OpenAI co-founders to lead advanced AI team at Microsoft | Amazon leader on rebounding from career mistakes | Q&A: Delta exec touts value of internal employee comms
OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman will join Microsoft after OpenAI's board pushed Altman out and Brockman subsequently quit. Emmett Shear, who led the streaming service Twitch, will serve as interim CEO of OpenAI, while Altman, Brockman and colleagues will "lead a new advanced AI research team" at Microsoft, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Full Story: The Associated Press (11/18),CNN (11/20)
Best Age to Retire? With the potential benefits of working longer, there are complex questions to consider. Share this piece with clients to help answer them.
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Recruiting & Retention
Amazon leader on rebounding from career mistakes Beryl Tomay, a leader at Amazon, talks about how she learned to bounce back from early career mistakes as a developer at the company, including one that prevented Kindle readers from downloading books or signing in, which caught the eye of founder Jeff Bezos. "It was a pivotal moment for me," Tomay says, noting, "Especially early on in my career, one thing I've struggled with has been building resiliency." Full Story: The Wall Street Journal (11/17)
Study: Visceral fat linked to Alzheimer's risk Study findings presented at the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting show that individuals with excess visceral fat, or fat found around the internal organs, may have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease as they age. While more research is needed, lead researcher Dr. Cyrus Raji says "we need to move beyond traditional conceptions of body fat, like BMI, and really look at the specifics of how fat is distributed to understand the health risks." Full Story: NBC News (11/20)
Benefits & Compensation
Legislators aim to open retirement saving to young workers US Senators Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., have introduced the Helping Young Americans Save for Retirement Act, which would make it easier for employers to offer retirement benefits to workers under age 21, beginning in 2026. Currently, employers are not obliged to offer 401(k) plan benefits to this age group, and many companies and organizations do not. Full Story: BenefitsPRO (free registration) (11/17)
The HR Leader
How to handle presidential politics in the office An increasingly polarizing presidential race and hot-button issues foretell volatile office political conversations and the potential for a repeat of reduced worker productivity found in a 2020 Gartner survey. Now is the time to revisit company policies, enforce tolerance and refresh workers' skill at redirecting conversations, say business leaders, psychologists and legal experts. Full Story: Success online (11/16)
November is National Native American Heritage Month. The National Congress of American Indians site says there are how many federally recognized Indian Nations in the US (including Alaska)?
My daughter Kawai spent her soccer career on the defense. She could play anywhere on the back line -- directing the defense as a centerback, cleaning up as a sweeper, or shutting down attacks on the flank. She had exceptional speed and instincts. But her best skill was her ability to recover after setbacks. Another coach noticed this about her and pointed it out to me. “She’s so good at just resetting,” he told me. “She just does it. She doesn’t get in her own head. I love that about her.” I smiled. I thanked him for the compliment as my mind flew backward to her early days playing club. It was a different level of play and pressure and she struggled, especially when balls got past the defense. She took it personally. She broke down one day after a particularly difficult game. “I get so mad, Mom,” she said, gulping back tears and staring out the truck window. “I get mad and don’t know what to do.” “Get the ball out of the net,” I said, my eyes on the slow-moving parking lot traffic. “What?” “Get the ball out of the net,” I repeated, this time looking at her. She frowned in confusion. Getting the ball out of the net helps reset the body and mind, I explained. “It’s called ‘recovery,’” I said. Her tears had dried and she was looking down, listening. “The action of getting the ball and throwing it up to the front line allows you to think about what went wrong, and what you need to do to prevent it from happening again. It keeps you from overthinking the error and letting it get into your head.” Resetting became a hallmark of Kawai’s play. She learned how to toughen up against failure and help her teammates to do the same. They weren’t cavalier about errors – they always acknowledged them – but they learned not to let it sit in their heads. Pushing ourselves to recover after failure is key to our personal growth and success, as we see in today’s Recruitment & Retention story. I liked what Amazon’s Beryl Tomay said about the review she had to go through after making some coding errors with the products she was working on. “It was a pivotal moment for me,” Tomay said in the story. “Especially early on in my career, one thing I’ve struggled with has been building resiliency. How you deal with that and how you pick yourself back up, learn from it and move on.” She’s right. Recovering after error builds resilience, toughness, awareness and a host of other important qualities. Failure hurts, but when it happens, don’t overthink it. Just get the ball out of the net. What kinds of stories matter to you? News about companies? Stories with research about workplace trends? Articles about HR technologies? Stories about leadership -- or more about the functions of HR? Let me know! And if you enjoy this brief, tell others so they can benefit also.
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