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One of the wonderful things about watching AppleTVs Severance is seeing the variety of “employee appreciation events” they throw. Each one worse than the last, but they provide wonderful satire of the flat attempts many companies make to demonstrate to their employees that they are valued. The truth is that employee appreciation is not shown by any event. It turns out that if you want the people who work in an organization to feel appreciated, you need to show that they are respected and valued every day. Managers should not wait for special occasions to say nice things about their employees performance. Instead, leaders need to be looking for chances to compliment excellence, effort, and improvement all the time. It is particularly important that significant recognition, praise, and rewards be given to people whose actions and ethos are aligned with the mission of the organization. When visible awards and praise go to people who are widely known to be favorites of management rather than to great team players, that undermines peoples belief that leaders care about the values they talk about. Intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards Psychologists have long distinguished between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards reflect the joy of engaging in a particular activity. For example, you might read often because you genuinely love engaging with a good book. Extrinsic rewards are rewards given that are independent of the activity itself. If someone paid me $5 for every book I read, that would be an extrinsic reward. The danger with extrinsic rewards is that people pursue the activity for that reward, and will often stop doing it when the reward is taken away. In fact, extrinsic rewards can sometimes interfere with peoples ability to learn that an activity is intrinsically rewarding. There is a parallel with employee appreciation. Authentic employee appreciation is embedded in the daily workflow in a way that feels connected (or intrinsic) to the work itself. Supervisors should regularly catch people doing good things and give them positive feedback. Highlighting great work during team meetings and in email updates is also valuable. What authentic appreciation looks like When compliments are freely given to acknowledge significant contributions, then other employee rewards often feel more authentic. Still, it’s useful for organizations to think about ways to provide perks that are consistent with their brand and mission. For example, I have seen leaders at my university use tickets to sporting events and other events on campus to reward service that goes beyond the call of duty. Rewards ring hollow when they feel separated from the work itself. When leaders routinely lead by creating fear, and fail to acknowledge great work, then any rewardeven ones that are on-brandwill still feel forced and inauthentic. On top of that, the rewards given to employees should feel like actual rewards. Holding a party after hours to honor people who have done great work may create a burden for those who have long commutes home or family obligations to attend to. Sending out gift baskets of food that get dietary restrictions of employees wrong is also a problem, because it signals you dont really know the people youre trying to honor. We spend a lot of our waking life at work. It’s nice to be recognized for the contributions we have made to the mission of our team. But an inauthentic reward can be worse than none. It leaves people feeling cynical because it suggests that their true contribution hasnt really been noticed.
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E-Commerce
If the joy of seeing butterflies seems increasingly rare these days, it isnt your imagination. From 2000 to 2020, the number of butterflies fell by 22% across the continental United States. Thats 1 in 5 butterflies lost. The findings are from an analysis just published in the journal Science by the U.S. Geological Surveys Powell Center Status of Butterflies of the United States Working Group, which I am involved in. The endangered Karner blue butterfly has struggled with habitat loss. [Photo: USFWS/Flickr] We found declines in just about every region of the continental U.S. and across almost all butterfly species. Overall, nearly one-third of the 342 butterfly species we were able to study declined by more than half. Twenty-two species fell by more than 90%. Only nine actually increased in numbers. West Coast lady butterflies range across the Western U.S., but their numbers have dropped by 80% in two decades. [Photo: Renee Las Vegas/Wiki Commons] Some species numbers are dropping faster than others. The West Coast lady, a fairly widespread species across the western U.S., dropped by 80% in 20 years. Given everything we know about its biology, it should be doing fine it has a wide range and feeds on a variety of plants. Yet, its numbers are absolutely tanking across its range. Why care about butterflies? Butterflies are beautiful. They inspire people, from art to literature and poetry. They deserve to exist simply for the sake of existing. They are also important for ecosystem function. Butterflies are pollinators, picking up pollen on their legs and bodies as they feed on nectar from one flower and carrying it to the next. In their caterpillar stage, they also play an important role as herbivores, keeping plant growth in check. A pipevine swallowtail caterpillar munches on leaves at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Md. Herbivores help keep plant growth in check. [Photo: Judy Gallagher/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY] Butterflies can also serve as an indicator species that can warn of threats and trends in other insects. Because humans are fond of butterflies, its easy to get volunteers to participate in surveys to count them. The annual North American Butterfly Association Fourth of July Count is an example and one we used in the analysis. The same kind of nationwide monitoring by amateur naturalists doesnt exist for less charismatic insects such as walking sticks. Whats causing butterflies to decline? Butterfly populations can decline for a number of reasons. Habitat loss, insecticides, rising temperatures and drying landscapes can all harm these fragile insects. A study published in 2024 found that a change in insecticide use was a major factor in driving butterfly declines in the Midwest over 17 years. The authors, many of whom were also part of the current study, noted that the drop coincided with a shift to using seeds with prophylactic insecticides, rather than only spraying crops after an infestation. The Southwest saw the greatest drops in butterfly abundance of any region. As that region heats up and dries out, the changing climate may be driving some of the butterfly decline there. Butterflies have a high surface-to-volume ratio they dont hold much moisture so they can easily become desiccated in dry conditions. Drought can also harm the plants that butterflies rely on. Only the Pacific Northwest didnt lose butterfly population on average. This trend was largely driven by an irruptive species, meaning one with extremely high abundance in some years the California tortoiseshell. When this species was excluded from the analyses, trends in the Pacific Northwest were similar to other regions. The California tortoiseshell butterfly can look like wood when its wings are closed, but theyre a soft orange on the other side. [Photo: Walter Siegmund/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA] When we looked at each species by its historical range, we found something else interesting. Many species suffered their highest losses at the southern ends of their ranges, while the northern losses generally werent as severe. While we could not link drivers to trends directly, the reason for this pattern might involve climate change, or greater exposure to agriculture with insecticides in southern areas, or it may be a combination of many stressors. There is hope for populations to recover Some butterfly species can have multiple generations per year, and depending on the environmental conditions, the number of generations can vary between years. This gives me a bit of hope when it comes to butterfly conservation. Because they have such short generation times, even small conservation steps can make a big difference and we can see populations bounce back. The Karner blue is an example. Its a small, endangered butterfly that depends on oak savannas and pine barren ecosystems. These habitats are uncommon and require management, especially prescribed burning, to maintain. With restoration efforts, one Karner blue population in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve in New York rebounded from a few hundred individuals in the early 1990s to thousands of butterflies. Similar management and restoration efforts could help other rare and declining butterflies to recover. What you can do to help butterflies recover The magnitude and rate of biodiversity loss in the world right now can make one feel helpless. But while national and international efforts are needed to address the crisis, you can also take small actions that can have quick benefits, starting in your own backyard. Butterflies love wildflowers, and planting native wildflowers can benefit many butterfly species. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has guides recommending which native species are best to plant in which parts of the country. Letting grass grow can help, even if its just a strip of grass and wildflowers a couple of feet wide at the back of the yard. A patch of wildflowers and grasses can become a butterfly garden, like this one in Townsend, Tenn. [Photo: Chris Light, CC BY-SA] Supporting policies that benefit conservation can also help. In some states, insects arent considered wildlife, so state wildlife agencies have their hands tied when it comes to working on butterfly conservation. But those laws could be changed. The federal Endangered Species Act can also help. The law mandates that the government maintain habitat for listed species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2024 recommended listing the monarch butterfly as a threatened species. With the new study, we now have population trends for more than half of all U.S. butterfly species, including many that likely should be considered for listing. With so many species needing help, it can be difficult to know where to start. But the new data can help concentrate conservation efforts on those species at the highest risk. I believe this study should be a wake-up call about the need to better protect butterflies and other insects the little things that run the world. Eliza Grames is an assistant professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University, State University of New York. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
MrBeast is currently the most-subscribed YouTuber in the worldbut his biggest moneymaker isnt content. Its chocolate. The 26-year-old creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, owns the snack brand Feastables, which generated $251 million in sales and more than $20 million in profit last year, according to investor documents obtained by Bloomberg. By contrast, his main media businessincluding his blockbuster YouTube channel and the Amazon Prime reality competition show, Beast Gamesbrought in similar revenue but lost nearly $80 million over the same period. With 372 million subscribers at the time of writing, MrBeasts videos range from spending 100 hours inside the pyramids to helping 2,000 people walk again. As you might imagine, content of that sort doesnt come cheap. The average video for MrBeasts main channel now costs between $3 million and $4 million, according to Bloomberg. Recouping such extravagant production budgets is no easy task, especially with only a few videos released per month. Little surprise, then, that the YouTube star has spent the past few years leveraging his fame to build businesses that have nothing to do with the social media platforms he started out on. Now, the most profitable arm of Beast Industries is its commerce division, led by the chocolate brand Feastables. According to Bloomberg, the company forecasts that Feastables will triple in size over the next couple of years, while media revenue will only account for one-fifth of its total sales by 2026. (MrBeast did not respond to Fast Companys request for comment.) As well as Feastables, Beast Industries is also a shareholder in the snack brand Lunchly and owns Viewstats, a software firm that sells digital tools to fellow content creators. As reported by Bloomberg, Beast Industries has secured more than $450 million in funding over the past four years to fuel its businesses. In recent months, MrBeast has been in talks with investors to raise an additional $200 million, which would push the company’s valuation past $5 billion, The Verge reported last week. Investors backing Beast Industries’s $5 billion valuation are betting on a future driven by consumer products rather than viral videos. Beyond Feastables, MrBeast is gearing up to launch a range of new products in the coming years, including beverages, a snack brand, and a cereal line. Hes also set to expand into mobile gaming, with a division expected to debut next year. This reflects a broader monetization shift in the creator economy, where major social media stars are pivoting from content to consumer products. Last year, popular podcast host Alex Cooper launched her drink brand, Unwell, while YouTuber-turned-podcaster Emma Chamberlain opened her first ever café in Los Angeles for her coffee brand, Chamberlain Coffee. Logan Paul, another early YouTube star, cofounded Prime energy drink and teamed up with MrBeast on Lunchly. Turns out, selling your brand as a chocolate bar or a beverage might be the real jackpot.
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E-Commerce
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