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The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Regardless of whether your company has a strict in-office policy or supports a flexible schedule, the reality is that office attendance is at its highest levels in five years, according to Bisnow. Nobody would argue the need for a healthy office, especially one with more people in it. And if you ask what makes a healthy office, most would say it is one that supports physical health and safety, well-being, collaboration, productivity, and social connection. This is why so many businesses focus on factors such as air quality, ventilation, security, and employee wellness programs, for example. While these environmental and social indicators of health are important, they overlook one critical element: the ways that humans interact in a space and use the office. Dont make assumptions about in-office productivity Employers make a lot of assumptions about how productive employees are in the office. Anecdotally, many employees say they look forward to spending time in the office to collaborate with colleagues. Yet top organizations want more than opinions and anecdotes. They want data showing the frequency of casual, impromptu brainstorming in the office and aligning that with productivity and efficiency. Data on how teams collaborate is crucial in improving organizational productivity, as Ive seen through numerous conversations with workplace leaders at Fortune 1000 companies. With the opportunity for more in-person collaboration, decision makers want to measure and understand the frequency of casual, impromptu discussions and brainstorming and how to foster more of it by creating the right office environment. Not long ago, meeting and huddle data was based on how much time employees spent using online collaboration tools and video platforms. Today, with employees spending more time in physical spaces, understanding how and where employees collaborate is critical to improving the experience and eliminating silos. For example, compare the needs of an ad agency with a research think tank. We assume the agency needs more space for collaboration and client meetings, setting up the office layout to feature open desks, soft seating, and large, impressive conference rooms with high-end audio-visual capabilities. At the think tank, we assume their employees need dedicated areas for individual, focused work. As a result, the office layout consists of rows of gray cubicles and a handful of different sized conference rooms. Over time, an interesting shift happens at both companies. The ad agency employees come into the office in the morning, meet with their teams or participate in a larger company meeting, eat lunch in the break room, and then leave for the day. The think tank employees squat in a conference room by themselves or in small clusters, participating in video conferences with colleagues and clients, spending little time at their desks. After a while, fewer employees come into the office, citing the ability to be more productive working remotely. Business as usual, right? Yes, except for the long-term issues of these work arrangements. Along with having to heat and cool unoccupied spaces, negatively impacting the buildings carbon footprint, there is also the cost of cleaning areas based on scheduling, not usage. Safety also plays a factor should an emergency occur in the office, and nobody is available to respond. Add to this the expense of office leasing and the potential of squandered investments in an office redesign. Not to mention the critical, yet less measurable, missed opportunities of face-to-face interactions. Healthy buildings should encompass the entire human experience When we think of healthy buildings, we should consider the entire human experience in them. Instead of making assumptions of how employees want to work, employers are starting to look more closely at how the office plays a role in the health, well-being, and productivity of employees. Consider the idea that every business is a system unto itself, designed to produce outcomes. In that system, the office can be viewed as a product, one that is continuously refined to meet the needs of its customers. In this instance, customers are the people using the office. Today, that product is improved by using AI in the digital space; the next era is improving it in the physical space by combining infrastructure data and intelligence on real-world spaces. Through a combination of AI and body heat sensing technology that ensures privacy, you can get a better sense of how the workforce uses the office. It is like having a touchscreen interface on a digital app, except in this instance, the office is the product. For example, a sensor that understands movement in a space can lead to insight about one-on-one and group interactions, frequency of impromptu meetings, and if large spaces are being used by an individual. This can show the subsequent impact on energy efficiency. This isnt about tracking attendance or keystrokes. Instead, by ensuring privacy and understanding how the workforce naturally moves throughout the office, employers can make better decisions about how to make the most of an employees time in the office. They may learn that the best open desks are quickly taken, forcing most employees to work in darker spaces, and that the volume of chatter makes it difficult to be productive. This is why conference rooms are being squatted, and employees are working remotely. These insights can lead to better management decisions about in-office work policies, layouts, leases, and even cleaning contracts. Employers that have amassed insights about office usage are feeding the data into GPTs to come up with office layouts and designs that more closely reflect their corporate cultures. Instead of having employees conform to the office, there is a way to have the office conform to the needs of employees. As a result, the office can become a place, or product, employees look forward to going to, providing a healthy work environment. Honghao Deng is CEO and cofounder of Butlr.
Category:
E-Commerce
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting and killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance division, in New York last year. In a statement, Mangione’s lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo called the decision to seek the death penalty “barbaric.” “While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” Friedman Agnifilo said. Mangione, 26, has pleaded not guilty to New York state charges of murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses. He could face life in prison without parole if convicted in that case. New York does not have the death penalty for state charges. Mangione faces a parallel federal indictment in Manhattan federal court over Thompson’s killing, which is where Bondi said prosecutors will aim for the death penalty. He has not yet been asked to enter a plea to the federal charges. If Mangione is convicted in the federal case, the jury would determine in a separate phase of the trial whether to recommend the death penalty. Any such recommendation must be unanimous, and the judge would be required to impose it. Thompson was shot dead on December 4 outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, where the company was gathering for an investor conference. Luigi Mangiones murder of Brian Thompson – an innocent man and father of two young children – was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America,” Bondi said in a statement. “After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trumps agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again,” Bondi said. The brazen killing of Thompson and ensuing five-day manhunt captivated Americans. Police officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, found Mangione on December 9 with a 9-millimeter pistol and silencer, clothing that matched the apparel worn by Thompson’s shooter in surveillance footage, and a notebook describing an intent to “wack” an insurance company CEO, according to a court filing. While public officials condemned the killing, some Americans have cheered Mangione, saying he drew attention to steep U.S. healthcare costs and the power of health insurers to refuse payment for some treatments. He is currently being held in federal lockup in Brooklyn. Bondi lifted a moratorium on February 5 on federal executions imposed in 2021 by her predecessor Merrick Garland, the attorney general under Democratic President Joe Biden. Doina Chiacu and Luc Cohen, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department began receiving notices of dismissal Tuesday in an overhaul ultimately expected to lay off up to 10,000 people. The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues. At the National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading health and medical agency, the layoffs occurred as its new director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, began his first day of work. The revolution begins today! Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media as he celebrated the swearing-in of his latest hires: Bhattacharya and Martin Makary, the new Food and Drug Administration commissioner. Kennedy’s post came just hours after employees began receiving emailed layoff notices. Kennedy announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for nearly half the country. The plan would consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America. The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers. Many of the jobs are based in the Washington area, but also in Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based, and in smaller offices throughout the country. HHS said the layoffs are expected to save $1.8 billion annually from the departments $1.7 trillion budget, most of which is spent on Medicare and Medicaid health insurance coverage for millions of Americans. Some staffers began getting lay off notices in their work inboxes at 5 a.m., while others found out their job had been eliminated after standing in long lines outside offices in Washington, Maryland and Atlanta to see if their badges still worked. Some gathered at local coffee shops and lunch spots after being turned away, finding out they had been eliminated after decades of service. One wondered aloud if it was a cruel April Fools’ Day joke. At the NIH, the cuts included at least four directors of the NIHs 27 institutes and centers who were put on administrative leave, and nearly entire communications staffs were terminated, according to an agency senior leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. An email viewed by The Associated Press shows some senior-level employees of the Bethesda, Maryland, campus who were placed on leave were offered a possible transfer to the Indian Health Service in locations including Alaska and given until the end of Wednesday to respond. At the FDA, dozens of staffers who regulate drugs, food, medical devices and tobacco products received notices, including the entire office responsible for drafting new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The notices came as the FDAs tobacco chief was removed from his position. Elsewhere at the agency, more than a dozen press officers and communications supervisors were notified that their jobs would be eliminated. The FDA as weve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed,” said former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in an online post. Califf stepped down at the end of the Biden administration. The layoff notices came just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread. They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy, Murray said Friday. The CDC has not provided a breakdown of cuts, but employees in different parts of the organization described to the AP extensive layoffs in programs that track asthma, air pollution, smoking, gun violence, reproductive health, climate change and other health threats. The intent seems to be to create a much smaller, infectious disease agency, but it is destroying a wide array of work and collaborations that have enabled local and national governments to be able to prevent deaths and respond to emergencies, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDCs director during President Barack Obama’s administration, said he is particularly concerned about cuts to the CDCs Office on Smoking and Health and the agencys Global Health Center. Weakening tobacco prevention is a gift to Big Tobacco that would guarantee more addiction, disease, and death, Frieden said, while cuts to the CDCs global disease detection work will cost lives. Among the hardest-hit centers was the CDCs National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, with more than 1,000 employees. NIOSH is based in Cincinnati but also has people in Pittsburgh; Spokane, Washington; and Morgantown, West Virginia. Cuts were less drastic at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where Trump’s Republican administration wants to avoid the appearance of debilitating the health insurance programs that cover roughly half of Americans, many of them poor, disabled and elderly. But the impact will still be felt, with the department slashing much of the workforce at the Office of Minority Health, which no longer has a functioning webpage. Jeffrey Grant, a former CMS deputy director, said the office is not part of a diversity, equity and inclusion program, the kind Trump’s Republican administration has sought to end. This is not a DEI initiative. This is meeting people where they are and meeting their specific health needs, said Grant, who resigned last month and now helps place laid-off CMS employees into new jobs. The Office of Program Operations & Local Engagement, which does local outreach for CMS operations, was also gutted, Grant said. Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back mor than $11 billion in COVID-19-related money. Some health departments have identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated, some of them overnight, some of them are already gone, said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. A coalition of state attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, arguing the cuts are illegal, would reverse progress on the opioid crisis and would throw mental health systems into chaos. HHS has not provided additional details or comments about Tuesdays mass firings, but on Thursday it provided a breakdown of some of the cuts. __ 3,500 jobs at the FDA, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods. __ 2,400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide. __ 1,200 jobs at the NIH. __ 300 jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid. Carla K. Johnson, AP medical writer Associated Press writers Lauran Neergaard, Amanda Seitz and Matthew Perrone, and Mike Stobbe contributed to this report. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at ending price gouging for live entertainment tickets, with musician Kid Rock at his side in the Oval Office wearing a bright red, white, and blue bejeweled suit. Anyone whos bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 yearsno matter what your politics areknows that its a conundrum, Kid Rock told reporters. Trump said while he didn’t know much about price gouging, “I checked it out, and it is a big problem. For decades, musicians have been feuding with ticket sellers like Ticketmaster over the high fees they pass on to fans, going back to 1995 when Pearl Jam canceled their tour after a dispute with Ticketmaster, over what they said were excessive and unfair fees. Here’s what to know about the new executive order. What does the executive order do? The executive order is designed to stop price-gouging by middlemen, and orders the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ensure price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchase process” and work with Attorney General Pam Bondi to better enforce the 2016 Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act against companies and individuals demonstrating unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct, like using bots to buy concert tickets in bulk and then resell them. It comes after the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation Entertainment last May, arguing their monopoly over live events in the U.S. has eliminated competition and driven up ticket prices. Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Golden State Warriors fans also experienced price gouging Another notable price gouging case occurred in 2015 when ticket seller StubHub sued rival Ticketmaster and the Golden State Warriors basketball team, arguing they unfairly required fans to resell game tickets on Ticketmasters platform, which increased ticket prices. However, the most publicized example is when Ticketmaster fumbled pre-ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in 2022, after the site crashed, leaving users logged out or frozen and causing “Swifties” hours of frustration as they attempted and failed to buy tickets. (In 2023, those tickets eventually reached between $11,000 to $22,500.) On Monday, Lady Gaga fans experienced something similar as they attempted to buy tickets for her highly anticipated The MAYHEM Ball tour, when dynamic pricing, which raises prices in real-time, drove tickets sky high with the help of bots and resellers. Now, many angry “little monsters” (the name given to Lady Gaga fans) are weighing whether to shell out thousands of dollars to see their favorite artist. Angry fans took to social media, where one X user complained tickets for Lady Gaga’s New York show were already “$1,770 for good lower level tickets . . . Just disgusting.” Meanwhile, another X user recalled Ticketmaster’s most infamous fiasco: “Like be for real . . . 1066 to be front row . . . like what in the Taylor Swift are these prices!?”
Category:
E-Commerce
Reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood said on Monday the Trump administration would cut federal family planning funding as of Tuesday, affecting birth control, cancer screenings and other services for low-income people. Planned Parenthood said that nine of its affiliates received notice that funding would be withheld under a program known as Title X, which has supported healthcare services for the poor since 1970. The Wall Street Journal reported last week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) planned an immediate freeze of $27.5 million in family planning grants for groups including Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood says more than 300 health centers are in the Title X network and Title X-funded centers received more than 1.5 million visits in 2023. It did not say how much funding would be halted by the Trump administration. HHS said in a statement it was withholding Title X payments to 16 organizations while it evaluates possible violations of their grant terms, including possibly of federal civil rights law and an executive order issued by President Donald Trump entitled, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders.” “HHS is conducting this evaluation to ensure these entities are in full compliance with Federal law and applicable grant terms, and to ensure responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” the statement said. Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, predicted that cancers would go undetected, access to birth control would be severely reduced, and sexually-transmitted infections would increase as a result. “President Trump and Elon Musk are pushing their dangerous political agenda, stripping health care access from people nationwide, and not giving a second thought to the devastation they will cause,” McGill Johnson said in a statement. Trump has named billionaire Musk, who helped the president get elected, to head up an initiative to target government agencies for spending cuts. Conservatives have long sought to defund Planned Parenthood because it also provides abortions. However, U.S. government funding for nearly all abortions has been banned since 1977. Daniel Trotta, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
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