Work, Employee | featured news

Engineer Dallas Goecker attends meetings, jokes with colleagues and roams the office building just like other employees at his company in Silicon Valley.

Thursday is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work day, although perhaps you didn't notice. The annual event, started 20 years ago as a way to expose girls and young women to workplace and career opportunities, has attracted less attention in recent years.

Employees who tweet or update their Facebook status saying ‘I had a bad day at
work’ could face losing their jobs, says a leading employment lawyer.

At a time of lingering economic malaise, gyrating markets and high unemployment, it's not surprising that workers around the world are less than content at their jobs. They're also feeling a diminished sense of loyalty, according to a new global analysis of data gathered by Mercer, the giant New York City-based human resources consulting firm.

The presence of company stock within a 401k plan is a major red flag. On the other hand, it provides a simple way for employees to assess whether they can trust their employer and any of the products and services offered within a plan. The more company stock within a 401k plan, the less an employer can be trusted. It's that simple.

Amid so much downsizing, it's risky and unnecessary for managers to let feelings confuse what ought to be a clean transaction when firing an employee.

Carol Bartz, the chief executive of Yahoo, says that immediate feedback is important for employees.

Residents of Swiss financial center Zurich know that their country has more to offer than world-class chocolate and precision watches. They can now brag that, on the whole, they earn more than anyone in the world. Zurich-dwellers rake in $22.60 per hour in average net pay, according to a wage survey released August 19. The runner-up city is less than 200 miles southwest: Geneva, where jobs pay $20.40 per hour.

Dear Annie: We used to have a great team here, until our boss was replaced by a manager brought in from another part of the company who is now trying to control our every move. He insists on telling everyone what to do and how to do it in minute detail (even though we've all been excelling at our jobs for years).