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Hi,

How’s your week going so far? I have daffodil envy. Apparently something happened to the ones that were planted by the previous owner, they got increasingly sparse over the last 3 springs and now, no daffodils. It’s good to have goals, and now I have a few for autumn.

Lots going on in the world and each week I try to surface information for you, as a person who leads with compassion, to help you stay centered, informed, and able to bring your best self to your work every day. With that as our framework, here are the stories I want to share with you today:

  • In case you missed it, this POV by Sheryl Estrada for Fortune bears repeating. It’s about layoff strategies and why they’re often mistakes. Cue the “I told you so,” because monkey see monkey do layoffs to wow investors really make me angry.
  • Each week, my company selects a charity to feature in our e-briefings and make a donation to. I became curious about America’s charitable giving habits and learned that only slightly more than half gave to charities in 2021 and the average annual donations for those people is $574. The article, from LendingTree, has lots of stats and breakdowns. And speaking of not-for-profits that deserve love…

Do Good Spotlight
🌟 Princeton-Blairstown Center 🌟

The Princeton-Blairstown Center (PBC) provides adventure-based, experiential education to youth from historically marginalized communities. What began in 1908 as a summer camp has grown into an outdoor education center with a wide variety of year-round programs serving almost 8,000 young people each year. Programs include those to improve learning retention over the summer to approximately 500 students from historically marginalized NJ communities in Trenton, Newark, and Camden free of charge. There’s a fund-raising soiree on May 5 that NJ locals will want to check out. Learn more about PBC here: Princeton-Blairstown Center.

Noteworthy 🖋
Gather Voices

Gather Voices enables any company with many customers, members, fans, donors, or employees to lift up the voices of their community with video. The Gather Voice’s software platform makes the process super simple, across the board. Customers record videos on their own devices while the software walks them through the process, including transferring ownership of the video to the company. On the company side, ANYONE at the company can edit, caption, brand and share the videos with a few clicks. No expertise required. This platform is what we’ve all been waiting for. Check out Gather Voices, and if you’re interested in learning more, contact Michael Hoffman for more details. Please let him know you heard about him here.

  • We’re all still feeling our way through the hybrid-ness of today’s world of working and networking. This from Jeffrey A. Hall for The Wall Street Journal talks about research he and his colleagues conducted. The studies compare face-to-face conversations with those done by phone, video chat, texts, or direct messages, email and social media checking for feelings of connectedness among participants. They found face-to-face could not be beat for eliciting feelings of connection and mitigating loneliness. You can read about their work/results here.
  • Layoff numbers aren’t the whole story. This from Insider shows staffing levels at major tech firms before/after layoffs.
  • Veteran astronaut Ellen Ochoa talks about how executives can manage challenges without sacrificing speed and innovation. Check out the podcast featuring this interview here.

That’s the wow for this week. I hope you enjoy the rest of the work week and the weekend, too. Stay well, stay safe, stay focused.

Niki

Niki’s Notes for Better Workplaces

Weekly news and insights on the compassionate workplace movement with commentary, spotlights on innovative companies, and not-for-profits that deserve extra love! Edited by A Better Paradigm Founder, Niki.