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Year-end performance reviews can be time-consuming. Yet the end and start of the year is when employees and managers are inundated with a heavy workload. Emotions range from elated to angst-ridden. After all, performance evaluations directly impact professional reputations, salary increases, bonuses, and promotions. The importance of revisiting objectives This reality begs the question of just how effective performance evaluations are and what employees can do to balance the scales. A recent SHRM study indicates that roughly 50% of companies employ traditional annual performance evaluation processes based on whether they achieve the goals that they set at the sta…

The walk sign lights up, and you’re ready to step off the curb when you hear the blare of an ambulance siren—or the sound of kids screaming, or even some leaves rustling in the wind. How do you make a sensible decision about whether it’s safe to cross the street when your brain must instantaneously juggle conflicting and related sensory information? Those decisions are made in the prefrontal cortex. One of the last areas of the brain to mature, it’s responsible for moment-to-moment reactions. And although researchers have long studied how brain cells process mixed signals, the mechanism has largely remained a mystery. Finally, new research is providing some insigh…

When Dr. David Rabin told me how Apollo Sessions worked, my exact first thought was, “poppycock.” This was an app, he said, that would turn my iPhone into a healing device using the vibrations of the phone’s haptic engine. By stimulating the vagus nerve—a core component of the parasympathetic nervous system responsible for the body’s recovery and relaxation mechanisms—using certain frequencies, this iOS app would make me feel different. It works, he assured me. With trauma patients in clinical settings, he claimed. As someone who is skeptical about wundermedicine by default, I didn’t believe it. But as someone who has lived through a few years of a traumatic experience, I…

KitchenAid just unveiled its “color of the year,” a retro, comforting Butter yellow. While most people are aware of Pantone’s color of the year program (hello, Mocha Mousse), fewer might be clued in to the fact that the beloved appliance company KitchenAid has been running its own version of the concept since 2017. Each year, KitchenAid picks a trendy new hue to outfit a line of its iconic stand mixers. In 2023, the pick was an electric pink Hibiscus, followed by a powdery Blue Salt in 2024. Now the company is all-in on its nostalgic buttery hue. The new mixer retails online for $499.99. [Photo: KitchenAid] A team of analysts from KitchenAid’s parent company, …

I once hired an executive—we’ll call her Alice—who elevated our company overnight. She helped shape our strategy, built a great team, and brought instant credibility to our brand. Our growth accelerated. The board respected her. The team loved her. I felt lucky to have her. But five years later, things had changed. Alice looked exhausted. She was short-tempered in meetings. One of her best people left. The team’s performance stalled. She wasn’t making obvious mistakes, but she was slowing the business down. Looking back, the signs were there, but I looked past them—like many CEOs do. When an executive has been a major contributor to success, it’s easy to let loyalty, …

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Los Angeles is our home and living laboratory. For four decades at RIOS, we’ve pioneered design that confronts complexity, believing that every urban challenge carries profound opportunities for transformation. The recent catastrophic fires aren’t just a crisis, but a critical inflection point for reimagining resilience. Our landscape practice, led by Katherine Harvey, has a…

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Well, this year was a wild ride. As we turn the page to 2025, it’s time to set intentions and make our own agency New Year’s resolutions. If your company is anything like ours, you’ve already met with your internal teams to determine what steps you will take to level up this year. This isn’t one-size-fits-all. Your approach may look entirely different, depending on your: Ni…

The Golden State Warriors are known for their electrifying plays and superstar Stephen Curry, but now the team is pioneering a fresh gameplan: blending sports and entertainment in a way no NBA franchise has before. As the first and only NBA team with its own record label, Golden State Entertainment, the Warriors are expanding their reach with “For the Soil,” a new album released this week. The project featuring the Bay Area’s top music artists — from E-40, Too Short, Saweetie, G-Eazy, Goapele, LaRussell and Larry June — arrives just in time for the league’s All-Star Game weekend in San Francisco. “A basketball team with a record label is unheard of until now, whic…

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Eggs Up Grill has 90 restaurants in nine southern states, up from 26 in 2018. Florida-based Another Broken Egg Café celebrated its 100th restaurant last year. Fast-food chains are also adding more breakfast items. Starbucks, which launched egg bites in 2017, now has a breakfast menu with 12 separate items containing eggs. Wend…

Road congestion is a persistent thorn in the side of our car-centric society. It’s loud, stressful, dangerous, and worsens air quality. It’s been linked to all kinds of adverse health effects, including lower birth weights, memory and attention problems in school kids, higher mortality in elderly adults, and even crime. But traffic might also affect our eating habits—and not in a good way. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, published in the Journal of Urban Economics, examined weekday traffic data from Los Angeles County highways between 2017 and 2019 and compared it with cellphone GPS data tracking customer visits to fast food restaurants …

After a rough start to 2025 due to the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, awards season in Hollywood is officially back in the swing of things. The fires, which broke out right after the Golden Globes, even caused some to question awards shows’ relevance in this time of crisis. Despite several delays, however, the Critics Choice Awards was held at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica on February 7. The following day, the Producers Guild of America Awards (PGA) was held at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles and the Directors Guild of America Awards (DGA) was presented at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. The results from these three prestigious awards shows …

A new study shows that bird flu has silently spread from animals to some veterinarians. The study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention echoes two smaller ones that detected evidence of infection in previously undiagnosed farmworkers. In those studies, several of the infected workers remembered having symptoms of H5N1 bird flu, while none of the veterinarians in the new paper recalled any such symptoms. The new study is more evidence that the official U.S. tally of confirmed human bird flu infections — 68 in the last year — is likely a significant undercount, said Dr. Gregory Gray, an infectious disease researcher at the University o…

Igloo is recalling more than 1 million of its coolers sold across the U.S., Mexico and Canada due to a handle hazard that has resulted in a handful of fingertip injuries, including some amputations. The now-recalled “Igloo 90 Qt. Flip & Tow Rolling Coolers” have a tow handle can pinch users’ fingertips against the product — posing potential amputation and other crushing risks, according to a Thursday recall notice from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Igloo has received 12 injury reports in the U.S., the CPSC notes, which include fingertip amputations, bone fractures, and lacerations. There are no known injuries in Canada or Mexico. Consumers i…

If you follow any Gen Zers on social media, you may know they seem to abide by one piece of sage wisdom: Go big or go home. That much is certainly true when it comes to their wild prom-posals and sometimes scary-extravagant gender-reveal parties. And apparently, it also holds true for their Valentine’s Day celebrations. According to a new survey from CouponFollow, on average, Americans in relationships plan to spend around $155 on the day of love this year. But Gen Z? Gen Z wouldn’t be satisfied unless they were going above and beyond. The generation that seems to enjoy flashy celebrations will spend far more on cards, chocolates, and stuffed animals, budgeting $235 t…

A driver drove a car into a labor union demonstration in central Munich on Thursday, injuring 30 people including children, authorities said. Officials said it was believed to be an attack. The suspect, an Afghan asylum-seeker, was arrested. The incident follows a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have pushed migration to the forefront of the campaign for Germany’s Feb. 23 election. Participants in a demonstration by the service workers’ union ver.di were walking along a street at about 10:30 a.m. when the suspect’s Mini Cooper overtook a police vehicle following the gathering, accelerated and plowed into the back of the group, police sa…

Denny’s Corporation (NASDAQ: DENN) told investors it is closing another 30 restaurants, for a total of 180 closures combined in 2024 and 2025, while reporting fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday. (It had previously said it would close a total of 150 locations.) The move is part of the restaurant chain’s plan to jumpstart its waning growth. Denny’s, like many fast-food and casual-dining chains, has been struggling in recent years due to inflation, changing customer habits, and skyrocketing food prices. It’s just one of many major chains to announce store closures recently, a list that includes TGI Fridays, Shake Shack, and Wendy’s as well. But Denny’s told Fast Compa…

Several channels owned by Paramount Global, including CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and MTV, could go dark on YouTube TV this week if a contract renewal cannot be reached between the two companies. YouTube TV, a subsidiary of Google, announced in a statement that it is working hard to reach a fair agreement that allows it to keep Paramount channels without raising prices for subscribers. It had not yet been successful in “good-faith” negotiations. What will happen if a new contract isn’t reached? After February 13, all Paramount content, including CBS and CBS Sports, will be removed from YouTube TV. Subscribers will also not be able to access previous re…

Valentine’s Day often conjures up images of chocolates and romance. But the crop behind this indulgence faces an existential threat. Regions like northeastern Brazil, one of the world’s notable cocoa-producing areas, are grappling with increasing aridity – a slow, yet unrelenting drying of the land. Cocoa is made from the beans of the cacao tree, which thrives in humid climates. The crop is struggling in these drying regions, and so are the farmers who grow it. This is not just Brazil’s story. Across West Africa, where 70% of the world’s cacao is grown, and in the Americas and Southeast Asia, shifting moisture levels threaten the delicate balance required for prod…

I recently helped my mom sort through boxes she inherited when my grandparents passed away. One box was labeled – either ironically or genuinely – “toothpick holders and other treasures.” Inside were many keepsakes from moments now lost to history – although we found no toothpick holders. My favorite of the items we sorted through was a solitary puzzle piece, an artifact reflecting my late grandmother’s penchant for hiding the final piece to a jigsaw puzzle just to swoop in at the last moment and finish it. After several hours of reminiscing, my mom and I threw away 90% of what we had sorted. “Why did I keep this?” is a question I hear frequently, both from my…