3 More Things Employees Want More Than A Raise

In response to Geoffrey James' 10 Things Employees Want More Than a Raise, here are a few more items to add to the list...

11. To be valued and respected.
    There's nothing worse than a company taking you for granted. If you're good at what you do, there are plenty of other companies out there in which you could do the exact same thing but be happier because they actually value you. On the lighter side, we mentioned some examples in Five Simple Habits That'll Make You A Better Co-Worker, having baseline respect, even if you don't get along, is nice. Please. Thank you. It's that damn easy.


12. To walk into the office kitchen without it feeling like a frat house.
    This is related to the previous point— respect. In this case, though, rather than it be about you as a contributor or team member, it's about sharing communal spaces with some decency. C'mon people, seriously? Is this really necessary? As much as places like Facebook might like you to live where you work, at least there is the distinction, however slight, between your own living space which you pay to use and the space you use to get paid, which you share with everyone in your office, aka. the company's (not your) office!


13. To be challenged.
    Again, this is related to point 11, which serves as the stepping stone. Take a look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:
    
    There is a definite correlation between the original article and the theory. Capping it off, to reach maximum fulfillment, employees want to self-actualize. They want to reach their full potential and live the words of the army, Be All That You Can Be, without actually being at war.

What else do employees want aside from money?

Share in the Comments below, we'd love to hear! :>

Happy Healthy Juicy Build The Company Culture You Envision, Don't Just Talk About It!

Facebook has Nothing & Everything to do with Health

Check out this Businessweek article: How Facebook Sells You.

No worries, this is not one of those paranoid Facebook articles that's preaching abstinence from the world's largest social networks. So you can still keep your virtual friends, just.. beware of them.

FB is a tool, still very much in development and changing, and one that can be used in many great ways. Take, for example, me & you, together at last. [giggle]. Likewise, however, it can also be abused— or used in ways NOT intended— in equally as many ways, if not more.

The point is to UNDERSTAND how and why FB is used [not just quit it altogether].

The article is great for illustrating how hungry businesses are to wet your appetite and swallow your cash, and, with that in mind, how much media can affect our psyche, behaviors and, ultimately.. ugh, I know, but health.

When it comes to nutrition and health education, businesses really do reign supreme. Is it really any surprise, considering the amount of money that goes into advertising and healthcare?


Some food for thought and some highlighted snippets, in case you don't care to read the whole thing:

Question: How many times have you done something because someone you care about did it?

"The whole premise of the site is that everything is more valuable when you have context about what your friends are doing," says Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who started accepting ads on Facebook as a Harvard sophomore in 2004 in an attempt to cover server costs. "That's true for ads as well. An advertiser can produce the best creative ad in the world, but knowing your friends really love drinking Coke is the best endorsement for Coke you can possibly get."

Question: Are there really that many people engaged in advertising and branding?

"A year ago, Facebook was an afterthought," says Carol Kruse, vice-president, global interactive marketing, at Coca-Cola (KO), which has more than 12 million Facebook fans. "As we go into 2011, it's fully integrated into our marketing plans, with a reliance and a focus on it."

Question: How are businesses using social media?

Facebook calls its ads "engagement ads," because they ask users to take action: play a video, vote in a poll, RSVP to an event, or just comment or click a button to indicate that they "like" it. The "like" button, which Facebook has gradually attached to just about every piece of content on its site and others across the Web, is intended to convey a general recommendation to a member's friends. So while a great majority of users ignore the great majority of ads on Facebook, the numbers change when, say, an ad for a local restaurant is footnoted by friends' names: ("Jordan, Jen, and 3 other friends like this").

That social endorsement is a tiny mnemonic designed to make the ad catchier, and it works. Nielsen, which started measuring the efficacy of Facebook ads a year ago, says that if users see their friend "likes" an ad or has commented on it, they are up to 30 percent more apt to recall the ad's message.

If enough of your friends like or comment on the ad, the ad can escape its right-side quarantine and jump into your main news feed, along with the names of your friends and all the conversation around the ad. The advertiser pays nothing for this migration. In the industry, it's called "earned media." (Think of a teenager wearing a Nike T-shirt or Ellen DeGeneres enthusiastically talking about a product.)

Question: What are the consequences?

Facebook's promise to advertisers isn't to get consumers to buy their products—or really even to get them to click through to their website. Instead, it wants to subtly park the advertiser's brand in the user's consciousness and provoke a purchase down the line. More immediately, it also aims to get you to "like" the brand yourself, which then serves as a sort of all-purpose opt-in, allowing the advertiser to insert future messages into your feed.

Think about it. Amongst the advertising fiends is Big Food trying to get you to eat as much of their manufactured crap as often as possible. Diet [& activity for that matter] is about ongoing lifestyle. So essentially, it's their job to take yours over, and, with 2/3 of our population suffering from overweight/obesity, it looks like they're doing a hell of a job. Literally.

What do you think? Do you buy it? ..oops. Not buy buy, but you know.. agree with, or Like, the argument? [grin].

Happy Healthy Juicy Powers of Social Media! For Better or For Worse.
Educators, Pay Attention!

Busting Up Shop... or perhaps your chops instead.

Office Space— the classic yet iconic flick nerds love.

For many (..of those who sport the sock-sandal ensemble?.. oops), this is considered the best movie scene ever..



Well, it turns out this smashing deed isn't just for geeks, the big screen, or men even.

A shopping mall in China has "opened a special store for [WOMEN ONLY] to break all kinds of things to relieve pressure and bad mood for a minute in Shenyang", according to People's Daily.

The store is partitioned by room theme, so women can choose to vent in a bedroom or living room— a kitchen is supposedly on its way.

Though the concept is pretty ingenius and absolutely hilarious, it's questionable whether dealing with frustration like this is productive. ..Might these behaviors eventually present themselves in real life?

Some healthy alternatives, or at least until we get one of these shops ourselves, you might consider these activities instead:

• Pound pavement: Running or jogging work your body from head to toe, and if you do it long&hard enough, you're sure not to have energy to be angry thereafter.
  
• Splash water: It's summer, man [&wo-]. If you need to vent, that's really all you do when you're under the deep blue.
  
• Paddle water: If you don't want to actually get in it, try a canoe or kayak instead.
  
• Hit the gym: If you really can't handle the great outdoors, get your heart pumping, body sweaty, and squeeze the negative energy out of you any which way you can, non-violently, that is. That's really the key to any great workout.

Happy Healthy Juicy Anger [&Fitness] Management!