NewsLink

Links to Internet news items and other information related to diversity and inclusion, provided every week by the Office of Diversity Management and Equal Employment Opportunity (06), a program office within VA's Office of Human Resources and Administration.

Volume 6, Issue 43                            July 25, 2007

This Week's Web Highlight
A Framework for Building Organizational Inclusion

AOL Names Senior Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion.  Under the leadership of Tiane Mitchell Gordon, AOL has embraced a list of “best practices” to encourage diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

8 One-Liners That Stick.  One-liners are the stuff of effective communicators and though we are seldom aware of it, each of us can use them to our advantage.

'Berry Bad Work-Life Balance?  BlackBerry devices and other smart phones may have had a huge impact on executive and employee productivity, but they also have a negative impact on work/life balance by making it more difficult to switch off from the office.

Pay Reform, Recruiting Cited as Top Personnel Challenges.  Pay system reform and recruiting and retaining an effective workforce are among the most critical challenges human resources leaders across the government face.

Does Height Equal Power?  Some CEOs Say Yes.  People of status often use height, or an inflated appearance of height, to look more powerful, says Lara Tiedens, an organizational behavior professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, who has written extensively about how executives acquire status.

Modern Humans Came Out of Africa, "Definitive" Study Says.  Scientists who compared the skulls and DNA of human remains from around the world say their results point to modern humans (Homo sapiens) having a single origin in Africa.

EEOC Age Rule Becomes Effective.  The new regulation from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), crafted in response to a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court decision, could help employers better recruit and retain older workers.

How to Practice Faith at Work Without Offending Others.  Advocates of programs that support religion in the workplace truly believe that when you embrace an employee as a whole person, including his or her religious convictions, you get a better worker—one who is loyal, happy, and productive.

Coaching US Troops on Iraqi Culture.  The Centre for Advanced Operational Culture Training is the new military body specializing in improving marines' cultural skills and foreign language abilities.

Arab-American Drivers Accuse FedEx Bosses of Discrimination.  Four Arab-American drivers who said they were harassed by their supervisors at a FedEx Corp. facility have filed a lawsuit alleging they were subjected to a steady flow of vitriol and discrimination.

Corporate America: The New Gay Activists.  Corporate America is shaping up to be the most persuasive gay activists of the decade.  How are they doing it?  With a simple three-step formula: credibility + education + action.

Discrimination Suit at GE Shakes Ranks.  A recent lawsuit filed against General Electric (GE) may indicate that the company’s long-renowned ranking system isn’t quite as transparent as it seems.

Do Americans Have a Cowboy Mentality?  New research shows that people from Western cultures such as the United States are particularly challenged in their ability to understand someone else’s point of view because they are part of a culture that encourages individualism.

Age Just a Number: Cohesive Office With Different Generations.  At some point all of us will work for or with people who aren't our age and who, through nature and nurture, bring different work styles and work ethics to their jobs.

Former Wal-Mart Greeter Accuses Chain of Discrimination.  Wendy Thomas, known by some as “Wal-Mart Wendy,” said she thinks she was fired from her job as a greeter because of a disability.

What's in a Name?  Studies show that if you have a name that sounds African-American you may find it more difficult to find a job than someone who appears, on paper, to be White.

Working Caregivers Get a Protective Lift.  Bosses who refuse a dad—but not a mom—a family leave, or shuttle a new mother away from plum work assignments, or allow co-workers to harass a colleague whose spouse is disabled should beware.

Experts: Work/Life Balance Should Fit Workplace.  Work/life balance is a hot topic these days, but, from providing dry cleaning services to allowing flexible hours to encouraging casual Friday dress, organizations should carefully consider the relevance of any work/life balance perks they are considering offering employees.

Balancing Politics, Family Life.  Before the sun rose over their Florida home, Debbie Wasserman Schultz pulled a thermometer from the mouth of her 8-year-old daughter, Rebecca, and checked the mercury: 103 degrees.  Stay home?  Or go to work?  It's a dilemma familiar to millions of working mothers.

Adaptive Marketing LLC Encourages Workers to Strike the Proper Balance Between Working and Living.  Adaptive Marketing LLC, an industry leader in online membership programs, heartily echoes that sentiment and encourages members of the American workforce to find their own comfortable middle ground between work and the other parts of their lives.

How to Break the Work Addiction.  More than 31 percent of college-educated male workers regularly work more than 50 hours per week, according to a recent study from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  For some, these long hours lead to burnout, but for others, they can become an addiction.

More Working Moms See Part-time Jobs as the Ideal.  In an eye-catching national survey from the Pew Research Center released recently, full-time working mothers rated themselves slightly lower as parents than those who stay home or work part time.

Telework Still Lags COOP.  Government is making great strides to prepare for continuity-of-operations events, but frequent teleworkers are still relatively rare.  That’s the upshot of a survey released by Juniper Networks, “Government Action Survey: Status and Progress of Emergency Preparedness and Continuity of Operations (COOP).”.

Lawmakers Disappointed by Federal Telework Gains.  According to a recent survey of 78 agencies by the Office of Personnel Management, only 9.5 percent of the more than 1.2 million Federal employees who were eligible in 2005 to work from an alternative site did so at least once a month. 

Religious Suit Wins $300,000 Award.  A former pharmacist at the Bay Pines VA Medical Center has won a $300,000 federal jury award against the Department of Veterans Affairs over an allegation of religious discrimination.

NewsLink is part of VA's ongoing effort to increase awareness and acceptance of diversity and to promote a flexible and inclusive work environment. For more information, visit the Office of Diversity Management and Equal Employment Opportunity Web site at www.va.gov/dmeeo.

Please distribute this free publication widely! Subscribe/unsubscribe information is found below. If you have any difficulty reading this message, request a plain-text version through dmeeo@va.gov.