What Costco And Wegmans Have In Common With Google

What could Google possibly have in common with Wegmans and Costco?

The tech giant is working on big-idea projects like self-driving cars and “smart” contact lenses, along with its core search business. The other two are focused on, essentially, selling groceries.

Still, in one critical respect the three companies are getting one thing right: They offer workers “good jobs” -- not low-paying dead-end work where employers feel like cogs in the machine.

The three companies give their employees a certain amount of freedom and a feeling of ownership over their work, Laszlo Bock, Google’s head of human resources tells the Wall Street Journal. That makes workers “act like owners,” Bock says.

All three companies frequently wind up atop lists of the best companies to work for -- or companies everyone wants to work for -- thanks to competitive pay and solid benefits and perks. All three offer some level of flexibility and, especially, training that sends a message to workers that they’re valued.

Crucially, employees don’t feel stuck in their jobs. Wegmans and Costco both promote from within -- and devote real resources to training workers to move them up the ranks. Turnover is low.

Seventy percent of warehouse managers at Costco started at the lowest rungs of the company, according to BusinessWeek. At Wegmans, 66 percent of promotions are internal.

The stores also offer rational scheduling. Workers are happier when they can plan their schedules far out in advance and swap shifts with colleagues. This isn’t common in retail, where often workers don’t know when they’re working from week to week.

Google's perks are legendary. The company offers workers sabbaticals, mindfulness training and many other coveted benefits designed to keep employees motivated and happy.

All this pay and respect and freedom may cost the companies more at the outset. But research has shown that creating “good jobs” that offer more than simply zombie-like dead-end work is actually a win for employers.

“Higher investment in people leads companies to do really well,” M.I.T. professor Zeynep Ton told The Huffington Post in February. Ton’s research has shown that employers that offer “good jobs” -- work that’s engaging and offers opportunities for workers to think -- are more profitable.

It’s a win-win.

Tesla's Self-Driving Feature Leaves Insurers Idling As States Scramble

Tesla Motors’ plan to roll out a self-driving feature on some cars this summer has regulators, especially in its home state of California, scrambling to write new rules.

Current California law allows automakers to operate autonomous vehicles -- but not regular drivers.

“We have been trying to get a handle on what they are planning to do,” Bernard Soriano, deputy director of California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, told The Wall Street Journal. “We are knee-deep in it.”

Auto insurance is regulated on a state level, so any new policies must await a ruling by the states.

That leaves auto insurers, who represent the next hurdle in the push for driverless cars, idling with the engine on.

“This is so new, there’s really no track record upon which to assess what’s the likelihood that there will be a crash or lawsuit resulting from a crash,” Michael Barry, vice president of media relations at the Insurance Information Institute, an industry-funded nonprofit, told The Huffington Post on Saturday. “It’s in its infancy.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

On the bright side, the insurance industry has nimbly adjusted to other new technologies in recent years, Barry said.

He pointed to new programs created for drivers at car-hailing services, allowing them to get a dual policy that separately covers time spent driving for personal and commercial use.

“The auto insurance industry has adapted to technological changes in the past, and will continue to do so in the future,” Barry said. “Look at what’s going on with Uber and Lyft.”

Overall, he predicted that driverless cars will eventually lead to fewer crashes. But it's still far from clear who will actually be responsible if and when a crash does occur.

“Liability is going to become an issue,” Barry said. “The burden might be on the manufacturer of the driverless vehicle to prove that it is not responsible for what happened in the event of a crash.”

Tesla’s autopilot feature will only be available on interstate highways, as CEO Elon Musk has said the technology is not yet “safe on suburban streets.”

Fully automated vehicles are still a ways off from becoming the norm. If a circumstance arises where an accident is unavoidable -- say, for instance, a child runs out into the street -- the computers that control the car do not yet have the ethical reasoning to deduce whether they should sacrifice the driver by suddenly swerving away, or run down the child. Last September, Ron Medford, Google’s safety chief on its driverless car project, said the company had not yet begun to study that issue.

Either way, even when self-driving cars do become widely available, the rate of turnover in the U.S. car market will delay their widespread adoption.

“The average car on the road is about 11 years old, so it takes decades for the U.S. fleet to turn over,” Barry said. “I think we’re far away from seeing a lot of driverless cars on the roadways.”

Microsoft To Require Its U.S. Suppliers To Offer Paid Leave

For the past several months, White House officials and Democrats in Congress have been using the bully pulpit to encourage more U.S. businesses to offer their workers paid leave. Their motto: “Lead on leave.”

On Thursday, Microsoft showed them how it’s done.

In a blog post on the company’s website, Brad Smith, a Microsoft vice president, announced that Microsoft will be taking steps to require all of its large U.S. contractors to offer their workers at least 15 days of paid leave per year. That time could come “either through 10 days of paid vacation and five days of paid sick leave or through 15 days of unrestricted paid time off,” Smith wrote.

There are certain restrictions. The new requirements will apply only to suppliers with 50 or more employees, and within those firms, they'll apply only to employees who have worked there for at least nine months and do “substantial work” for Microsoft.

While the new terms certainly won’t apply to everyone in Microsoft’s supply chain, the company said they “will apply to a great many.”

Like any modern U.S. firm of its size, Microsoft deals with all sorts of suppliers, “from building maintenance to management consulting and campus security to software localization,” as Smith noted Thursday. A lot of these companies may already offer their workers the paid time off that Microsoft will require, but plenty of them probably don’t. For example, it's not hard to imagine that the janitorial firms whose workers clean Microsoft’s offices at night don't currently provide the kind of paid time off that Smith describes.

If Microsoft stands by its pledge, then the companies that fail to meet its standard will lose Microsoft’s business. The company said it plans to work with its suppliers over the next year to help them implement the new policies.

By using its considerable contracting power to encourage more paid leave, Microsoft is taking a step that even the White House, for all its talk on the subject, has been loath to pursue.

The federal government holds more contracts than any private-sector firm -- a power that presidents going at least as far back as Franklin Roosevelt have wielded to set higher labor standards. Officials in the Obama White House have used procurement rules to raise working standards in several ways, like setting a new minimum wage for contractors and cracking down on wage theft. But as The Huffington Post has reported, White House officials have thus far declined to give contracting preference to firms that offer paid leave.

Though the standards vary, other developed countries already have laws in place that guarantee workers some amount of paid leave, be it vacation time, sick days or child leave. The U.S. doesn’t require private-sector businesses to offer such perks, and lower-income workers are less likely than their better-paid counterparts to have some kind of paid leave. Current U.S. laws on the matter are unlikely to change any time soon, with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress.

In his blog post, Smith said that Microsoft believes offering paid leave is not only a nice thing to do but also a good business practice, leading to a “happier and more productive workforce.”

“The people who work for our suppliers are critical to our success and we want them to have the benefit of paid time off,” he wrote.

Steve Jobs Became A Better Boss When He Curbed His Narcissism

It takes a certain amount of narcissism to claw your way up the ranks of a company. But it takes as much humility to be successful once you’re there.

Executives who curb their confidence in their vision by admitting mistakes and limitations and acknowledging the contributions of others tend to command the most respect and loyalty from their teams, who thereby deliver results, according to a new study from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management. However, humility, like meditation or golf, may take some practice.

And even so, narcissism is often a necessary tool for success -- as it was for the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whose obsessive commitment to his vision for the iPhone maker helped shape it into the world's most valuable company.

“Humility is not meant to replace some of the quintessential aspects of leaders,” Bradley P. Owens, assistant professor of business ethics at the university, told The Huffington Post. “It’s meant to supplement and buffer them from the extremes of narcissism.”

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, surveyed 876 employees at a large Fortune 100 health insurance company and asked them to rate 138 leaders in the company on their humility and effectiveness, and how motivated the employees were by their supervisors.

Researchers measured the narcissism of the leaders by asking them to describe themselves by choosing between statements such as “I am an extraordinary person,” or “I am much like everybody else.”

“The leaders that performed the best were those who had high narcissism and high humility,” Owens, the lead study author, said.

As a real-life example of how narcissism and humility can mix successfully, Owens pointed to the portrayal of Steve Jobs in the new biography Becoming Steve Jobs, penned by journalists Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.

The book, released Tuesday, chronicles the tech titan’s humbling years after his first run at Apple, which ended with the board firing him. Roughly a decade later, Jobs returned to the company and led it in a stunning turnaround. Paired with the findings from Owens’ study, this telling appears to link the softening of Jobs’ initial hotheaded abrasiveness with Apple's rise to global dominance.

Until he was fired in 1985, Jobs was known for being extremely demanding on people around him, including then-CEO John Sculley.

“That was part of his greatness,” William Simon, co-author of iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, told ABC News in 2011. “But he drove people too hard. ... Being gentle was not part of his demeanor.”

By the time Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he had learned to balance his leadership style.

“When he came back in his second stint, people described him as someone who was still narcissistic, but had learned to temper his narcissism in important ways,” Owens said. “That’s why Steve Jobs was really a great example of what we were looking for.”

That means, too, that humility can be a learned skill.

"Even if you have a narcissistic leader, and in a sense it's causing them to be less effective in certain ways, people can proactively practice virtues like humility and develop their character," Owens said. "Over time, it will begin to stick and enhance their leadership effectiveness.

Companies Led By Moral Bosses Are Actually More Profitable

Good character also means good business, according to a new study.

Conducted by leadership consulting firm KRW International, the study found a link between a business' performance and the integrity of its CEO. Firms where employees rated the CEO's moral principles highly performed better than firms whose top executive had a lower character rating.

“I was unprepared to discover how robust the connection really is,” KRW founder Fred Kiel said, per the Harvard Business Review, which first reported on the study.

The report highlighted 10 leaders who excelled across the board. These rockstar execs -- Kiel calls them “virtuoso CEOs” -- include Dale Larson, CEO and president of Larson Manufacturing Company, Sally Jewell, a former CEO of outdoor retailer REI, and Charles Sorenson, CEO and president of Intermountain Healthcare. They were seen as standing up for the right issues, expressing concern for others, showing empathy and moving past mistakes. And they got high marks for their vision, strategy and accountability.

By contrast, the 10 individuals who scored lowest in KRW's study seemed to twist the truth for their advantage, avoid blame and be preoccupied with their personal financial gain.

The researchers compiled their data by asking employees at 84 U.S. companies and nonprofits to rate their CEOs and managers on four key moral principles: integrity, responsibility, forgiveness and compassion. They then lined up those responses with the firms’ financial results and examined whether there appeared to be an impact on profitability.

Businesses helmed by an exec with a positive character score saw an average return on assets of 9.35 percent over a two-year span. Companies with a CEO who scored lower, on the other hand, had an average ROA of just 1.93 percent.

Interestingly, the low-rated leaders gave themselves better assessments than their employees did, while virtuoso CEOs gave themselves lower scores than their employees did.

Employees aren't the only ones who recognize the importance of having an upright leader, however. Other execs have chimed in on the issue. Marillyn Hewson, president and CEO of aerospace and defense firm Lockheed Martin, wrote in a LinkedIn post that a leader can build trust by showing a commitment to integrity and values, as well as being transparent about the company's strategy.

"It’s important to communicate that the commitment to integrity, respect and excellence starts at the top -- and even more important to demonstrate that commitment through decisions and actions," Hewson wrote. "Show employees that you are embracing your values, and you’ll go a long way towards building trust."

And in fact, it's been shown that profits follow when employers treat their workers well. Companies that offer great pay and benefits and help workers reduce stress have fewer staff turnovers and can even outperform the S&P 500 stock index.

You can read more about Kiel’s study in his book Return on Character, out April 7 from the Harvard Business Review Press.

Obama Reveals What Helps Him Manage The Stress Of His Job

President Barack Obama revealed what he thinks is the most important way to manage the stress of his job in an interview with The Huffington Post last week.

Obama credited morning exercise and his Hawaiian roots for his ability to keep a calm demeanor in such a high-stress environment, but he noted family is what really keeps him grounded.

"I don't get too high, don't get too low," Obama said.

"But I think the most important -- I'm very consistent about spending time with family," he added. "And when you have dinner with your daughters -- particularly teenage daughters -- they'll keep you in your place and they'll teach you something about perspective."

Obama said it's also important to "take the long view" on issues instead of panicking about what's happening day by day.

"Everything's a crisis, everything is terrible, everything is doomsday, everything is -- if it doesn't get solved tomorrow, you know, your presidency is going off the rails. There must have been what, 15, 20 things that over the last seven years folks have said, 'This is it. It's over,'" Obama said. "You know, we had the Gulf oil spill, worst environmental disaster in history. Everybody said, 'Ah, he's handling this terribly.' A year later, nobody was talking about it, and in retrospect, it turns out that we handled that as well as any environmental crisis has been handled."

Watch a clip of Obama's interview with HuffPost above.

Antibiotic Use In Meat Is Soaring

BLT sandwiches may need to add an A to the acronym -- for antibiotics.

Soaring demand for meat across the world has caused a major uptick in the amount of antimicrobial drugs in pork, beef and poultry, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But as bacon sales sizzle and China -- where pork is the favored meat -- becomes wealthier, pig farmers around the world are meeting demand by using about four times as much antibiotics per pound of meat as cattle ranchers. Poultry is a close second.

This charts shows that pigs, for the most part, consume the highest density and amount of antibiotics.

The antibiotics serve two purposes. First, they help fatten up livestock at a faster rate. Second, they keep animals healthy despite being raised in overcrowded, filthy conditions where disease spreads easily.

In 2010, farmers around the world used more than 63,000 tons of antibiotics to raise livestock. By 2030, the researchers expect that number to rise to more than 105,000 tons.

“People are getting richer and want to eat more meat,” Thomas Van Boeckel, an epidemiologist at Princeton University and an author of the study, told The Huffington Post by phone. “Antibiotics help to provide a lot of meat for people who can afford it.”

Consumption of antibiotic-fed meat poses a major threat to humanity. Exposure to human antibiotics through meat has given rise to antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” which some researchers suggest could kill up to 10 million people worldwide by 2050 if left unchecked.

As awareness of this threat grows, some companies have removed antibiotics from their meat supply. Earlier this month, McDonald’s vowed to remove human antibiotics from its chicken supply, though animal antibiotics would continue to be used and the human drugs would remain in beef and pork products. Chicken chain Chick-fil-A removed all antibiotics from its chicken last year.

But Chipotle remains the food industry’s poster child for antibiotic-free meat. The burrito chain showed its commitment earlier this year when it suffered a pork shortage after discovering issues with its supplier.

Still, the industry seems unlikely to change unless more consumers demand antibiotic-free meat. Legislation has done little to stymie the growth of the use of antibiotics in the United States. In China, no such legislation exists.

“If things change at all, it’ll be because customers demand better products, like organic bacon,” Van Boeckel said. “But, of course, not everyone can afford that.”