Employees are distracted, and it’s no wonder. They don’t have to read the news; they see colleagues who are disengaged, actively searching for greener pastures, and quitting. Meanwhile, executives still are trying to make sense of a business model that accommodates fully office versus hybrid-office workplaces. Despite their current efforts, more than 70% of workers are unhappy with their company’s location flexibility and plan to seek other opportunities within a year.
Listen to the latest episode of Fast Company’s Creative Control podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RadioPublic, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher.
Before the World Health Organization officially recognized burnout as a syndrome in 2019, there was already a mounting wave of high-profile creators speaking out against what they felt as pressure from platforms to churn out content consistently or their channels would suffer. Unsurprisingly, the past two years have only made burnout worse.  
Throughout the pandemic, technology decision-makers have quickly adopted new solutions to streamline remote and hybrid business processes. But this onboarding process shined a light on a long-standing problem: the inherent biases introduced to tech products by humans. Although many tech solutions are powered by AI, the tech industry has historically lacked an accountable vetting process to account for potential biases in the data these products’ algorithms are built on. The result i
On Monday, Facebook parent Meta revealed that its metaverse, Horizon Worlds, would test a new way to let creators sell virtual goods, services, and experiences within the digital universe (such as fashion accessories, or access to exclusive spaces). As CEO Mark Zuckerberg put it in a video, those features represent “a new part of the e-commerce equation overall”—and, according to a blog post from the company, would be a step toward “our long-term vision for the metave
Politics loomed large over this week’s Global Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C. The annual training and networking event, hosted by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), carried some added political buzz as regulators in the U.S. and Europe edge closer to passing major regulation to reign in big tech companies. Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Brad Smith, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan, and European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynd
For decades, cybersecurity experts have been held back by a relative lack of federal involvement across a range of issues in cyberspace. Now they’ve finally got their wish, but will the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (CDP), which the State Department announced last week, focus on all of the right issues? For years there’s been a clear necessity for such an agency. Attacks such as last year’s Colonial pipeline hack and the 2020 Solar Winds attack on the U.S. software
Asians are not underrepresented in tech, and some diversity initiatives don’t include them. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still massive barriers to overcome. In our new report on women of color in tech, we found that Asian women reported worse outcomes than white women, often by a wide margin. In fact, Asian women’s experience was far closer to that of other women of color than to that of white women. East Asian women (e.g. Chinese) were 66% less likely than whit
Among the many changes brought about by the pandemic is the widespread use of QR codes, graphical representations of digital data that can be printed and later scanned by a smartphone or other device. QR codes have a wide range of uses that help people avoid contact with objects and close interactions with other people, including for sharing restaurant menus, email list sign-ups, car and home sales information, and checking in and out of medical and professional appointments. QR c
If you ask me, you can never have too many screens. One for email! One for browsing! One for files! Screens for everyone! However, not everyone has the luxury of cramming a sprawling collection of monitors onto a desk, or has enough inputs on their computers to support such a setup. If you’ve got an iPad and a Mac, though, it’s dead simple to use the iPad as a companion monitor for your Mac. Here’s how. Sidecar requirements We’re going to be using Apple’s free,
A year ago, as cryptocurrencies and NFTs burst into the mainstream, the novelty of the blockchain alone was enough to clamor over. But a year later, the public seems to be seeking the next major synthesis of blockchain tech—and that may well be the metaverse. According to a report from blockchain analytics group Nansen, metaverse-linked NFTs led the market in the first quarter of 2022, with investments in virtual land and real estate, avatars, and assets returning an average of 129.4%. Th