% efficient), and more expensive. The new way of making fuel could help, though other aspects of the technology will also have to improve to make fuel cells competitive with electric cars.

“New catalysts are great,” says Sally Benson, co-director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. “But if you look at light-duty transport, I would be seriously skeptical that it would be sufficient to switch to making fuel cell vehicles more desirable than battery electric vehicles.”

There are several challenges to overcome, including the cost of manufacturing the cars themselves. “I have a little difficulty seeing as how hydrogen fuel cell vehicles get to be less expensive than electric vehicles, given that a fuel cell vehicle is basically an electric vehicle,” says Duvall. “Except that instead of a large battery it has a small high-power battery like you’d find in a hybrid vehicle. It is an electric vehicle with some extra complexities.”

The infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles also still has to be built. If you own a fuel cell car in the Bay Area or Los Angeles, there are places to fuel up–but the stations are rare elsewhere.

[Illustration: sky_max/iStock]
Still, Duvall believes that fuel cell cars could be coming at a larger scale (as do car manufacturers, many of whom have new fuel cell models in development along with electric cars, though Elon Musk has notably called them “mind-bogglingly stupid.”) “I consider both technologies to be ultimately feasible,” Duvall says. “I just consider them to be in different stages of development.”

Fuel cell cars have one significant advantage: fueling them is fast, unlike charging an electric car. A Toyota Mirai with a quarter-tank of hydrogen takes a little over six minutes to fill up, only a little longer than a gas car. The technology may be especially attractive for trucks traveling long distances when charging batteries would be impractical.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that the technical challenges will be met,” Duvall says. “There’s a lot of very good people and a lot of companies really working on this.” The researchers at the University of Houston may provide one piece of the solution in helping the technology scale.

“I’m planning to set up large-scale testing, and if it’s successful, we’re looking to have a small-scale startup company to make hydrogen using this technology that we’ve developed,” says Ren.

Lawsuit Accuses Uber Of Fare Fraud

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Some Uber customers think Uber is taking them for a ride–and not in a good way. According to a federal class-action lawsuit filed today, Uber is charging UberX riders based on different, less-efficient routes than the ones its basing driver pay on, resulting in higher fares for riders. The suit relates to Uber’s “upfront” pricing model, which offers drivers a guaranteed rate based on miles and minutes driven. The complaint, filed in Brooklyn federal court, notes this practice qualifies as unjust enrichment under New York general business law.

“Contrary to Uber’s representations concerning the ‘cost of the ride’ and the “actual fare” charged to Uber X riders via the Upfront Pricing model, Uber has charged Uber X riders a fare that is $1.98 higher on average than the ‘actual fare’, i.e., the fare incurred by the Uber X drivers for the ride,” according to the lawsuit. The complaint estimates that Uber pockets an additional $7.43 million per month from UberX drivers thanks to its upfront pricing.

In September of last year, the Ride Share Guy blog saw a discrepancy between what drivers were being paid and riders were paying, noting that Uber was “overcharging” customers. In the months since, Uber has been pressured to answer questions about this alleged difference. It’s only in the last week that details have emerged. First came the explanation that it had developed a new method of pricing for customers. Uber representatives told Bloomberg the company estimates fares based on what a rider would be willing to pay. In that report, Uber’s head of product Daniel Graf, said the company uses artificial intelligence to determine these prices. However, the lawsuit from Gayed suggests it’s using elongated routes to craft its fares.

“Upon information and belief, Uber has intentionally designed the software that calculates the Upfront Price to use a longer, less efficient route than the route which Uber uses to populate the driver’s Uber App in order to charge the rider a higher fare and pay the driver a lower fare, when the two should be the same fare as set forth in the Technology Services Agreement,” the complaint reads.

The new lawsuit is just the latest headache for the ride-hailing company, which just yesterday settled another class-action suit filed by drivers in New York in which it agreed to pay them tens of millions of dollars and admitted to underpaying them for over two years. The missed revenue came to light as Uber was preparing to launch a more transparent fare breakdown for drivers.

Drivers have been vocal in their anger. “Uber’s theft of drivers’ hard-earned wages is the latest in a long history of underhanded tactics in this industry,” wrote Independent Driver’s Guild founder Jim Conigliaro Jr. The organization has called for an investigation into not just Uber’s fare and payment practices, but all ride-hailing applications.

For the most part, riders have not as widely engaged in legal battle with Uber. That may be in part because Uber says riders give up their right to sue by using the app. Today’s class-action suit was filed by lead plaintiff Jacqueline Gayed and has at least one hundred other passengers joining the suit. They accuse Uber of knowing and failing to disclose that its upfront pricing model was charging more to riders than the fare that was being offered to drivers for the same ride.

Gayed is married to an Uber driver and was apparently able to compare fares charged to riders with drivers’ payments over time. The complaint alleges she asked Uber for clarity on its pricing in May 2017 via text, to which Uber responded that pricing involved a standard base fare of a per-minute charge and a per-mile charge. According to the suit, Uber didn’t tell Gayed anything about using a different route to calculate the upfront for riders than the route it was using to determine a driver’s fare. She then claims she asked Uber if she could opt out of the upfront pricing scheme and the company did not allow her to do this.

Gayed is seeking damages related to rides dating back to April 2016, which is roughly when Uber first implemented upfront pricing in New York.

Fast Company reached out to Uber for comment and is awaiting response; we’ll be updating this story as it develops.

Apple’s Rumored Smart Speaker Might Not Be An Echo Killer–Or Even A Smart Speaker

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There are plenty of reasons to take rumors of a new Apple “smart speaker” seriously. Such a product would not only answer a clear desire among consumers to converse with their technology in the home via voice control but also make sense as a new way to interact with existing Apple services. It could be the product that makes Apple’s connected-home vision–which is built around its HomeKit platform, and is still a work in progress–come to life.

But envisioning a theoretical Apple smart speaker is harder than imagining, say, the next iPhone. And it’s dangerous to assume that it would closely resemble the smart speaker the public knows best–Amazon’s Echo, which pioneered the category.

In fact, it might be misleading to think of Apple’s home device as a “smart speaker” at all. It may do some of the things we’ve already seen the Echo do, like playing music, delivering news and weather, and providing general “assistant” functions like reminders and traffic reports, but it will feel different. You’ll be able to talk to it, but it’ll serve as an endpoint for a different mix of services in the home, like HomeKit, Apple Music, Siri, and maybe tvOS. In short, it will likely look, act, and think different.

Amazon Echo

The Center Of The Apple Home

Reports about the new Apple device started showing up last year. The most recent, and perhaps most reliable one, comes from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who, with his sources in Apple’s supply chain of Asian companies, is usually pretty spot-on in his predictions. Kuo suggests the device would be “positioned for the high-end market” and cost more than Amazon’s $179 Echo, and would have a high-quality woofer and seven tweeters.

Even if it sounds great, the Apple device’s main job may be acting as a natural-language hub for the Apple connected home. The company’s HomeKit strategy has been brewing for the past few years, but has yet to become a mainstream platform on the level with, say, Apple Music. A natural-language hub could drop right into the center of the HomeKit platform and become the physical device by which consumers might begin to identify with HomeKit.

Strictly defined, HomeKit doesn’t currently have a hub that acts as both a central integration point and command center for all the home accessories in the house. Apple says the Apple TV and the iPad currently act as “hubs” because they facilitate away-from-home access to the HomeKit system for iPhone users via the Home app for iOS.

But there’s more to being a hub than creating a remote connection. HomeKit currently relies on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to connect to third-party devices in the home, such as smart lightbulbs. Accessories that don’t support these technologies natively must use a bridge to connect. That’s one reason that the selection of HomeKit devices has been limited. (Apple estimates that there are now about 140 HomeKit-friendly products, including smart-home mainstays such as Philips’ Hue bulbs.) An Apple hub could include built-in support for the Z-Wave, ZigBee, and Thread standards, and the universe of home accessories that HomeKit could connect to would immediately grow much bigger.

Philips Hue smart bulbs

Kuo believes the device will include a camera for facial recognition, which might help it understand which member of a household it’s dealing with. “The facial recognition piece of the equation may relate to Apple investigating how this entertainment experience can be shared by different people,” wrote Above Avalon analyst Neil Cybart in a recent research note.

Distinguishing between family members might be critical: Google recently added support for multiple household member accounts in its Google Home speaker, using voice recognition to tell who’s who. Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi told me the days of “one home speaker, one account” are over.

It’s Not All About The Cloud

Another way an Apple device might be very different than other smart speakers is in the device’s relationship with the cloud. Rather than being dependent on the internet, the HomeKit platform operates on a device level, communicating directly via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi between iPhones, iPads, Apple TV, and third-party accessories in the home; Apple believes constantly moving data constantly moving back and forth from the cloud creates security and privacy issues.

A new Apple hub device would have to conform to that same approach, at least where HomeKit functions are concerned. Kuo says in his research note that the Apple smart speaker will have computing power comparable with an iPhone 6 or 6s. It might need that much horsepower because it would be handling a lot of home automation data, and coordinating its use with both other iOS devices and third-party accessories scattered throughout the home.

Even if the rumored device functions as a hub, that doesn’t mean it would be marketed as one. It probably wouldn’t be. Instead, it would be marketed with whatever story Apple feels would get it into homes fastest. It could be marketed as an Apple Music device, for example.

“Instead of positioning any one of those core technologies or services as the main product, Apple would position them as ingredients to an overall experience found in the entertainment realm,” Cybart wrote in his report.

Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin took the idea further in a research brief: “Voice is on the cusp of becoming the mechanism to eliminate the remote with our TV experience.” If an Apple hub provided entirely hands-free control of TV, it would change the Apple TV experience for good.

If Not Now, When?

KGI Securities’ Kuo said that there’s an “over 50%” chance that this new product will be announced at Apple’s WWDC developer conference starting June 5. But there are also good reasons to believe that the new product might not be announced at the WWDC developer event coming up June 5. The spring event is typically reserved for talking about new stuff in the four major Apple operating systems, and a major hardware product announcement would steal some of that thunder.

On the other hand, it may simply be time to jump into the market. Amazon and Google already have smart speakers. Samsung’s Harman Kardon has announced one powered by Microsoft’s Cortana. There will be others. And they may spur adoption of entire platforms: For instance, if a Google Home shows up on the kitchen counter one day, the family might be tempted to start buying home accessories that work well with it.

Google Home

Amazon created the smart-speaker category; the Echo has proved remarkably popular with consumers, strongly suggesting that they want to be able to talk to a home device as if it were a person standing in the room with them. But the name “smart speaker” never really fit even the Echo, and as more and more products come out it’ll fit new entrants in the category even less.

We’ve already seen Amazon itself aggressively widening the category to include a variety of devices that contain the Alexa brain. In just the past few weeks it’s announced two of them: The Echo Look, a smart mirror that is meant for the bedroom and is more about its camera than anything else. And the new Amazon Show‘s distinguishing feature is its display.

In another year, the only things that will still be true of all the devices in this category will be that they’re connected to internet services and can understand and speak natural language in the open air. While Amazon’s Echo has defined the category so far, Apple has a shot at redefining it–as it’s done in the past with MP3 players, smartphones, and beyond.

Will A Basic Income Mean The End Of Work? Don’t Get Too Excited

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The Future of Not Working” is how the New York Times headlined a big recent magazine article on universal basic income (UBI). And why not? UBI–the idea of giving all citizens regular payments to cover basic needs–is generally considered a work alternative: a response to the age of extreme automation, when work is no longer available, or a solution that recognizes work as boring and demeaning, and therefore something best left to history. UBI detractors will say if you give people money, they’ll do nothing useful. Fans see UBI as freeing us from pointlessness, allowing us to pursue more creative, socially engaged activities.

In fact, some of this rhetoric could be missing the mark. The evidence from many trials of unconditional cash transfers, including basic income plans, finds little evidence that work (or the desire to work) disappears in conditions of free money. In almost all cases, giving people regular payments hasn’t dampened their thirst for employment. In fact, UBI is a bit like the lottery, says Ioana Marinescu, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, author of a recent paper looking at the relationship between cash transfers and behavior. We may imagine that lottery winners all decamp to Florida (or similar) and sit by the pool all day. Actually, most lottery winners keep clocking in (though presumably less despairingly than before).

“Intuition might tell you, ‘Well if people get this cash, why should they bother working now?’ [We find] the impact on work is very, very small,” Marinescu says in an interview.

The payments have though improved educational attainment, mental health, and reduced alcohol and cannabis use and dependence. [Illustration: Rogotanie/iStock]

Marinescu’s report for the left-of-center Roosevelt Institute looks at data from U.S. and Canadian negative income tax experiments (a form of basic income where incomes are means-tested through the tax system), the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (an ongoing annual payment to all Alaskans ranging from $1,000-$2,000), the Eastern Band of Cherokees casino dividend program (about $4,000 on average), as well as several other studies, including ones covering lottery windfalls. Across several countries, eras, and payment arrangements, the results were similar. People largely continued working even after receiving means not to (or at least the means to work a lot less).

“I think that all these countries give fairly consistent results is deeply encouraging. In principle, we can’t expect the same policy to have the same effect [everywhere], but across these studies we see fairly similar effects,” Marinescu says.

Alaska has made cash transfers since 1982, reaching about 660,000 individuals in 2016 (if you move to Alaska, you can claim the dividend within a year of residency, which is a nice deal). Marinescu and her colleague Damon Jones compared the state’s employment figures with other states without dividends. There’s been no relative decrease in population-employment ratios, though there has been an increase in consumption. Alaskans spend more money proportionately because they have more money.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Casino Dividend, as the name suggests, disburses income from the tribal lands casino: 16,000 people get twice-yearly payments–up to $6,000 in total. Again, there was little change in the ratio of people working either full- or part-time, a long-term study by Duke University researchers found. The payments have though improved educational attainment, mental health, and reduced alcohol and cannabis use and dependence.

Marinescu is currently polling one alternative payment method: a small carbon tax on fossil fuel products that would be returned as a UBI to everyone in America. [Illustration: Rogotanie/iStock]
Meanwhile, in the 1970s, six U.S. states and one province in Canada (Manitoba) took part in negative income tax experiments, where government gave out from between $17,445 to $48,446 for a family of four, then reduced that amount for higher earners, either by taxing the transfer or cutting benefits for each dollar of earned income. Overall, the experiments saw a 4% point decline in employment, the equivalent of men working two weeks less a year, Marinescu says. Only one experiment, in Seattle and Denver (the biggest) saw a big effect: a 7.4% fall in earnings ($1,800 annually) among individuals observed for many years after the experiment ended (perhaps, Marinescu says, because they retired early).

The report compares results from UBI trials with studies into lottery winners. One Swedish study found that winning $140,000 decreases the probability of someone working by about 2% (from a baseline of 77% of the overall population working). But it also found that this effect was entirely gone after 10 years (perhaps because the winners’ money begins to run out).

The evidence so far is not conclusive and a little out of date, but it doesn’t point to large negative effects in terms of employment, health, and education, Marinescu says. If anything, it points to the opposite. Manitoba’s negative income tax (known as Mincome), for example, resulted in a 8.5% decrease in hospitalizations, especially for mental health, accidents, and injuries. For Marinescu, the more interesting question is not what behavioral impacts we might see from UBI, but how to pay for it. Some estimates for a nationwide U.S. UBI put the cost at $1.3 trillion (more than double the defense budget). If we have to slash other public assistance programs or substantially raise taxes, that might seriously affect the results of the UBI itself. Lower-income Americans might get less money overall, harming their health or employment prospects. Or, if we increase taxes, high earners might pay more, with possible ramifications for innovation and hiring trends.

Marinescu is currently polling one alternative payment method: a small carbon tax on fossil fuel products that would be returned as a UBI to everyone in America. Worth about $600 a year, it wouldn’t be a massive rock in the pond. But it would offer a starting point, she says, and kill two birds at the same time: testing UBI and doing something about climate change. Marinescu hopes to identify states most amenable to the idea, helping activists plot a state-by-state political strategy, akin to the campaign for gay marriage and marijuana legalization. Marinescu doesn’t think $600 will make a massive difference to people’s lives, but it would make the UBI idea tangible, leaving room for future expansion.

“Politically, [a national UBI] doesn’t seem feasible in the short run,” she says. “It’s interesting to have smaller transfers first, see the economic effects, and then we can see where we want to go from there.”


Apple’s HomeKit Dilemma: Building A Great Smart-Home Hub Is A Huge Challenge

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If you’re planning to build a smart home around Apple’s HomeKit platform, be prepared for higher prices, more clutter, and fewer choices than other platforms.

That’s because unlike competitors such as SmartThings and Wink, Apple doesn’t support the most popular smart home wireless protocols through a central connection hub. Instead, some HomeKit products such as smart light bulbs and dimmers require their own bridge hardware to connect with Apple devices, adding cost and complexity. And because of Apple’s security requirements for third-party HomeKit bridges, some companies may charge more for HomeKit-compatible hardware or avoid the platform entirely.

All of these problems could theoretically be solved by an official HomeKit hub, capable of managing multiple smart home devices through a single connection point. But for Apple, following other smart home players into the hub business would also bring trade-offs in complexity and functionality. As we approach the third anniversary of Apple’s HomeKit announcement–and the company’s WWDC conference, which could bring HomeKit news, approaches–it’s worth revisiting whether a HomeKit hub really makes sense for Apple.

Philips’ Hue hub

Radio Silence

When Apple announced HomeKit in 2014, the company seemed to be betting on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as its wireless protocols of choice. Because iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV boxes already have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios inside, they can connect directly to certain HomeKit devices with no additional bridges or hubs. Apple TVs and iPads even have some hub-like features, such as being able to relay a Bluetooth signal onto a Wi-Fi network, and enabling remote device control from outside the home.

But Wi-Fi and Bluetooth aren’t always ideal for smart-home products. Wi-Fi tends to be power hungry, making it a poor fit for battery-operated sensors, doorbells, and locks. Bluetooth is more power efficient but has a shorter range, and can’t connect to devices outside the house on its own. Although an upcoming version of Bluetooth will allow many devices to form a single “mesh” network, device makers say they’re uncertain about when this will launch, and how well it will work in smart home applications.

For those reasons, smart home device makers often turn to a couple of well-established smart home protocols known as ZigBee and Z-Wave. Both operate at lower power than Wi-Fi because they’re optimized for sending smart home commands rather than a firehose of data, but they have longer range than Bluetooth. They can even extend their range further by relaying a signal across a chain of devices.

“There is a strong reason for companies making light bulbs, like us, to use a protocol like ZigBee, which is basically designed for these whole-home networks,” says George Yianni, head of home systems technology for Philips Lighting, maker of the popular Hue smart bulbs.

The big trade-off is that Hue bulbs require a middleman device to relay commands between the ZigBee radios inside each bulb and the Wi-Fi radios inside phones, tablets, laptops, and other general-purpose computing devices. A Philips Hue bridge sells for $60 by itself, or for $70 in a bundle with two basic Hue bulbs (normally $15 apiece). Lutron also offers a bridge for its Caseta smart dimmers, priced at $80 by itself or $89 with one dimmer and remote.

With other platforms such as Wink and Samsung’s SmartThings, multiple bridges aren’t entirely necessary. Both systems offer $100 hubs that connect with any ZigBee or Z-Wave device, so users can connect to bulbs, switches, buttons, and sensors from a variety of companies. While the up-front cost is greater than buying a bridge for a single smart home product, the cost over time can be cheaper as you add more devices to your home.

Lutron’s light switch and hub

HomeKit’s Hindrances

Requiring multiple bridges creates complications for HomeKit beyond the added cost. To become certified for HomeKit, each bridge or standalone device must have a licensed MFi chip from Apple, which provides encryption and authentication. While Apple’s high security standards are laudable, they place a bigger burden on device makers, one that might not be necessary with a central MFi-approved hub.

That burden helps explain why Keen Home, a maker of smart air vents, has so far avoided putting an MFi chip in its own bridge, which is required for users who don’t have their own hubs. Will McLeod, Keen’s cofounder and chief of product, says that although the company and its manufacturing partner are MFi-licensed, including the chip would have raised costs for all consumers, including those who don’t want to use HomeKit. Keen is now considering whether to release a separate HomeKit bridge, which would cost more than the current version.

“It’s a non-trivial change, and it’s something that we would have to pass onto consumers, but it might also be something that people are willing to pay more for,” McLeod says.

The MFi chip requirement also creates trade-offs for device makers who stick it out with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi for their HomeKit products. Fibaro, for instance, traded Z-Wave for Bluetooth in the HomeKit versions of its water leak and motion sensors. The Bluetooth and MFi chips put a bigger strain on battery life than Z-Wave would have, prompting Fibaro to strip away some features such as more frequent temperature readings and more fine-grained light sensitivity controls.

“It’s something that was a challenge for us,” says Rich Bira, Fibaro USA’s general manager. “Some manufacturers, if they don’t do the algorithms correctly, or they don’t spend a lot of time on it, the battery can be a bit worse.”

Keen Home's smart air vent
Keen Home’s smart air vent

Waves Of Change

Although it may seem that Apple could solve all these problems by releasing a HomeKit hub, it wouldn’t be a panacea. The up-front cost for a multi-purpose hub would likely be higher than a single-purpose bridge, and could require users to educate themselves about wireless protocols that aren’t in their vernacular.

“I definitely understand where Apple is coming from,” Keen Home’s Will McLeod says. “It’s less for a consumer to understand and learn about.”

McLeod also points out a problem with all multi-purpose hub devices: They don’t support all the things that a device maker might want to do. For example, a platform like HomeKit might not anticipate that a smoke detector should talk to a set of smart vents, telling them to shut off in case of a fire.

“We realize, because we’re deep in the heart of it, that the No. 1 cause of death in a fire is smoke inhalation, and if you can close off the vents when a smoke detector detects smoke, you can prevent that from spreading throughout the home,” McLeod says. “That’s definitely something we want to build, but that’s not something that becomes baked in on a third-party’s platform that’s not thinking about intricacies like that.”

Several other vendors I spoke to also bemoaned the lack of control afforded by generalist hubs. Philips’ George Yianni, for instance, notes that lighting controls are more responsive through the company’s own bridge, and that certain effects such as fading in with the sunrise are more tightly coordinated. Although Philips is open to the idea of putting all its features and integrations onto a third-party hub, the device would need to have enough resources to duplicate everything its own bridge can do, and would require strong business agreements to ensure that Hue support doesn’t get abandoned or fragmented.

“Today, one of the reasons we’re able to keep pushing new features and functionality is we’re able to ensure that all our bridges in the field are running the same software,” Yianni says.

Perhaps the way forward, then, is to approach the hub as an optional add-on for enthusiasts and professionals, rather than a central component of the HomeKit experience. In January, Z-Wave demonstrated a proof-of-concept hub that could map HomeKit controls onto Z-Wave devices. Raoul Wijgergangs, vice president of the Z-Wave business unit at Sigma Designs, which makes the protocol’s hardware modules, says that one company is already working on a HomeKit-enabled Z-Wave hub for later this year. (He won’t give more details, but confirms that it won’t be an Apple product.)

“I think that smart home has proven to be more complex for Apple than they initially realized,” Wijgergangs says. “I’ve experienced them taking a different stand over time toward the more established technologies in this place, and also the more established players and service providers.”

To clear the path for a Z-Wave hub, Sigma spent two years working with Apple on a new security framework, which is now required for all new Z-Wave devices. The upcoming HomeKit hub will have its own MFi chip, and will support all those devices automatically, Wijgergangs says. Although this may create new complexities for consumers, he notes that 80% of the current smart home market is professionally installed. Z-Wave is prominent in that market, so a HomeKit hub could help Apple extend its reach in ways that weren’t possible with just bridges, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.

“They are taking more of an approach to embrace some of the values and essentials of this industry,” Wijgergangs says, “rather than take the more traditional Apple stance of, ‘We know it better, we’re going to change everything, and we’re Apple, so the world will adhere to the way we view it.'”

The Relationship Between Brands And Music Needs To Evolve

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Music is what anthropologists call a “cultural universal.” It’s one of the few constants across the diverse cultures of the world that is practiced and celebrated in every society. And while it manifests differently across a wide range of industries and cultural disciplines, there is no denying the huge role it plays in people’s lives, the passion it evokes, and the emotion it can communicate, even breaking down language barriers.

For thousands of years, music has been used as a means of emotional expression. It has unique psychological qualities that can affect listeners in many ways, impacting emotions, creating a somatic effect, and even being used as a means of achieving catharsis. With such deep psychological effects, it’s not a surprise that music fans’ relationships with musicians also run very deep. And in a digital world of “always on,” music fans are connecting to artists at unprecedented levels through a multitude of platforms.

So why do only a relatively small number of brands utilize this powerful passion to connect with the incredibly diverse audiences they must engage with to boost their business?

In 2015, close to 91% of all Americans listened to music more than 24 hours a week. Last year, we even saw the music industry move back to positive growth after years of decline, as it finally began to find its bearings around streaming, with streaming revenue increasing 57.4% from the first half of 2015, to the first half of 2016.

While there is no denying that the streaming model is not yet perfect, with unanswered questions around the revenue opportunities for smaller, less established artists, there has been a shift to a place where consumers are prepared to pay for something that the digital world had previously served them for free. This is a bright spot, but one that comes potentially too late for an industry that has seen its profit model rendered unrecognizable by the digital advances of the last 20 years, leaving artists to find or invent new revenue streams wherever they can.

Looking at the world through the lens of brand marketing, we see many forward-thinking brands recognizing the need to engage their consumers through their passions. Smart marketers are no longer selling through messages alone, but rather providing experiences to strengthen the connections between themselves and consumers. When looking at the research and data, it’s clear that music and culture offer brands an advantage in consumer engagement and in commercial metrics. A study by AEG & Momentum Worldwide found that 83% of millennials leave with a greater trust for brands that support a live music experience.

[Photo: Flickr user Jennahomen]

This leaves us at an exciting intersection in marketing where brands and artists have many positive and mutually beneficial reasons to come together to create, communicate, and collaborate. In simple terms, two key events have created this new landscape. First, a shift in the commercial model for artists, driving them to rethink their opportunities; and second, the large increase in brands with a desire and necessity to create new experiences for their consumers, moving away from the traditional ad model that is being forced to evolve at a great pace.

The movement, however, is not entirely new. Artists and brands have worked together for many years, but rarely have their interests been so aligned. However, when assessing opportunities, both artists and brands must follow some key rules of engagement to ensure that the partnership is positive and rewarding for music fans, artists, and brands.

  • There is no shortcut. The best work will require insights and strategic thinking, informing an integrated creative process between all parties.
  • Brands and artists both need to respect the unique dynamic and communicate openly.
  • Understanding what artists are looking to achieve will immediately break down barriers and open up a forum for new ideas and experiences.
  • As a foundation, artists and brands should be clear on their aim and objectives.
  • Aspire to support the music ecosystem and create new opportunities for artists, with that comes respect and endorsement.
  • Understand that artists who consider opportunities with brands are not “selling out,” an outdated term. In fact, quite often, it is the approach that is outdated.

Looking at the current landscape there are some forward-thinking experiences taking place that personify these rules, and demonstrate real success and value. Identifying key insights during planning is critical, and State Farm utilized this approach to help create a relevant experience for consumers at music festivals, offering helpful services that brought their brand promise to life while also proving insurance can be relevant in a millennial-rich space. For Microsoft’s music program, the key to success is in the long-term strategic approach–the aim was to understand how they could inspire and empower artists with new technology to help create immersive and powerful experiences driven by Microsoft technology. The result is a series of inspiring collaborations that allow artists to think outside the box and feel confident that they have the full support of an experienced technology partner to help execute. Most recently the work with M83 brought to life an interactive video experience that allowed fans to explore a music video through a video game format.

Not putting music at the top of consumer passion points disregards data from around the globe that demonstrates the power of music and the impact it can have on brand marketing. Through a planned and strategic approach, implemented by an experienced partner, brands have a huge opportunity to truly integrate with artists and create experiences that have a substantial brand impact, artist impact, and take them to a wider, more engaged audience.


Andy Walsh is a founding partner at creative music agency Listen, which has worked with clients like Microsoft, Tinder, Spotify, Live Nation, and more.

CEOs Got Huge Raises Last Year–Did You?

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In the 1970s, the great management theorist Peter Drucker famously said the gap between CEO pay and the rest of a company’s workers should be no more than 20-to-1. Any greater ratio, he argued, would inevitably lead to resentment and loss of morale among the rank-and-file. Today, those sort of expectations look quaint. Driven by Wall Street, CEO pay has been rising ever higher, even as incomes among the bottom half of earners have been stagnating. The latest figures, from leadership data firm Equilar, show typical CEOs at large public companies earned $11.5 million last year, an increase of 8.5% from the year before. Across the S&P 500, CEOs made 347 times more than average employees in 2016, according to separate numbers kept by the AFL-CIO. The ratio was just 46-to-1 in 1983, the union says.

The best-paid executives were in industrial goods (companies like 3M, Caterpillar, and GE) who had average pay of $13.2 million. The best-paid single executives tended to be in communications. Thomas Rutledge, CEO of Charter Communications, received $98 million, including stock options, Equilar says. Leslie Moonves, at the helm at CBS, made $68.6 million, while Robert Iger, at Walt Disney, made $41 million. All the numbers are estimates, because of the difficulty of estimating stock options. Ginni Rometty, at IBM, has been heavily criticized for her reported $33 million pay package, but some analysts reckon that her total remuneration could be worth as much as $50 million, depending on assumptions you make about future share performance.

Defenders of CEO pay argue that top executives–like top NBA or baseball players–operate in a separate market from everyone else. There are only so many managers capable of running large companies, just like there are only so many outfielders who can hit .300-plus consistently. Moreover, they say, CEOs earn their money by delivering returns to shareholders. Charter’s share price has risen more than 100 points in the last year, on the back of acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, for instance. But then CEO pay increases often don’t correlate with investor returns. Rometty has delivered five years of falling revenues and as little as 0.1% for investors over that time.

Most workers, both here and in other countries, tend to think that the CEO-employee pay gaps are much less wide than they are. [Photo: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images]
It’s hard to know what psychological effect these salaries have on workers at America’s largest companies. The Associated Press, which helped produce the analysis, says full-time employees as a whole have seen their pay rise of 10.9% over the last five years, but those numbers include CEOs and other highly workers as well as the rank-and-file. Average U.S. households are still earning less than they did in the late-1990s, U.S. Census figures show. Most workers, both here and in other countries, tend to think that the CEO-employee pay gaps are much less wide than they are, a study by academics Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael Norton showed. It’s possible therefore that Drucker’s feared resentment is not as great as it might be.

In 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission started requiring companies to offer shareholders the right to protest executive pay awards. These “say-on-pay” votes, while only advisory, have led boards to reconsider whether CEOs are really worth what they claim. The AP notes that when higher numbers of shareholders express displeasure, it often results in a rethink. For example, automotive supplier BorgWarner last year saw 60% of share-votes either resisting or abstaining on its CEO pay package. It subsequently cut CEO James Verrier’s compensation from $2.4 million to just $950,000.

But the say-on-pay rules might not be around for long. Working with allies in Congress, the Trump Administration is trying to scale back the Dodd-Frank legislation that made such votes mandatory. It could also end a requirement for companies, starting this year, to report their CEO-to-median worker pay ratios, which also offer some leverage for shareholders (and outsiders) over the issue. For the moment, the long-running increases in CEO pay–and in CEO-to-worker ratios–look set to continue unabated.

Seven CEOs’ Secrets For Running More Productive Meetings

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How often do your meetings go on for way too long? Actually, don’t answer that–here’s a better question. How often do your meetings end exactly when they need to? Yeah, thought so.

“Walking into any meeting, it’s important to remember that everyone in the room is sacrificing part of his or her day to be there,” says Shivani Siroya, CEO of fintech startup Tala. “And when you treat people’s time with the reverence it deserves, suddenly meetings become a force for good in your day, rather than the thing you had to do.”

It’s easier said than done. Many workplaces struggle to trim down their meeting time to the bare minimum that’s needed to be effective. But some execs have figured out some ways to do just that. Here’s how these seven CEOs keep their meetings short and sweet while making sure their team members–include remote ones–aren’t left in the dark.


Related: How These 12 Companies Make Meetings Memorable, Effective, And Short


Set The Agenda In Advance

Eugene Chung, CEO of the virtual reality (VR) company Penrose Studios, says “the best meetings are the ones where there was more preparation going into it than the length of the meeting itself.” This sounds obvious, but it’s often one of the first things to lapse when work gets busy. Some CEOs ask team members to do some pre-reading prior to a meeting; others outline some action items themselves, then share those around the day before.

For Marcela Sapone, CEO of the butler service Hello Alfred, agenda setting is much simpler. She just asks a single question at the start of every meeting: What is the goal? “You’ll also find that question at the top of all our documents, Slack channels, and calendar invites,” she says.

Too many meetings are spent plodding through slide decks that could just as easily be reviewed by employees individually beforehand–if at all, points out Michael Hansen, CEO of the edtech company Cengage. “The meeting should be a discussion on the topic, not a roll-through of slides,” he says. Hansen often gives employees a short reading assignment so they can skip the slide decks when it’s time to meet.

On-demand child care startup Trusted creates a designated list for each meeting on its internal Trello board. (Many organizations, Fast Company included, use the productivity tool for task management.) Prior to the meeting, employees are then invited to add cards to the Trello list, which alerts CEO Anand Iyer to agenda items they want to address.

“The person adding the card is responsible for adding information about what they want to discuss, and how long they think the agenda item will run,” he says. “During the meeting, I usually play time cop. Cards that are added first on the list get addressed first.”


Related:How Trello Employees Use Trello


Warby Parker also shares meeting agendas with its teams ahead of time, but opts for Google Docs to do that instead of Trello. Employees are welcome to comment on anything in the agenda document–including people who may be less inclined to speak up during a meeting.

This approach isn’t just for big all-hands meetings, either. According to Morgan DeBaun, CEO of media startup Blavity, it works great for more intimate ones, too. DeBaun asks employees to send her an agenda in advance of even one-on-one meetings, giving her time to prepare to field simple questions beforehand. This way, says DeBaun, “We can spend time actually working through issues as opposed to them giving me a status update.”

Cap Your Meeting Time

“People have the tendency to schedule meetings for exactly one hour,” Hansen points out, even though “in reality, very few meetings actually need an hour.” He now limits meetings to 30-45 minutes, as do many managers at Cengage. “Meetings that were once 30 minutes are now 25; 60-minute meetings are now 45,” he says.

Hansen isn’t the only CEO who’s started allocating less time for meetings overall. “By default, we are no longer scheduling meetings for more than 30 minutes and hoping that they end even earlier,” says Lance Neuhauser, CEO of adtech company 4C.

DeBaun follows much the same rule, albeit with a few exceptions. “If something is going to take longer than 30 minutes, then it’s really a working session or about relationship building,” she adds.

But sometimes, meeting at all just isn’t necessary, and the best course of action is to cancel altogether. This is where setting an agenda in advance comes in handy: Iyer says that “if there are zero cards” on Trusted’s Trello board prior to a meeting, it gets canceled.

Use Video To Meet With Far-Flung Employees . . .

In today’s workplaces, productive meetings also depend on the participation of remote employees–a necessity that too many crappy conference-call systems seem hellbent on frustrating. That’s why many CEOs agree that it’s crucial to invest in a decent platform for screen sharing and making video calls. Iyer uses Screenhero, a collaboration tool that integrates with Slack, to bring Trusted’s remote employees into a team meeting or conversation.

But even small gestures can help remote employees feel more present. Sapone’s team at Hello Alfred holds weekly all-hands meetings in Google Hangouts; the team working out of the company’s New York headquarters gathers around a big table in the kitchen where there’s a TV at the end of the room, and remote workers in San Francisco and Boston join the session through Hangouts. “We coordinate the snacks so we are having a similar experience, and swap the order of who presents first all the time to make it fair,” she says.

Chung uses (what else?) Penrose’s own VR collaboration tool, called Maestro, during meetings with remote employees. “Whenever our team wants to collaborate on things, we all hop into VR and collaborate inside of a fully virtual space,” he says.

. . . But Don’t Use It As A Substitute For Face Time

Still, anyone who leads team meetings via video knows they can devolve into a maelstrom of technical issues. And even when tech meltdowns aren’t a factor, remote employees may opt out of participating in a call because they aren’t present and being held accountable.

“Have you tried to do a brainstorm via conference call?” Hansen says. “You’re guaranteed that people will put you on mute and multitask.” Since Cengage has a lot of remote employees, Hansen says it’s crucial to choose a meeting format–in-person, video, or conference call–depending on the topic of discussion. Neuhauser agrees it’s hard to host a robust brainstorm over the airwaves. “There’s nothing comparable to being in the room where it happens, so when important meetings and brainstorms take place we try to do them in-person,” he says.

Of course, that isn’t always possible. Because he knows some remote employees will inevitably miss out on certain meetings, Neuhauser regularly checks in with them individually “to make sure they have a chance to make their voices heard.” A number of companies host the real-life equivalent of an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit, in an effort to be transparent and give all employees a chance to chat with company leaders.

Slack and other group chat platforms can also help democratize brainstorms and keep remote employees in the loop. Both Sapone and DeBaun cite Slack as a crucial tool for bridging the gap. “We use Slack for most team communication, and many of our content producers are remote, so we have a #collaborate channel where people are constantly asking for feedback or ideas,” DeBaun says. “Some of our best articles are from people asking questions in Slack and everyone pitching in.”

Sometimes, though, it’s worth going the extra mile to have all your employees in the room. Tala has offices in Santa Monica, Nairobi, and Manila; usually, the team holds video meetings, and employees alternate between staying up late and waking up early to account for the time difference. But as Siroya points out, real face time is still critical. “Earlier this year, we brought our entire Kenyan engineering team to Santa Monica for a month,” she says.

Seen one way, that’s one really long meeting. But it helps cut back on the need for countless, less effective, smaller ones.

Honest Trailers Celebrates Its 200th Video And A Vision For Its Future

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Andy Signore wants to be taken seriously–and he’s fully aware that may be somewhat of a challenge as the creator of Honest Trailers, a wildly popular YouTube channel that gives comedically blunt breakdowns of blockbuster films.

Since the first “honest trailer” for Star Wars: Episode I–The Phantom Menace‘s 3D release in 2012, Signore and his team have managed to spin that viral hit into the media company Screen Junkies, which houses a multitude of digital shows all focused on film and TV. The challenge for Signore, who is also senior vice president of content for Screen Junkies’s parent company DEFY Media, has been keeping his flagship entity fresh while establishing a brand that can prove its more than trailer spoofs.

“The whole plan is to figure how can we be seen as not just an internet brand. How can people think of us as an authority in film and TV, with more of a comedic take than regular entertainment shows?” Signore says.

Signore has said before that he ultimately sees Screen Junkies as the ESPN of film and TV: a digital network with a similar commentary format but, of course, with “nerdier debates.”

Andy Signore [Photo: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]
“I do think there’s a hole for that right now, and we’re doing really well at building enough credibility to get us to that point where we can then become that authority,” Signore says.

In addition to Honest Trailers being nominated for an Emmy last year and hitting its 200th video milestone this month, part of building that credibility has been proving financial stability and audience engagement outside of YouTube.

Screen Junkies added its subscription service, Screen Junkies Plus, in 2015 as a means to offer premium content for viewers willing to pay $5 per month. That supplemental revenue stream has allowed Screen Junkies to venture into new territory, namely documentaries. Signore announced earlier this month that several documentaries are currently in the works–the first one on deck for a release later this year profiles the 1999 cult classic Galaxy Quest.

“It’s really about figuring out what the audience would like and what also fuels our passion,” Signore says. “If we don’t give them what they want, we’re out of business. But what are we really excited about and how can we flex our muscles, creatively?”

Honest Trailers will always be a part of Signore’s creative DNA. However, he’s positioning Screen Junkies not only as an extension of film and TV-related content but as a company that will be able to stand on its own without relying too heavily on YouTube’s platform.

“You need to make sure you have multiple ways to reach [your audience] because at the end of the day YouTube’s algorithm can change however they want–they can flip a switch and suddenly your numbers start going away. I know views are down on a lot of channels out there and people are complaining about it,” Signore says. “I think we’re very lucky with Honest Trailers, but I don’t consider us in the YouTube business–I consider us in the content business and YouTube is a platform that we respect and [utilize]. That’s why a [Screen Junkies Plus] was born.”

“So don’t just see us as Honest Trailers,” Signore goes on to say. “We’re a legit brand trying to make amazing content from our point of view and in our voice–that’s the goal moving forward.”

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