Amazon recently announced an ambitious plan to offer on-site health care to its employees. The tech giant will open a pilot clinic in its Seattle headquarters later this year and begin expanding the services to more employees in 2019. Like other companies, Amazon wants to address the rising costs of emergency room visits, which are the most frequently used type of outpatient service. In January, Amazon announced a joint venture with Berkshire Hathaway and J.P. Morgan Chase to work towards cheaper, higher quality health care. The CEO of the venture – Dr. Atul Gawande – is specifically focused ... view article details

Have you noticed your international friends are always traveling and on the go, while your state-side buddies complain they’ve barely been able to make it to the beach at all this summer? The reason for this may be a lack of paid time off (PTO) for American employees. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the U.S. is the only advanced economy (and member of the OECD) that doesn’t guarantee workers even a single day of PTO. The CEPR's report also confirmed 25 percent of America's workers in the private sector don’t get any time off at all. The statutory minimum paid l... view article details

Delta – the second largest commercial airline in the world – is encouraging its internal pool of non-pilot workers, college students at certain universities, and even younger folks to consider taking their talents to the cockpit. By tapping into these various niches, Delta hopes to slowly erase a significant shortage of pilots over time. Baby boomers are already retiring at a staggering rate, and Delta’s 13,000+ pilots are required by federal law to lay down the keys at 65. Some pilots are leaving for other companies – another trend indicative of the war for talent. Delta expects to hire mor... view article details

What’s the worst thing an entrepreneur can do? Not listen, according to Chicago entrepreneur Adam Fridman.“We -- I am including myself on purpose -- get excited about an idea and we fire. Pausing to listen to advice seems a waste of time,” he said.Fridman would know. He founded three Chicago companies, making him a prominent entrepreneur in the Windy City startup community. While earning his Master's degree in finance from Depaul University in 2003, Adam founded Idea2Result, a Chicago based B2B appointment setting staffing company.  Following the success of Idea2Result, Adam co-founded GoBumpe... view article details

You have a proposal due at 2 p.m., a meeting at 3 p.m., and a conference call at 4 p.m. Then, after work, there are kids to be shuttled to dance lessons, groceries to be shopped for and laundry that just isn't going to wash itself. And weren't you thinking about going to the gym sometime today?Just about everyone with a job knows the feeling of trying to squeeze work, family and personal activities into a very finite amount of time. And the busier we get, the more the pressure builds. How can you focus on your monthly sales report when you are also mentally calibrating a car pool schedule?But ... view article details

Dear Annette, I've been working on my income taxes, and my files are getting pretty big. How much of this stuff do I have to keep? Form 1-too-many Dear Form, When I found out a few years ago that Dickie and I were going to prison for failing to pay taxes on three years' worth of his a income from selling cosmetics door-to-door, my first thoughts were, What should I pack? Will there be mints under my pillow? Will there be someone to do the floors and bath? And why does an undocumented Maltese owe taxes in the first place? (After all, he does have his shots.) But I quickly realized incarceration... view article details

The Midwest continued to be the best place for job-seekers last month, according to data recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The states in the center of the country had an average unemployment rate of 7.2 percent in April, better than any other region and significantly lower than the national rate of 8.1 percent.  Driving the Midwest's low jobless numbers was North Dakota's unemployment rate of 3 percent. The western part of North Dakota is experiencing an oil boom that has produced thousands of jobs in the construction, trade and transportation, and professional services... view article details

North Dakota was the place to be in 2011, at least for people seeking work. The state ended last year much as it began: with the lowest unemployment rates in the country, according to numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to numbers released last week, the national, seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 8.3 percent. North Dakota, however, had a jobless rate of just 3.3 percent, down from 3.8 percent in December 2010, according to BLS data from December 2011 which focused on individual states. Two other states from the upper Midwest and a pair of New England states rou... view article details

Jackie and Tom are members of a software development team. The team is focused on a new application that is to be rolled out next month. Jackie is the senior member and feels responsible for the team’s reputation. She believes the current version doesn’t have enough bells and whistles. Tom believes their reputation will be more affected by the number of bugs still in the software, and thinks they should eliminate those before adding new features.If you were Jackie, which of the following would you say to Tom?'Tom, if you brainstorm with me, we’ll be able to quickly figure out the best features... view article details

Q: Heather, I read your article about dealing with office bullies and replied to one of the other people who commented. Could you please answer this question for me: 'Wouldn't asking about dispute resolution at an interview be as taboo as asking about the money they are willing to pay you?' Thank you,Michelle A: Excellent question, Michelle. I’d like to expand upon my prior email response to you.In June I took my three kids hiking throughout Colorado. Because we were doing high altitude hiking, we had to be prepared for the types of weather events and emergencies that can occur above 14,000 fe... view article details