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Links | Security

Linked: We’re still making terrible choices with passwords, even though we know better
ByMike McBride October 19, 2021November 5, 2021 Reading Time: 2 minutes

Most people do the right thing with passwords for financial accounts, but all the websites that make them create an account just to read an article? Who really cares if that account gets hacked? Why not just use the same password for all of them? What’s the hacker going to do, read USA Today as them? Who cares?

That is all just normal, human, behavior. The thing that should scare the hell out of security professionals is how many people view their work access the same way. They don’t care. It’s not their data, it’s just the place where they happen to work, for now. This shows in the low number of people creating a strong password for their work accounts. (It also shows how making them change it every few months really just backfires.)

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Career

Quick Thought – Should we Expect Employees to Always be All-Stars?
ByMike McBride October 18, 2021October 18, 2021 Reading Time: 2 minutes

Over the weekend, the wife and I had BBC World News on the TV while we both were catching up with the virtual world in our living room, and they were doing an investigation into maternity and paternity leave in European countries as opposed to the US.

I’m not getting into that debate, but there was a point where they were interviewing a Dutch mother about her career, and the leave she took both pre and post-birth. What made my wife and I both stop what we were doing was her admission that she didn’t see why it was necessary to always “excel” at her career, but that just being OK was enough. She didn’t consider being outstanding at her job to be anything that was all that important in the grand scheme of things.

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Career | Links | Mental Health

Linked: Work burnout rises despite company investments in mental health
ByMike McBride October 16, 2021October 16, 2021 Reading Time: 2 minutes

As I’ve said before, many employers did the easy stuff. They invested in some mental health tools, promoted using employee assistance programs, talked more about mental health, heck they even gave people more time off or at least pushed people to actually use the time off they hadn’t been. And yet, here we are. Why?

Because they haven’t yet done the hard work of making the workplace not the place that hurts mental health to start with. There’s no easy fix for that. It won’t happen in a few weeks, but if you don’t start looking at it, you’re going to find yourself without many employees to keep going. Because in 2021, people have options, and those options are only going to keep growing as younger generations make very different decisions about their careers than those of us in older generations are used to.

The workplace will change one way or another. If your’s doesn’t want to, it will be killed.

Read More Linked: Work burnout rises despite company investments in mental health
Career | Links

Linked: 4 video meeting rules that should follow us back to the office
ByMike McBride October 13, 2021October 12, 2021 Reading Time: 1 minute

I agree, I have noticed that people do seem to be more aware of when someone else is trying to talk and how they might have interrupted or stepped over them. We absolutely should make time for just socializing. One of my biggest pet peeves about the argument that remote workers just don’t connect as a team and collaborate is that it is possible if you simply intentionally create the space for it. We should trust our employees enough to multitask during the parts of meetings that aren’t really relevant to them, and by all means, we should consider having fewer meetings.

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Career | LitigationSupport

An Important eDiscovery Lesson From Jon Gruden
ByMike McBride October 12, 2021October 11, 2021 Reading Time: 1 minute

See Jon, even when the investigation has nothing to do with you, those comments you made in the email exist, and the guy you sent them to didn’t, or couldn’t, delete them. So even though they may have flown under the radar for all these years, all it took was one investigation or lawsuit to involve the other people on the email chain, and everything you said is now out there.

You would think people would stop having to relearn this lesson every few years, but alas here we are.

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Mental Health

World Mental Health Day 2021 in the Workplace – a Roundup
ByMike McBride October 10, 2021October 10, 2021 Reading Time: 6 minutes

Today, as many of you know, is World Mental Health Day, a day to talk about mental health issues to raise awareness and eliminate the stigma surrounding what is really a common occurrence. Even in the workplace.

Read More World Mental Health Day 2021 in the Workplace – a Roundup