Before the coronavirus pandemic caused a massive and abrupt shift to remote work, some businesses had already been easing employees into a flexible work schedule and issuing corporate-owned devices for work-from-home use. Today, nearly three in four CFOs polled by advisory firm Gartner are exploring the possibility of permanently moving a fraction of their workforce (5%) to a remote-work status. “This data is an example of the lasting impact the current coronavirus crisis will have on the way...

Intruders are learning how to hijack video calls on this popular platform Video conferencing tools are quickly becoming a target of hackers who want to eavesdrop on calls and steal data from unsuspecting remote workers. ‘Uninvited guests’ are learning to crack meeting codes and break in. But companies today are also falling prey to a new form of security attack called ‘Zoom bombing’ – in which intruders gate-crash an online meeting to video-stream pornographic or racist content. Recent...

Employers in North America are bracing for the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic – by returning to the same cost reduction methods of the last financial crisis, a new report suggests. These cost-containment measures range from hiring freezes and delayed salary increases, to furloughs and layoffs, according to a recent survey by global advisory firm Willis Towers Watson. In recent weeks, a total of 1.3 million retrenched workers in Canada and more than 10 million in the US have applied...

As supermarket chains scramble to hire thousands of workers to meet the demand for grocery supplies during the pandemic, one retailer is ensuring its own employees stay rooted in the team. Costco Australia is rewarding 4,000 workers a bonus of $750 for their hard work and commitment to the community despite the dangers of the coronavirus outbreak, retail union SDA said. The bonus comes on top of the company’s temporary wage increase of $3 per hour given to all workers who rendered their...

It’s Friday, and you’re looking forward to a quiet weekend at home. No meetings. No reports. No stress. Until you remember, you have a presentation at 9 a.m. on Monday. In an ideal world, humans will simply delineate work from personal life, unplug, and forget about all their tasks the minute they end their shift. But humans just aren’t engineered that way. “What we chew over are the upsetting things, the distressing things, and we do it in ways that are entirely unproductive,” says...