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Back-to-school season is almost here, even for those years out of traditional education. On TikTok, class is in session as a new trend has emerged where creators DIY monthly curriculums based on new skills, creative projects, and books on subjects they want to focus on for the month. Creator Elizabeth Jean is widely credited with starting the trend. In a viral video summarising her July curriculum, one of the units is on baking, specifically cookies, where she lists a few recipe books she plans on following for the month. Jean also chooses one memoir to read each month, has one unit on manifestation and spirituality and one she has termed inner alchemy, focusing on self-reflection. She is also working through Julia Camerons Artist’s Way. Examples of previous units she has completed include watching movies that won the Palm Dor at Cannes Film Festival. Another included watching all the Mary Kate and Ashley movies. Incredible use of free will, one person commented When selecting her units she asks herself, What would my inner child want to be spending time on? she explained. If she doesnt finish her monthly reading, what happens? Well, nothing. It simply rolls over to next month because this isnt school and there are no rules. Jean encourages others to post their own curriculums using the hashtag #curriculumclub. One commenters curriculum includes reading Fahrenheit 451 for their English unit, Peoples Guide to the US 1492-2011 for History, trying a new yoga studio in place of P.E. and learning embroidery for Art. Another is choosing to study 1960s french film, vegetarian cooking, feng shui, and how fairytales are influenced by the teller. Some are even giving themself electives, as well as weekly assignments and a final project. They are also making use of local libraries to compile their reading lists. As one Tiktoker put it in her video, “I think it holds us accountable to not let the month go by without doing anything that stimulates our brains.” Others are using the framework of a college curriculum to structure their dream life, looking at their goals as if they were a college course and deciding what would be the tasks and reading set in order to achieve them. In an era where many are outsourcing their brains to artificial intelligence, it’s encouraging to see people embrace a trend that reclaims curiosity and engages with learning as just for fun. Self development is one of TikToks favorite subjects, from productivity hacks to looksmaxxing content. As with any of the trends that emerge online, it should also be taken with a pinch of salt. The idea that we must treat continual self-improvement as a full time job is both exhausting and unnecessary, especially with many already juggling enough on their plate. If the thoughts of syllabuses and exams trigger your fight or flight, remember, it’s supposed to be fun. Better yet, youre not at school and you can simply choose not to.
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E-Commerce
At many companies, discussing salaries is considered a taboo thats kept to whispered conversations around the water cooler or brief mentions at after-work drinks. But, according to a new study, a lack of pay transparency among peers in the workplace might be damaging employee morale. The study, authored by a group of cross-institutional business and finance professors and published in the Social Science Research Network, examined Glassdoor employee ratings of compensation satisfaction at more than 1,300 publicly traded firms. The researchers compared these ratings from before and after a 2018 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandate, which required that companies disclose the CEO pay ratioa metric that compares CEO pay to that of the median employee. Prior to this mandate, employees did not have access to an official estimate of their peers compensation. The results show that, contrary to popular belief, the conventional approach to keeping employee salaries hush-hush may actually have a damaging effect. Heres what executives need to know about the findings: Employees are already making their own assumptions According to Lisa LaViers, an assistant professor of accounting at Tulane University and co-author on the study, previous research on pay transparency started with the assumption that employees knew nothing about what others were being paid. It was also assumed that when the employees learned they were paid more than others, they would think that was fair and it wouldn’t make them any happierbut if they discovered they were paid less than others, it would make them unhappy,” she says. This theory, called the Fair Wage Effort Hypothesis, caused executives to believe that the net effect of pay transparency would be dissatisfaction among employees. However, LaViers explains, this research doesn’t apply well to a modern economy, where employees have much broader access to pay information. Employees are doing their own research, and aren’t content to stay in the dark, she says. Pay transparency increases compensation satisfaction To better understand employees’ assumptions and sentiments, the study examined about 300,000 individual compensation ratings across firms in 62 different industries both before and after the 2018 SEC mandate. It found that, when employees gained access to an idea of the median employee compensation at their firm, their own compensation satisfaction went uppointing to the fact that many employees overestimate how much their colleagues make, and having the real number actually improves their own sentiments. In general, finding out about the high rates of CEO pay makes employees mad. But the thing about our research is that employees already knew what the CEO was being paid; their anger about that was already baked into their pay satisfaction, LaViers explains. The new information being disclosed was that of the median employee. This number is much lower than CEO pay and provides a much more favorable comparison point for rank-and-file employees. Giving them this new comparison point helped put their own wages into a more favorable light. Managers should challenge their own ideas Based on these findings, the authors have a few suggestions for managers who may be operating under the preconceived idea that pay transparency is bad for business. To start, they write, managers should assume that employees are looking for compensation averages online, and they should be actively keeping an eye out to make sure that any estimates floating around are up-to-date. Whether or not you implement a policy of pay transparency, employees are developing ideas of what others in the firm are making, LaViers says, adding that many of those preconceptions are either inaccurate or inflated. It may also be helpful to use anonymous surveys in an effort to understand whether employees believe they are being underpaid compared to their peers. If those notions exist, adopting greater pay transparency could help to alleviate the tension. Unless your company is actually paying people unfairly (which is a different problem entirely!), you may benefit from implementing a policy of greater transparency, LaViers says. It will help you take control of the narrative and give employees more realistic reference points to compare their own wages to.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers and retailers not to sell or use certain imported cookware that may leach significant levels of lead. The FDA issued an alert on Wednesday after tests showed some types of imported cookware made from aluminum, brass, and aluminum alloys (known as Hindalium/Hindolium or Indalium/Indolium) leached lead into food when used for cooking, making food unsafe. Here’s what to know. Why is this a concern? Lead is toxic to humans and can affect people of any age or health status. Consuming food with elevated lead levels can contribute to elevated levels of lead in the blood. Young children, women of child-bearing age, and those who are breastfeeding may be at higher risk for potential adverse events after eating food cooked using these products. There is no safe level of exposure to leadeven low levels can cause serious health problems, particularly in children and fetuses, according to the FDA. Babies and kids are more susceptible to lead toxicity due to their smaller body size, metabolism, and rapid growth. At low levels of lead exposure, children may not have obvious symptoms, but can still experience trouble learning, low IQ, and behavior changes. At higher levels, people may experience fatigue, headache, stomach pain, vomiting, or neurologic changes. Which cookware is included in the warning? The warning was issued for Indian aluminum cookware company, Saraswati Strips Pvt. Ltd, which sells the cookware under the brand name Tiger White. The FDA noted, however, it “could not identify and contact the distributor” to initiate a recall, so the products may still be on retail store shelves. The product details are as follows: Brand and product name: PURE ALLUMINIUM UTENSILS TM TIGER WHITE RTM NO: 2608606 AN ISO 9001:2015 Certified Co. SARASWATI STRIPS PVT. LTD. INDIA Retailer: Mannan Supermarket, 166-11 Hillside Ave. 1st FL, Jamaica, NY Manufacturer: SARASWATI STRIPS PVT. LTD. Recall status: FDA was unable to identify the distributor responsible for effectuating a recall The investigation is ongoing and the FDA is actively working to remove the cookware from shelves, and will determine if additional products are affected. FDA recommendations Consumers should throw away the cookware. Do not donate or refurbish it. Consumers who are concerned they may have been exposed to lead, or elevated levels of lead, should contact their health care provider. Retailers and distributors are encouraged to consult with the FDA regarding the safety and regulatory status of any products used in contact with food that they market or distribute. Additional questions can be sent to the FDA via email at premarkt@fda.hhs.gov.
Category:
E-Commerce
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