Workplace

In his new book, Josh Levs says many dads today want to engage with their families, but old office stereotypes prevail, with corporate policies standing in the way.  He says that hurts not only fathers, but families and businesses as well.

This program was originally broadcast on 9/16/15.

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With a beak like a parrot, venom strong enough to dissolve flesh, and eight writhing tentacles, the octopus is among the most alien-looking of creatures.

On today’s show, a naturalist explores animal consciousness through the eyes of the incredible octopus. Plus, classical instruments through the eyes of musical rebels, Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufield of Arcade Fire. 

There’s plenty of evidence that drug use during pregnancy can harm the fetus, but should using illicit substances while pregnant be a criminal offense? On today’s show, an unfiltered look at what happens when expectant mothers are jailed for drug use.

Then, from Mexican cartels to Isis, the rise in kidnappings globally adds up to a 1.6 billion dollar “hostage industry”. Later in the show a journalist attends “Hostage Camp”, where wealthy travelers learn how to survive a kidnapping.  

With this generation of young adults coming into its own, we look at who they are and what motivates them.  Some say they’re entitled, obsessed with technology, and have short attention spans - but others say Millennials are highly creative, dynamic and more open to new ways of looking at society.

This show was originally broadcast on May 27, 2014.

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From the early days of counting houses, when office jobs were looked down on but were still considered a refuge from factory work,  to the modern day cubicle. We talk with author Nikil Saval about his new book "Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace." (This show was originally broadcast on 7/2/14)

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• Nikil Saval - an editor of  n + 1, a print and digital magazine of literature, culture, and politics. "Cubed" is his first book.

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A new national report finds New Hampshire and plenty of other states sorely lacking when it comes to supporting new parents. This comes amid a larger, national conversation about “family-friendly” work environments: what that involves, what’s reasonable and what isn’t, and how some of these policies affect productivity and the bottom line.

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Every day, the internet is inundated with more information, and more data to be to be categorized, organized, scrubbed, and filed away in a timely manner. Millions of miniscule tasks need to be performed each day to keep things running smoothly. Computers can do some of this mind-numbing work; other tasks are done piecemeal by hundreds of thousands of people for almost no money; Amazon Mechanical Turk is a marketplace for this kind of work. Ellen Cushing is staff writer for The East Bay Express, she wrote about the work called “micro-tasking,” which pays a pittance, drawing comparisons to working in a sweatshop.

We’re continuing our series “How We Work: Five Years Later” by defining “employee satisfaction” in twenty-thirteen.  During the recession, many people held onto their jobs even if they were unhappy, and many employers were unable to go above and beyond the basics. But now, there’s more attention to this issue, whether it’s flex-time, good benefits, or better pay, and how these improvements affect productivity.

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Do employees work harder when they are paid more?

A new study out of Harvard set out to answer that question and came away with some interesting conclusions. One, that employers should consider not just what they pay workers, but how. Offering cash bonuses increases employee productivity more than raises in  salaries, even if the amount of bump is exactly the same.   

Duncan Gilchrist is Ph.D. student studying business economics at Harvard, and one of the authors of the study. 

Is there an adult out there who has not, in a moment of fatigue, insomnia, or on a particularly hard day at work, looked around at their life and asked, “Is this it? Is this what I want my life to be?”  Even people who have plenty of money and status and work in their industry of choice may find themselves fantasizing about a job that engages their spirit. A new book from the School of Life series sets out a practical guide to negotiating the myriad choices, overcoming the fear of change, and finding a career that has meaning. Roman Krznaric is a founding member of the school of life. He advises organizations from Oxfam to the UN on using empathy and conversation to create social change. He spoke to us from Oxford, England to talk about his new book How to Find Fulfilling Work.

The practice has increased, but women who want to breastfeed still face barriers at work as well as out and about in public. We’ll talk about some of the research on this subject, as well as questions about where and how moms can do this and how much accommodation the workplace should have to make. 

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Don't fear the ides of June, the Saturday show is here! Our can't miss mix of the best of the best of Word of Mouth.

The popular website glassdoor has thousands of people posting their salaries, reviews of their companies, and other juicy corporate tidbits online for all to see. Does this mark the end of salary secrecy? And what do companies think about it?

Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook has touched down in China.

Today, the Boston Globe reported on the growing trend of employees abandoning their chairs and standing up at their workstations. It's become a pretty popular topic since we first started talking about it nearly a year ago, and a popular topic around these parts, too, in no small part because I am still the only standing employee in my workspace. The good news?

Are you sitting down? Well, listen up: research shows that sitting too much shaves years off of your life. In 2011, a study in the emerging field of Inactivity Studies found that each hour of sitting per day increases a person’s risk of death due to cardiovascular diseases by 18 percent. It turns out that eating well and getting plenty of exercise do not offset the detriments of couch potato time as much as living and working in an environment where standing is the default option. As part of our continuing series Shifting the Balance, we spoke with Dr.