Team Taskmaster

Gizmodo had a post today about Powermat, a wireless charger for up to three electronic devices. I heard the buzz on this product while it was in development and was interested to see what kind of press its debut has been getting.

Gizmodo’s take? “Wireless charging is still in its infancy, but the idea is great: you have a lil’ mat or platform onto which you can toss your gadgets and let them charge. No tangled wires and fumbling around.”

Rachel Metz of the Associated Press likes the Powermat, too: “There’s something thrilling about cutting (most of) the cords.”

Sounds good, and I’m all about simplifying and streamlining and boosting efficiency. But I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid quite yet.

First of all, it’s pricey: $100 for the mat and an additional $30 to $40 for the special case for each device you’ll be charging. Do I really want to shell out $220 when I can just plug in for free?

Second, would I prefer to travel with a big mat (and its attendant cord, which of course needs to be plugged into an outlet) rather than bring my device chargers — some of which are pretty low-profile USB connectors?

A big ad blitz for Powermat (estimated at $10 to $15 million) kicked off this week, so I’m sure you’ll start seeing it everywhere. And it’ll be retailing at Target and Best Buy in a month or so. In the meantime, check out this admittedly clever commercial for the product.

Are you trying to cut costs by bringing, rather than buying, your workday lunch? Kudos to you. It’s definitely a money-saver — in fact, you could save over $1,000 per year just by brown-bagging it three times a week. You can even calculate the cost of your homemade sandwich to prove the savings to yourself.

But let’s face it: Bringing your own lunch can get boring, not to mention tedious. After all, you have to do the grocery shopping, engineer your meal every morning (or night before, if you’re a planner), and hope your goodies don’t get squashed on the commute.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some ideas on how to hack your DIY lunch so your meal is a daily treat, not a trial.

Start a lunch pool. Find four other colleagues willing to participate, and have each one pick a day to make lunch for the group. It’s a great way to add some variety to the mix and skip four out of five days of prep work.

Spice up your spreads. If a sandwich is your stand-by, add a little sizzle with gourmet mustard, cilantro mayonnaise, sun-dried tomato spread, horseradish, hummus, spreadable cheese, or even salad dressing.

Up the crunch factor. Add seeds or nuts to your soups, salads, and pastas — even to your sandwiches. The texture will make your food more satisfying and seem more filling.

Warm up to the microwave. Even a boring sandwich takes on more personality when it’s got warm, melted cheese inside. And toasty leftovers beats cold sliced chicken any day.

Banish the sog. Wilted salads? Not any more. Just separate your ingredients into plastic containers (or plastic baggies) and assemble your salad at the office. Or invest in a special container, like the Fit & Fresh Salad Shaker, that lets you keep the dressing separate and the salad nicely chilled.

Recycle your dinners. Cook a little extra in the evening and voila — you’ll have tasty leftovers to bring to work in the morning.

Don’t skip the soup. A hearty soup can be incredibly satisfying on a cold (or tough) day in the office. Homemade rocks, but there are plenty of “just add water” packaged versions out there that’ll do the trick, too.

Go gourmet. If you can cook, there’s no reason not to make your bagged lunch a fine-dining experience. Build a panini, create a gorgeous pesto pasta, or grill up some seasoned veggies. Need inspiration? Check out these recipes for a better brown bag lunch from three New York chefs.

Think outside the (sandwich) box. Tired of two slices of whole wheat, mayo, mustard, ham, cheese, and tomato? Sandwiches come in infinite varieties. Try a different kind of bread - baguette, sourdough roll, ciabbata, focaccia, pita, tortilla. Swap out your American cheese for some brie, Havarti, or goat’s cheese. How about sun-dried tomatoes instead of fresh? Or turn to the doyenne of food for ideas: Martha Stewart offers 25 great sandwich ideas, plus new takes on salads and lunchbox treats.

If you’ve got other ideas for improving your brown-bag lunch, share them with the Team Taskmaster readers in the comments section.

(image by Melyviz via Flickr, CC 2.0)

If you see a co-worker in a neighboring cubicle contorting into a strange pose, relax. She’s probably not having a convulsion. Rather, it’s more likely that she has embraced the latest workplace stressbuster: yoga.

A pilot study published in the journal Health Education & Behavior found that 20 minutes per day of guided workplace meditation and yoga, combined with six weekly group sessions, can lower feelings of stress by more than 10 percent in sedentary office employees.

Researchers from Ohio State found that yoga and meditation combined reduced participants’ stress, improved their awareness of external stressors, and helped them sleep better. In addition to 20 minutes of practice at their desks, participants attended a weekly, one-hour session during their lunch breaks.

Since lowering stress can increase productivity, adding yoga to the mix can be a win-win for the workplace. Want to put this into practice in your office? Learn some simple yoga moves you can do at your desk or in your office, try a little meditation — the approach used in the study was mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR, but any type can help — and try to attend a weekly yoga class.

(image by enfad via Flickr, CC 2.0)

When it comes to our brethren in Europe, we tend to have a love-hate relationship with the French. I’m a Francophile myself, having lived in Paris once upon a time, but I have plenty of friends who jumped on the Freedom Fries train and consider the French to be rude, snobby, and generally insufferable.

(Of course, I have French friends who consider Americans crude, slobby, and generally unutterable, so I guess we’re even.)

So I thought it was funny to see some recent statistics that indicated that the French may be both lazier than Americans — and simultaneously more productive.

A survey from UBS has shown that the French continue to work the least amount of hours per year in the world. The average in surveyed cities was about 1,900 hours per year, but workers in Paris and Lyon are logging only about 1,600. (Most hours worked? Cairo, at 2,373 per year.)

However, point out Vincent Fernando and John Carney of The Business Insider, the real message here isn’t about laziness — it’s that the French are likely some of the most productive people in the world.

Think about it. Nationmaster ranks France as #18 in terms of GDP per capita, at $36,500 per person, yet France works much less than most developed nations. They achieve their high standard of living while working 16% less hours than the average world citizen…Plus, if you visit France you’ll also realize that their actual standard of living is probably much higher than GDP numbers would indicate.

Thus, if one were to divide France’s GDP per capita by actual hours worked, you’d probably find that the French are achieving some of the highest returns on work-hours invested. Labor Alpha, if you will.

In fact, crunch the numbers and you’ll find that the French Labor Alpha is about $0.50 GDP/capita/hour over the U.S.

It may sound small at first, but add that up across millions of people, and a few decades. Now you’ve built a lesson for the rest of the world to learn.

The message? Work smarter, not harder. And maybe revisit your assumptions about the French work ethic.

(image by mabel flores via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Back before the economy imploded and unemployment hovered near 10 percent and some of my most-respected colleagues began exploring Amway as a valid income option, we were always counseled to play hard-to-get in job interviews.

Don’t talk salary first. Be enthusiastic, but don’t gush. Remember that you’d be bringing value to their organization. Above all, make sure you negotiate, because after all, any job offer is just a starting point.

Has that all changed?

I just read a piece by Tim Tolan on Fistful of Talent in which he expressed consternation that a candidate might go through several rounds of vetting and still show up at the final interview with a “you’d be lucky to have me” attitude. His point seemed to be that with unemployment rates as high as they are, anyone should be swooningly grateful to have made it that far.

“Maybe they don’t understand math or are so caught up in themselves they simply don’t get it. Can you say ‘clueless’? Thanks.”

Now, maybe he’s talking about people who are still saying “I’m not sure this is the direction I want to go” in that final interview. If that’s the case, he’s dead-on. If you’re so unsure of whether this job is the right fit, why in tarnation did you keep interviewing up to this point?

But if he’s talking about a candidate who’s confident in his abilities and is expecting to have his prospective employers show him a certain amount of wooing, well, I think he’s dead wrong.

I recently interviewed for a gig that would have been a huge win-win. I brought to the table a unique skill set and background that would fill a gaping hole in their structure. They were a smart organization that would have provided me new challenges and opportunities. And they recruited me; I didn’t approach them. It took them two months to convince me to interview — for a position they were creating for me.

But when I went to meet the senior management, they spent no time at all telling me how much they’d like to have me on board, or why I’d be a good fit, or what the company could offer me. Instead, they grilled me on minutiae like start times, telecommuting, and vacation requirements.

I get it that you need to figure that stuff out. But considering the effort they put into pursuing me, you’d think they wouldn’t treat me as if I was someone who’d just walked in off the street with a “Help Wanted” ad clutched in my grimy hand.

In the end, I said no, despite a fair offer. Recession or not, I want to be part of an organization that values me, not one that expects me to be grateful just to have a paycheck.

I’m sure I’m going to get plenty of comments from people who will flame me for turning up my nose at a steady income, but so be it; my job satisfaction comes from more than just money. As long as I’m getting by, I’ll hold out for that professional respect.

So I say playing hard-to-get is still the right approach. If you don’t respect yourself, how can you expect a potential employer to respect you?

(image by WTL Photos via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Want to make yourself indispensable at work? You can help bullet-proof your career (or get yourself noticed for a promotion) with five simple steps, says Ali Hale of Dumb Little Man. The first three:

1. Do your job and do it well. Sound obvious? Well, it’s not. How many of us coast through some (or all) of the day, turn in an “OK” rather than “stellar” report, or tell ourselves something isn’t worth putting effort into? To become a company hero, you need to not only do your job, but do it to a high standard, says Hale.
2. Mind your manners. You’d never be intentionally rude to your boss, but have you ever snapped at a colleague? Or been snotty with a receptionist? How you treat others, from the janitor to the CEO, gets noticed. Make sure it’s for the right reasons.
3. Get positive, even if you have to fake it. Sure, maybe you’re not completely engaged with a project or a challenge. But moaning and whining about it won’t win you any points. Be the “can do” person, the one with a smile even when the situation gets difficult. Focus on the things you enjoy about your job and take the time to praise or encourage colleagues, suggests Hale.

Hale has two more tricks and some other helpful ideas, so swing on by and read her full post, How to Make Yourself Indispensable at Work. And good luck in becoming the office superstar.

Oh, you want me to join your meeting for a quick info download? Great. Don’t forget to tell me to build a PowerPoint presentation.

Instead of letting me speak to the group for three minutes to explain the new initiative, make me present a slide deck. With bullet points. And, preferably, with cutesy little graphics. Bonus points for animated slides.

Make sure we take time to futz with the A/V setup, pull the blinds, and make sure everyone in the room has a good sightline. Burn a little time by making me stand up in front of the group and assigning some random person to click through my presentation for me.

By all means, have me read verbatim from the PowerPoint slides. After all, it would be heresy for me to be spontaneous, natural, or (God forbid) collaborative with my audience.

Remind me to make 14 hard copies of the slide deck to pass out at the conclusion of my talk, which has now taken 20 minutes instead of the anticipated three. Why? Because no one was paying attention to the presentation anyway, so they might want to read it later.

Also, it makes people feel important to walk away from a meeting with a sheaf of paper. Let’s not worry about the trees or the company’s “Go Green!” initiatives.

And above all, never mind that it took me a grand total of two hours — building the slide deck, making copies, and presenting — to convey information that, again, should’ve taken three minutes, max.

What a great use of my time and a fabulous way to boost my productivity! The corporate reliance on PowerPoint for all purposes is clearly a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Last week, I blogged about the growing trend of cubicle-free workplaces. The folks at Harvard Business Review had noted that cubicles don’t really work, saying they discourage collaboration, lower engagement, and make it tougher to innovate.

Being that we’re talking Harvard here, you’d think they know what they’re talking about. But your take? Not a chance.

Pretty much all of you who responded blew a big fat raspberry at the idea of open workspaces. Bouchart wrote:

“Why would I want to collaborate more? Most of the data I work with is bad or incomplete, so everyone would just be sharing their flawed conclusions and ignorance.”

Added gkumaran,

“With a small drawing board and non-closed environment, I cannot think more. I get distracted easily. Which severely degrades your work, if your work involves creativity.”

And my colleague Geoffrey James opined,

“Actually, creative people need private offices so that they can think privately. Maybe it’s the open bullpen — and the lack of focus that it creates — that’s killed the newspaper business.”

Good points, all. Maybe ditching the cubicles isn’t the way to more productivity. I’d like to hear what the rest of you think, so…it’s poll time!

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(image by GraceFamily via Flickr, CC 2.0)

It’s been a tough year or two for most of us, what with the economy imploding, jobs getting slashed, and home values plummeting. But for a few, it’s proven too much too handle.

According to The New York Times, workplace suicides rose significantly from 2007 to 2008, to a series high of 251 nationwide.

The Times reported that:

• 94 percent were committed by men
• the suicide rate was highest for workers ages 45 to 54
• white workers were most likely to commit suicide (78 percent)
• employees in management positions accounted for the largest group of suicides

And keep in mind these numbers don’t include suicides that were committed outside the workplace.

What can managers do to make sure one of their team members is not in trouble? Educate your employees on the risk signs of suicide, says Workforce Management, and create a workplace culture that lets workers feel comfortable seeking help from the company’s Employee Assistance Program or other resources.

As a manager, cultivate an open-door policy and encourage your employees to let you know if they’re having difficulties.

Recognize, and be prepared to respond to, the warning signs of suicide. According to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC), these may include:

• Talking about suicide or death
• Making statements like “I wish I were dead.” and “I’m going to end it all.”
• Less direct verbal cues, including “What’s the point of living?” “Soon you won’t have to worry about me” and “Who cares if I’m dead, anyway?”
• Uncharacteristically isolating themselves from others in the workplace
• Expressing feelings that life is meaningless or hopeless
• Giving away cherished possessions
• A sudden and unexplained improvement in mood after being depressed or withdrawn
• Neglect of appearance and hygiene
• Sudden unexplained deterioration of work performance or productivity

It’s okay to approach an employee directly and ask, “Do you feel like you want to die?”, says the SPRC. Be ready to offer EAP assistance or help your employee find outside counseling. If you feel that the person is in immediate danger, don’t hesitate to call 911.

For more information and resources:

• Download the SPRC’s handbook on what employers can do to prevent suicide
• Call (or direct your employee to call) the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
• Read ValueOptions’ guidelines for creating a comprehensive suicide prevention plan for the workplace

What does your office look like? If you’re in corporate America, it’s probably some combination of cubicles, offices, and conference rooms. But that trend may soon give way to more open floor plans with fewer walls and partitions — and fewer barriers to collaboration.

According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett at the Harvard Business Review, companies are realizing that cubicle cultures just don’t work. Why? Because the impersonal “cube farms” discourage collaboration, stifle employee engagement, and strangle innovation.

Creative fields have long embraced open floor plans or, at least, minimal barriers between workers. When I worked as a newspaper reporter, the only offices belonged to the bigwigs; the rest of us worked in close proximity — usually, with open desks — and enjoyed the ability to tap our co-workers for ideas, input, or just a quick dose of humor. That sparked our inspiration, made our stories better, and created a collegial environment.

Contrast that to being segmented into a Dilbert-like space. Sure, you might have somewhere to hang your Demotivators calendar, and you might be able to play hearts on your computer without your boss noticing. But it also shuts you away from your colleagues.

According to a study called Bookend Generations, both Generation Y workers and Baby Boomers prize interacting with high-quality colleagues — ranking it equal to or even higher than financial compensation. Speaking as a Gen X-er, I agree. My engagement and excitement about my work usually comes from exciting and interesting collaborations with smart people, rather than from my paycheck.

So think about tearing down some of those cubicle walls and, as Hewlett says, share the intellectual wealth.

(image by Tim Patterson via Flickr, CC 2.0)