What Costco And Wegmans Have In Common With Google

What could Google possibly have in common with Wegmans and Costco?

The tech giant is working on big-idea projects like self-driving cars and “smart” contact lenses, along with its core search business. The other two are focused on, essentially, selling groceries.

Still, in one critical respect the three companies are getting one thing right: They offer workers “good jobs” -- not low-paying dead-end work where employers feel like cogs in the machine.

The three companies give their employees a certain amount of freedom and a feeling of ownership over their work, Laszlo Bock, Google’s head of human resources tells the Wall Street Journal. That makes workers “act like owners,” Bock says.

All three companies frequently wind up atop lists of the best companies to work for -- or companies everyone wants to work for -- thanks to competitive pay and solid benefits and perks. All three offer some level of flexibility and, especially, training that sends a message to workers that they’re valued.

Crucially, employees don’t feel stuck in their jobs. Wegmans and Costco both promote from within -- and devote real resources to training workers to move them up the ranks. Turnover is low.

Seventy percent of warehouse managers at Costco started at the lowest rungs of the company, according to BusinessWeek. At Wegmans, 66 percent of promotions are internal.

The stores also offer rational scheduling. Workers are happier when they can plan their schedules far out in advance and swap shifts with colleagues. This isn’t common in retail, where often workers don’t know when they’re working from week to week.

Google's perks are legendary. The company offers workers sabbaticals, mindfulness training and many other coveted benefits designed to keep employees motivated and happy.

All this pay and respect and freedom may cost the companies more at the outset. But research has shown that creating “good jobs” that offer more than simply zombie-like dead-end work is actually a win for employers.

“Higher investment in people leads companies to do really well,” M.I.T. professor Zeynep Ton told The Huffington Post in February. Ton’s research has shown that employers that offer “good jobs” -- work that’s engaging and offers opportunities for workers to think -- are more profitable.

It’s a win-win.

Apple's Tim Cook To Donate All His Money, Magazine Says

(Adds details on Cook's growing public presence, background)

March 26 (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook is joining the roster of the very rich who are giving away their wealth.

Fortune magazine cited the head of the world's largest technology corporation as saying he planned to donate his estimated $785 million fortune to charity - after paying for his 10-year-old nephew's college education.

"You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripples for change," Cook told the magazine.

Fortune estimated Cook's net worth, based on his holdings of Apple stock, at about $120 million. He also holds restricted stock worth $665 million if it were to be fully vested.

The 54-year-old CEO's revelation in Fortune's lengthy profile of him is an example of the increasingly public philanthropy of the world's richest people.

Billionaire financier Warren Buffett is encouraging the very wealthy to give away at least half their worth in their lifetimes through the "Giving Pledge," whose website lists such luminaries as Microsoft Corp's Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Inc and Oracle Corp's Larry Ellison.

While Cook's largesse could not begin to approach the scale of a Gates or Zuckerberg, both worth billions of dollars, the Apple CEO told Fortune he hopes to make a difference.

Cook, who is not listed on the website, is known as an intensely private person who shuns the spotlight on philanthropy.

In recent years, however, he has begun speaking out more openly about issues ranging from the environment to civil rights. Cook, who recently revealed he was gay, spoke out against discrimination of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual communities during his induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor last year.

He told Fortune he has started donating money to unspecified causes quietly and is trying to develop a more "systematic approach" to philanthropy that goes beyond writing checks. (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru and Edwin Chan in San Francisco; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Andre Grenon)

Microsoft To Require Its U.S. Suppliers To Offer Paid Leave

For the past several months, White House officials and Democrats in Congress have been using the bully pulpit to encourage more U.S. businesses to offer their workers paid leave. Their motto: “Lead on leave.”

On Thursday, Microsoft showed them how it’s done.

In a blog post on the company’s website, Brad Smith, a Microsoft vice president, announced that Microsoft will be taking steps to require all of its large U.S. contractors to offer their workers at least 15 days of paid leave per year. That time could come “either through 10 days of paid vacation and five days of paid sick leave or through 15 days of unrestricted paid time off,” Smith wrote.

There are certain restrictions. The new requirements will apply only to suppliers with 50 or more employees, and within those firms, they'll apply only to employees who have worked there for at least nine months and do “substantial work” for Microsoft.

While the new terms certainly won’t apply to everyone in Microsoft’s supply chain, the company said they “will apply to a great many.”

Like any modern U.S. firm of its size, Microsoft deals with all sorts of suppliers, “from building maintenance to management consulting and campus security to software localization,” as Smith noted Thursday. A lot of these companies may already offer their workers the paid time off that Microsoft will require, but plenty of them probably don’t. For example, it's not hard to imagine that the janitorial firms whose workers clean Microsoft’s offices at night don't currently provide the kind of paid time off that Smith describes.

If Microsoft stands by its pledge, then the companies that fail to meet its standard will lose Microsoft’s business. The company said it plans to work with its suppliers over the next year to help them implement the new policies.

By using its considerable contracting power to encourage more paid leave, Microsoft is taking a step that even the White House, for all its talk on the subject, has been loath to pursue.

The federal government holds more contracts than any private-sector firm -- a power that presidents going at least as far back as Franklin Roosevelt have wielded to set higher labor standards. Officials in the Obama White House have used procurement rules to raise working standards in several ways, like setting a new minimum wage for contractors and cracking down on wage theft. But as The Huffington Post has reported, White House officials have thus far declined to give contracting preference to firms that offer paid leave.

Though the standards vary, other developed countries already have laws in place that guarantee workers some amount of paid leave, be it vacation time, sick days or child leave. The U.S. doesn’t require private-sector businesses to offer such perks, and lower-income workers are less likely than their better-paid counterparts to have some kind of paid leave. Current U.S. laws on the matter are unlikely to change any time soon, with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress.

In his blog post, Smith said that Microsoft believes offering paid leave is not only a nice thing to do but also a good business practice, leading to a “happier and more productive workforce.”

“The people who work for our suppliers are critical to our success and we want them to have the benefit of paid time off,” he wrote.

Steve Jobs Became A Better Boss When He Curbed His Narcissism

It takes a certain amount of narcissism to claw your way up the ranks of a company. But it takes as much humility to be successful once you’re there.

Executives who curb their confidence in their vision by admitting mistakes and limitations and acknowledging the contributions of others tend to command the most respect and loyalty from their teams, who thereby deliver results, according to a new study from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management. However, humility, like meditation or golf, may take some practice.

And even so, narcissism is often a necessary tool for success -- as it was for the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whose obsessive commitment to his vision for the iPhone maker helped shape it into the world's most valuable company.

“Humility is not meant to replace some of the quintessential aspects of leaders,” Bradley P. Owens, assistant professor of business ethics at the university, told The Huffington Post. “It’s meant to supplement and buffer them from the extremes of narcissism.”

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, surveyed 876 employees at a large Fortune 100 health insurance company and asked them to rate 138 leaders in the company on their humility and effectiveness, and how motivated the employees were by their supervisors.

Researchers measured the narcissism of the leaders by asking them to describe themselves by choosing between statements such as “I am an extraordinary person,” or “I am much like everybody else.”

“The leaders that performed the best were those who had high narcissism and high humility,” Owens, the lead study author, said.

As a real-life example of how narcissism and humility can mix successfully, Owens pointed to the portrayal of Steve Jobs in the new biography Becoming Steve Jobs, penned by journalists Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.

The book, released Tuesday, chronicles the tech titan’s humbling years after his first run at Apple, which ended with the board firing him. Roughly a decade later, Jobs returned to the company and led it in a stunning turnaround. Paired with the findings from Owens’ study, this telling appears to link the softening of Jobs’ initial hotheaded abrasiveness with Apple's rise to global dominance.

Until he was fired in 1985, Jobs was known for being extremely demanding on people around him, including then-CEO John Sculley.

“That was part of his greatness,” William Simon, co-author of iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, told ABC News in 2011. “But he drove people too hard. ... Being gentle was not part of his demeanor.”

By the time Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he had learned to balance his leadership style.

“When he came back in his second stint, people described him as someone who was still narcissistic, but had learned to temper his narcissism in important ways,” Owens said. “That’s why Steve Jobs was really a great example of what we were looking for.”

That means, too, that humility can be a learned skill.

"Even if you have a narcissistic leader, and in a sense it's causing them to be less effective in certain ways, people can proactively practice virtues like humility and develop their character," Owens said. "Over time, it will begin to stick and enhance their leadership effectiveness.

Companies Led By Moral Bosses Are Actually More Profitable

Good character also means good business, according to a new study.

Conducted by leadership consulting firm KRW International, the study found a link between a business' performance and the integrity of its CEO. Firms where employees rated the CEO's moral principles highly performed better than firms whose top executive had a lower character rating.

“I was unprepared to discover how robust the connection really is,” KRW founder Fred Kiel said, per the Harvard Business Review, which first reported on the study.

The report highlighted 10 leaders who excelled across the board. These rockstar execs -- Kiel calls them “virtuoso CEOs” -- include Dale Larson, CEO and president of Larson Manufacturing Company, Sally Jewell, a former CEO of outdoor retailer REI, and Charles Sorenson, CEO and president of Intermountain Healthcare. They were seen as standing up for the right issues, expressing concern for others, showing empathy and moving past mistakes. And they got high marks for their vision, strategy and accountability.

By contrast, the 10 individuals who scored lowest in KRW's study seemed to twist the truth for their advantage, avoid blame and be preoccupied with their personal financial gain.

The researchers compiled their data by asking employees at 84 U.S. companies and nonprofits to rate their CEOs and managers on four key moral principles: integrity, responsibility, forgiveness and compassion. They then lined up those responses with the firms’ financial results and examined whether there appeared to be an impact on profitability.

Businesses helmed by an exec with a positive character score saw an average return on assets of 9.35 percent over a two-year span. Companies with a CEO who scored lower, on the other hand, had an average ROA of just 1.93 percent.

Interestingly, the low-rated leaders gave themselves better assessments than their employees did, while virtuoso CEOs gave themselves lower scores than their employees did.

Employees aren't the only ones who recognize the importance of having an upright leader, however. Other execs have chimed in on the issue. Marillyn Hewson, president and CEO of aerospace and defense firm Lockheed Martin, wrote in a LinkedIn post that a leader can build trust by showing a commitment to integrity and values, as well as being transparent about the company's strategy.

"It’s important to communicate that the commitment to integrity, respect and excellence starts at the top -- and even more important to demonstrate that commitment through decisions and actions," Hewson wrote. "Show employees that you are embracing your values, and you’ll go a long way towards building trust."

And in fact, it's been shown that profits follow when employers treat their workers well. Companies that offer great pay and benefits and help workers reduce stress have fewer staff turnovers and can even outperform the S&P 500 stock index.

You can read more about Kiel’s study in his book Return on Character, out April 7 from the Harvard Business Review Press.

Obama Reveals What Helps Him Manage The Stress Of His Job

President Barack Obama revealed what he thinks is the most important way to manage the stress of his job in an interview with The Huffington Post last week.

Obama credited morning exercise and his Hawaiian roots for his ability to keep a calm demeanor in such a high-stress environment, but he noted family is what really keeps him grounded.

"I don't get too high, don't get too low," Obama said.

"But I think the most important -- I'm very consistent about spending time with family," he added. "And when you have dinner with your daughters -- particularly teenage daughters -- they'll keep you in your place and they'll teach you something about perspective."

Obama said it's also important to "take the long view" on issues instead of panicking about what's happening day by day.

"Everything's a crisis, everything is terrible, everything is doomsday, everything is -- if it doesn't get solved tomorrow, you know, your presidency is going off the rails. There must have been what, 15, 20 things that over the last seven years folks have said, 'This is it. It's over,'" Obama said. "You know, we had the Gulf oil spill, worst environmental disaster in history. Everybody said, 'Ah, he's handling this terribly.' A year later, nobody was talking about it, and in retrospect, it turns out that we handled that as well as any environmental crisis has been handled."

Watch a clip of Obama's interview with HuffPost above.

The Middle Class Has Gotten Smaller In Every State Since 2000

America’s middle class is shrinking in every state in America.

A new analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts' Stateline blog, shows that the percentage of middle-class households -- defined as those earning between 67 and 200 percent of a state’s median income -- dropped in every U.S. state between 2000 and 2013. Median income also fell in most states during that period.

Wisconsin, Ohio, North Dakota, Nevada, and New Mexico had some of the largest declines in middle-class households over the 13-year span, while Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, and Hawaii suffered the least.

The decline of the American middle class is unsurprising by now. The middle class has seen its wages change little since the turn of the millennium, while high-earning individuals keep making more and more each year. And middle-class wages are a long way from catching up to the rising costs of child care, tuition, and hospital visits.

And nearly a decade after the peak of a devastating bubble, housing is once again growing increasingly unaffordable for many. Stateline's analysis showed that a greater percentage of households in many states are paying at least 30 percent of total income on housing, a widely used standard for housing affordability.