Companies and boardrooms across America are replete with white people, often white men, terrified of losing their seat at the table to a Black person or a gender minority. I’ve witnessed countless confessions affirming this notion in my work as a justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI) leader. A recent series of decisions by ESPN left a couple of reporters exposed when a hot mic and recorded video captured white fear of reparations for all to see.

Reparations come in many forms. My favorites include baby bonds, free education, jubilee, and community reinvestment. When people think of reparations, they jump…

It’s one thing to have a plan for what you’re going to do when your organization’s office reopens. It’s another thing to have a plan that gets all your colleagues on the same page.

That difference is what drives the questions I hear over and over as I speak with employers, industry associations and journalists about the transition to the hybrid workplace.

For the past sixteen months, many professionals have experienced a common reality in which everyone else on their team, organization and industry is full-time remote. …

“Remember that time Jane got pissed because your relative had cancer?” Jane was a former boss (not her real name), but the cancer was real. An old coworker reminded me of this recently, and as much as I attempted to wipe that experience from my memory, it floods back to me regularly.

I’ve had some transformative, wonderful bosses over the past 20 years, and I’ve also had the opposite. Jane was the opposite, and the experience was notable, and a nod to the struggles that might lay ahead as the workforce considers going hybrid.

Organizational Culture Can Be Attractive

A big part of my interest…

Your train is running behind schedule, and you’re going to be late for work for the second time this week. Worse, you got drenched on the walk to the station, and you can already smell the damp from your shoes. You look inside your sodden bag and realize you forgot your lunch. It’s only early morning, and you already wish the day was over. To make matters worse, you’ll have to repeat this ritual in around 9 hours, stuck shoulder to shoulder with other disgruntled passengers all just desperate to get home.

When the world of work went remote, I…

Now that employers are (cautiously) rolling out their reopening plans, professionals are deciding whether or not they want to continue working from home — as well as how to negotiate these arrangements.

The Great Resignation is in full swing, with 4 million Americans quitting their jobs in April 2021 alone. A survey from Monster.com conducted last month found that an astonishing 95% of workers are considering changing jobs. …

You spend a third of your life working, so why not spend it with the people you enjoy the most? I remember when I first started my full-time job. I was a newly-shorn graduate at a large enterprise company and was paired with others in a similar boat, fresh out of university and keen to learn what it was like taking on adulting; contending with various work woes, from dealing with a terrible manager or working until the brink of burnout.

Roughly six months into the job, I found myself stranded with a manager I could barely stand, and my…

The four-day workweek is making headlines again.

It first made the rounds back in 2008 when Utah state government employees began working ten-hour days from Monday to Thursday. A decade later, in the summer of 2019, Microsoft Japan trialed a four-day workweek, and it noted a 40 percent increase in sales per employee before curiously returning to the five-day workweek.

Now, Buffer, a tech company with 89 employees, is igniting the conversation again, particularly as the pandemic, remote work, and the blurring of lines between home and work has resulted in people working, on average, longer hours than ever before.

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Imagine you are invited for a job interview. It’s your desired company and position, and you try your best to get an offer.

You are well-prepared, looking confident and formal enough to make a positive first impression.

Now it is showtime. You open a friendly conversation, try to establish a personal connection, and sell your skills as well as you can. You know an employer is already interested in you. Your job with the interview is not to change their mind.

Once the interview ends, you repeat the conversation in your head over again. You assess your answers and try…