2008 Volume 5

As the economy continues to sour, curse words have become standard parts of speech in many offices across the country. But beware, cussing at work could cost you your career. A new survey out from TheLadders.com, reveals that 36% of US bosses have issued a formal warning, and 6% have fired an employee for swearing, deeming a foul mouth the most punishable of all workplace faux pas.

The poll of more than two thousand executives also finds that 81.2% of senior execs find foul-mouthed colleagues unacceptable to work alongside in the office.

When it comes to dealing with bad behavior in the cubicle next-door, co-workers had a slightly higher threshold for bad language. While 81.2% said they deem swearing in the workplace unacceptable, the absolute most offensive thing an office worker can do to his or her colleagues is steal their food from the office refrigerator. A full 97.8% of respondents rated fridge raiders the worst possible offenders of workplace etiquette.

Source:www.theladders.com

Forty-Three Percent of Working Moms Would Take a Pay Cut to Spend More Time with Their Kids

Of the 43 percent of working moms who said they would take a pay cut if it meant they could spend more time with their kids, 34 percent stated they would be willing to give up ten percent or more of their salaries, according to a new CareerBuilder.com survey of 880 women, employed full-time, with children under the age of 18 living at home. For working moms with more than one source of income, just over half (51 percent) of working moms indicated they would leave their job if their spouse or significant other made enough money to support the entire family.

While moms strive to keep a healthy balance between their professional and personal lives, lack of time with their children still seems to be an issue. More than a third (34 percent) of working moms said they spend less than three hours per day with their children. Seventeen percent reported they had missed three or more significant events in their child’s life in the last year. Twenty-seven percent had missed two or more.

"More than 25 percent of working moms are dissatisfied with their work/life balance," said Mary Delaney, chief sales officer at CareerBuilder.com and mother of three. "As companies continue to experience a tighter labor market, the importance of retaining star employees is requiring them to implement benefits that actually encourage workers to improve the balance between their professional and family lives. From flexible work schedules to job sharing to telecommuting, company-wide work/life initiatives are becoming much more universal." 

Source: Career Builder 

Did You Know?

That WellDirect's content providers include some of the best-known and widely respected organizations in the U.S.?

WellDirect relies on almost 200 sources, including the March of Dimes, Girls & Boys Town, the Gottman Institute, GreatSchool.net, National Alliance of the Mentally Ill (NAMI), America Saves, Collegeboard.com and Diabetesatwork.org.

Spouses Often Mirror Each Other’s Health Habits

If one spouse exercises, quits smoking, stops drinking alcohol, receives a flu shot, or undergoes a cholesterol screening, the other spouse is more likely to do the same, according to a new study in Health Services Research. Researchers from the Yale School of Public Health examined longitudinal data on 6,072 individuals and their spouses from the Health and Retirement Study.

The study found that:

• The changes in spouses’ health habits were most apparent in such behavior as smoking and drinking, which is often spurred by outside cues, and in patient-directed preventive behavior, such as getting a flu shot.
• Smokers were over five times more likely to quit smoking if their spouse quit, when controlling for other relevant factors.
• For alcohol, drinkers were more than five times more likely to quit drinking in response to their spouse abstaining.
• The changes were less apparent in clinician-directed preventive behavior, such as obtaining cholesterol screening.

The study's authors said health habits and use of preventive services should be viewed in the context of a family. They said attempts to change behavior may be enhanced or thwarted by the behavior of family members, especially spouses. For this reason, they said, intervention programs should include tips about how to get the other spouse involved in exercise or help reduce tobacco cues.

Source: Yale School of Public Health

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