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A new app makes hiring security as simple as ordering an Uber. A viral TikTok with 11.2 million views reads, “POV we just ordered bodyguards to pick us up from the airport.” In the video, two influencers summon a pair of Protectors—private security in black SUVs—to Newark Airport after flying in from Los Angeles for New York Fashion Week. Another clip follows: “Everything we did with our bodyguards today.” They get picked up from their hotel, stop for matcha, attend a runway show, and shop—all accompanied by four bodyguards. The videos are savvy marketing for Protector, a soon-to-launch app promising on-demand personal security for the general public. “Th…

Lately, you may have noticed headlines about anti-DEI executive orders. While these orders are aimed at the federal government and don’t directly affect companies, they can make anyone who cares about inclusion feel uneasy. If your organization is serious about creating a fair and welcoming workplace, now is a good time to review and refresh your strategy. Let’s chat about some practical ways to stay focused on your values and navigate these challenging headlines. Reassure your team that inclusion is legal First things first, it’s important to remind everyone that diversity, equity, and inclusion work is completely legal. In an email interview, Working IDEAL’s…

The White House’s recent decision to grant press credentials to independent journalists, podcasters, and social media influencers marks a defining moment in the evolution of modern media. It acknowledges a reality that has been unfolding for years: How people consume information has fundamentally changed. For years, traditional media outlets have been the primary gatekeepers of news and information. Today, the landscape is fragmented, dynamic, and decentralized. Millions of people now turn to independent content creators, newsletters, and podcasts—often in place of mainstream news sources. This shift raises essential opportunities and challenges for companies and exec…

An X post recently made the rounds for its “old money” visuals. The video depicting weekends spent sailing Lake Como in tuxedos and candlelit dinners at impossibly long dining tables screams “upper crust.” Or so we thought. It was another X user who quickly shattered the illusion. “Sorry to burst the fantasy, but I know one of the girls in this video, and none of this is casual or real,” Louis Pisano wrote in a post. “It’s an ‘Instagram club’ where, if you get accepted, you pay to dress up and create ‘old money’ content with them.” This is the Tuxedo Society, a U.K.-based members-only club promising access to “experiences in the most iconic locations” and a chance…

The iconic Louvre in Paris is no stranger to crowds. Since first opening in 1793, the museum has played host to millions of guests and undergone dozens of expansions and renovations to accommodate them. Today, though, overtourism has brought the historic site to a breaking point. In a typical year, the Louvre is prepared to accommodate 4 million visitors. But in 2024, almost 9 million people—70% of them originating from outside of France—passed through its doors. “Visiting the Louvre is a physical ordeal,” museum director Laurence des Cars wrote in a widely publicized leaked memo. Now the Louvre will now undergo a massive renovation to address overcrowding and ex…

In his last semester at college, in between studying labor law and environmental impact assessment, Alex Elderbroom took a class on something very different: how to build a tiny house. In the class, at Paul Smith’s College in upstate New York—a school that mixes traditional academics with more practical courses—a small group of students spent three months last fall going through each step of the construction process, from planning and purchasing materials to building basic furniture for the finished 8-by-10-foot space. Elderbroom, who just graduated, happens to already rent a tiny cabin. He was interested in learning how to build one of the homes himself. “It seem…

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. While virtual doctor visits were available prior to 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic kicked them into overdrive: From 2018-2022, the percentage of American hospitals offering telehealth jumped over 14% to 86.9%. In 2021, McKinsey reported that the use of virtual care had stabilized at 38 times higher than before the pandemic. That same year, 85% of doctors offered it and 37% of adults surveyed had us…

Recently, the IRS realized that it owes $2.4 billion total in COVID stimulus payments to about one million taxpayers, with a maximum payment of $1,400. If you’re eligible for a stimulus check, you don’t have to do anything to receive it: The IRS is sending out honest-to-goodness windfalls to a million Americans. Unlike your tax refund—which is a portion of your salary being returned to you—no one is likely to wag a finger at you for getting a stimulus check. But that doesn’t necessarily make it easy to figure out what to spend your stimulus money on. If you’re looking for good uses for your stimulus money, here are several strategies that can help you make the mos…

The new year isn’t getting off to a great start when it comes to employment in the tech industry. Tech giant Salesforce is reportedly getting ready to cut 1,000 roles at the company. The expected job cuts are just the latest in a line of layoffs already initiated by well-known companies in the technology sector, including Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft. Here’s what you need to know. Salesforce to reportedly lay off over 1,000 employees Today, Bloomberg reported that Salesforce, the world’s top customer relationship management software company, will be cutting more than 1,000 positions at the company. The news came from an unnamed source and was not an official announc…

You’ve probably heard that people don’t leave their job, they leave their manager. It’s a popular saying because it’s often true. Having a toxic boss, however, is different than having one you simply don’t like. If your boss is toxic, you need to take steps to protect yourself. But if it’s simply a matter of personalities not jiving, slow your job-search roll, suggests Stephanie Chung, author of Ally Leadership, How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You. “There are people in your family you probably don’t like,” she says. “But if you like your company, you like your colleagues, you like how much money you’re making, you like your benefits, and the only thing you don’t l…

A little over a decade ago, Netflix decided to take streaming into its own hands: Instead of relying on commercial content delivery services, the streamer built its own servers from scratch, and gave them away to internet service providers. Since then, Netflix has distributed over 18,000 of these servers, now installed in 6,000 locations spread across 175 countries, forming the company’s Open Connect content delivery network. Now, Netflix is ready to take this tech beyond movies and TV shows: The company has begun to develop its own cloud gaming infrastructure, with servers that could eventually allow any Netflix member to play complex games on their smart TVs without…

As artificial intelligence begins to “devour the world,” job seekers must adapt their strategy to stand out in the hiring process. Hiring managers have begun to populate their interviews with questions about how prospective employees use AI in their work. According to industry experts, these types of questions will become more common as time goes on and AI continues to advance. In fact, 88% of C-suite leaders say speeding up AI adoption is important over the next year, according to LinkedIn’s 2025 Work Change Report. This can be daunting for people who don’t work in technology. You certainly don’t want to tell a hiring manager that you use ChatGPT to write and id…

Ever wondered what life is like for an astronaut? Now you can ask during NASA’s first Twitch event, where astronauts will be broadcasting live from the International Space Station (ISS). The stream is set to take place on Wednesday, February 12, at 11:45 a.m. ET on NASA’s official Twitch channel. The event will feature flight engineer Don Pettit, currently in space as part of the Expedition 72 launch which began on September 23, 2024, and ends in Spring 2025. He’ll be joined by NASA astronaut Matt Dominick, who returned to Earth in October 2024 after conducting scientific research for 232 days aboard the ISS. The NASA astronauts will answer questions about daily …

One of the largest non-profit blood centers in the country, New York Blood Center (NYBC), said it was hit with a ransomware attack over the weekend and is now experiencing disruptions in its services, including longer than normal processing times for blood donations, plus the cancelling and rescheduling of some blood donations. NYBC provides blood to over 200 hospitals in the northeast, including New York and New Jersey, and transfusion-related medical services to over 500 hospitals across the nation. “At this time, we do not have a specific timetable for system restoration,” NYBC said in a statement on its website. “We are working diligently with third-party expe…

The return-to-office (RTO) push at companies such as Amazon and AT&T—which both required employees to be back in the office full-time this month—has been met with discontent and frustration from much of their workforces. Some Amazon employees have said they are looking for new jobs, if they haven’t left already, while people at both companies have reportedly struggled to even find an open desk. But other leaders are not letting the prospect of low morale or limited workspace derail their plans to return to the office full time in 2025. According to a memo obtained by Business Insider, the latest addition to the mix is Dell, which had already tested the waters with…

Whether you’re setting up a new Windows PC or looking to enhance your current setup, there are some life-changing apps you can grab for free that will transform how you use your computer. From screen grabbing to file searching to quick launching and more, these essential apps will supercharge your productivity—all for the low, low price of nothing. ShareX: Screen captures and then some Windows includes a basic screen-capture tool. Don’t settle for it, though: Get ShareX, which rivals even paid screen-grabbers. You can create custom-capture regions that remember your preferences, set up automatic uploads with instant-link copying, and configure workflows tha…

“Competency checking” is a practice that imposes extra scrutiny on Black professionals and people of color, challenging their qualifications, intellect, and ability to advance. There are three primary ways competency checking is deployed in the modern workplace. The first is the assumption of Black intellectual inferiority and/or a lack of qualifications. This can manifest in low expectations, marginalization, and extreme micromanagement. (More simply: If someone assumes, consciously or unconsciously, that all Black people are intellectually inferior, they may question the person and their qualifications more closely during an interview and, once hired, pay much more …

On Valentine’s Day 2025, heavy rains started to fall in parts of rural Appalachia. Over the course of a few days, residents in eastern Kentucky watched as river levels rose and surpassed flood levels. Emergency teams conducted over 1,000 water rescues. Hundreds, if not thousands of people were displaced from homes, and entire business districts filled with mud. For some, it was the third time in just four years that their homes had flooded, and the process of disposing of destroyed furniture, cleaning out the muck and starting anew is beginning again. Historic floods wiped out businesses and homes in eastern Kentucky in February 2021, July 2022 and now February 20…

Catfishing. Once a trend confined to the realm of online dating. Now, like other relationship phenomena including ghosting, career cushioning, and quiet quitting, it’s infiltrated the workplace. This is bad for employers and employees alike. Corporate catfishing is when employers make false or misleading claims about their working culture in job ads or interviews in a bid to attract top talent, and it’s a big issue. Research shows that 70% of hiring managers have lied to candidates during hiring processes. A separate study also found that 72% of workers have experienced “shift shock,” where the reality of a new job doesn’t live up to what you were sold. The reas…

Growing up in the mountains of western Guatemala, Feliciano Perez Tomas cultivated the same type of native maize his family had for generations. The breed of corn was central to his Indigenous K’iche’ community’s diet, a grain and pulse-heavy intake that dates back to the time of the Maya Civilization. But over the years, more frequent and intense rains—linked to climate change—came earlier in the year, disrupting the harvest. “Before it rained in March and we would sow seeds when it happened, but these days the rains can begin in February, and there can be a lot of ice and colder conditions,” said Tomas, 42. “We would have to work so hard, but receive little.…

It’s been a rough few years for brick-and-mortar retailers. In 2024, numerous big-name companies shuttered or announced their intentions to shutter locations across the country, including Big Lots, Macy’s, CVS, LL Flooring, Walgreens, and Family Dollar. Now a discount retail chain with nearly a hundred stores has announced that it will close all of its locations. That retailer is Bargain Hunt, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month. Here’s what you need to know about its bankruptcy and store closings: Why did Bargain Hunt file for bankruptcy? Interestingly, Bargain Hunt has not revealed specific reasons for filing for bankruptcy. No…

Human skills fall into three major buckets: physical, intellectual, and emotional. Of these, the last two are critical differentiators of talent across all knowledge economy jobs. When it comes to intellectual skills, such as learning ability, a century of scientific evidence reveals that this trait is the most consistent predictor of job performance and career success across all occupations. Why? Because it predicts how fast and well you can learn, reason, and solve problems, which basically matters in every job. That said, intellectual skills are clearly not enough to do well in your job or career. In fact, most jobs will also require you to understand, influenc…

Teenage YouTube users across the world will now get automatic reminders to go to bed and take a break from their screens. YouTube announced this week it was expanding such reminders to minors across the globe, ensuring they are full-screen and toggled-on by default. The feature first debuted in the U.S. seven years ago, and went automatic for minors in 2023. So-called “bedtime” notifications have grown in popularity, buoyed in large part by YouTube and TikTok. But it’s unclear how effective the notifications are in the first place. After all, YouTube users only have to click to close out the banner; on TikTok, it’s even easier to keep swiping past the text. …

In today’s fast-paced, tech-driven world, commanding attention during meetings or presentations is an increasingly complex challenge. Attendees are often preoccupied with emails, notifications, or social media, turning valuable discussions into background noise. To overcome the issue, presenters must intentionally foster engagement that goes beyond just delivering information. The importance of engagement Engagement is the bridge between delivering information and fostering collaboration. When people feel actively involved in a conversation or presentation, they are more likely to pay attention, retain information, and contribute meaningfully. Think about meetings …