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Pfotenhauer held many positions in the mortgage and title industries in his long career, including being the chair of Merscorp, MORPAC and MISMO. View the full article

Long-serving CEO paid $1.5mn in base salary and a $41.5mn bonusView the full article

I’m sure you’ve seen the studies that come out from time to time showing that diet sodas are arguably kinda-sorta bad for you. (Their evidence is never very strong.) But did you see the new study that found diet soda was better than water for people with type 2 diabetes? Not only is it a real study, it was well-designed and we should be paying attention to it, according to an epidemiologist I talked to who was not involved in the study. That epidemiologist is Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz of the University of Wollongong, who wrote about it here. When I asked him if it was a good or a bad thing that this study had mostly escaped notice by news media, he said “this is far more robust than most of the science that gets media coverage.” The study was not sponsored by any commercial drink company. What the study foundIn the delightfully named SODAS trial (Study Of Drinks with Artificial Sweeteners), researchers at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, recruited adults who had type 2 diabetes and who had a habit of drinking artificially sweetened beverages (including, but not limited to, my one true love Diet Coke). The study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Half of them were asked to switch to drinking water instead, and everyone was provided with three servings a day of either their diet drink of choice, or a water of their choice (unsweetened seltzer included). The study ran for 24 weeks. There were 181 people enrolled, of which 179 finished the study, which is considered a fairly large group for a study of this type. (It's twice as large as an older study I'll contrast it with below.) The main outcome the researchers studied was hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) as measured by a blood test. This is a common test used to monitor glucose control in people who have diabetes or are at risk for it. The higher your HbA1C, the higher your blood glucose has probably been over the past three months or so. The results: HbA1C got slightly better in the group that was drinking artificial sweeteners: from 7.19% to 7.14%. It got worse in the group that was drinking water, from 7.20% to 7.44%. The researchers collected a few other metrics, for good measure. Fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and “time in range” as measured by a continuous glucose monitor all favored the diet drinks group. The people in the diet drinks group lost a little bit of weight (on average, two pounds) while those in the water group had stable weights. The researchers referred to this difference in weight loss as “statistically significant, but not clinically significant.” In other words, probably real, but too small to matter. Bottom line: there was no real benefit to the people in the study switching from diet sodas to water; if anything, doing so may have slightly hurt their health. What this means for you and your Diet Coke habitOK, maybe I mean me and my Diet Coke habit. I fully admit to being biased here, but in an educated way. I like my Diet Coke. I’ve also been keeping an eye on research about artificial sweeteners over the years, and while I won’t necessarily defend my soda as health food, nothing has ever convinced me that it’s bad for me. (Sugar-sweetened sodas are a different story; those, we should probably all avoid.) Now, we have a reasonably large, well-designed, independently-funded study showing that artificially sweetened drinks are possibly better for you than water. I still haven’t seen any news coverage of it, even though a study with the opposite results got coverage a few years back. That study involved 81 women with diabetes in a weight-loss trial, and their HbA1C improved slightly with water compared to diet drinks. Even so, one expert that Everyday Health spoke to about it said that he was “of the opinion that the health risks of diet sodas are overstated.” (Meanwhile, the authors of the most recent study point out that comparing that study to theirs isn’t quite apples-to-apples, since it was a weight loss trial and this one is not.) That’s an important point to remember about any study on a specific food: they usually apply to a specific medical condition or population. We like to file them away in our mind as “Diet Coke good” or “Diet Coke bad,” but each study only gives us a piece of the puzzle, not a generality. For example this study tells us nothing about Diet Coke’s effects on people who have poorly controlled diabetes, or who don’t have diabetes at all; and it doesn’t say anything about measures other than those related to blood sugar. It didn’t even specifically study Diet Coke, although it’s likely that Diet Coke was one of the more popular beverages participants chose. To be clear, it is entirely possible that this isn’t a real effect, and and that water and diet drinks are basically equivalent when it comes to your blood glucose and your health. Meyerowitz-Katz says this is probably the most likely explanation, but we can’t rule out the possibility that diet sodas may help glucose control in type 2 diabetes. Maybe they satisfy a sweet tooth and help people avoid other sugary snacks, for example. The researchers write that their main takeaway is that “maintaining usual [artificially-sweetened beverage] intake may be a tool to continue to help manage T2D if glycemic measures are controlled and stable.” Meyerowitz-Katz agrees: “At worst, there is no difference between diet soft drinks and water when it comes to diabetes control. At best, the diet drinks might be sightly better.” View the full article

Everybody wants smoother workflows and fewer manual tasks. And thanks to AI models, automation is at the center of conversations in marketing departments across all industries. But most rarely get the results they’re looking for. According to Ascend2’s State of Marketing Automation Report, only 28% of marketers say their automation “very successfully” supports their objectives. While 69% felt it was only somewhat successful. While this specific stat is from 2024, I imagine the broad idea is still true. Especially since there are so many more automation options and tools. It can get overwhelming to decide a go-forward plan and implement effectively. So if you feel stuck in the camp of “not bad, but not great” marketing automation, you’re not alone. The good news? Once you understand the core building blocks, you can turn messy, half-automated systems into workflows that actually move the needle. A good marketing automation usually involves four basic steps: A trigger: A catalyst event that starts the automation An action: One or more steps that happen in sequence after the trigger An output: The end result A loop or exit point: A new trigger, or an event that stops the automation In this article, we’re going to discuss how to use these steps to automate: The mechanics of content creation (and no, we won’t just be telling you to “write it with AI”) Beyond the basics of email nurtures Your PR strategy Social media engagement Automate the Mechanics of Content Creation Content marketers are creative people. We don’t want to automate away the creative work that drives results. That said, we can automate marketing workflows that come before and after creating. (So we can spend more time on high-impact work.) Here are some simple ways to get started. 1. Basic Brief Builder Tools required: Make (free for 1,000 credits per month, paid plans start at $9/month) Your favorite keyword research tool (plans vary) Project management platform (tools like Asana offer a free plan) Google Sheets, Google Docs (free plan available) Every week, content marketers around the world spend hours researching keywords, pulling search data, creating new briefs, and adding tasks to their project management systems. What if you could do most of that with one automation? Here are the basics of how this works: Trigger: A new row is added to a Google Sheet (your new keyword) Action: That keyword is run through your SEO tool, which pulls keyword difficulty, search volume, related terms, and top organic results Output: A new Google Doc with the data inside, and a new task in your project management tool In the end, the automation will look like this: And if this seems scary, don’t worry: I’m going to walk you through each step to create this with Make. (Or, you can go ahead and copy this Scenario into your own Make account here.) First, you’ll need a Google Sheet for your source. Start with columns for your new keyword, status, brief URL, and task URL. To get started faster, copy this template here. Next, add Google Sheets as the trigger step, and select “Watch New Rows.” After that, select the Google Sheet you want to watch. This runs the automation every time you add a new keyword to that sheet. Now, it’s time to gather information from your SEO tool. For this example, we’re going to use Semrush. (You could also use an API like DataForSEO.) Our first Semrush module will be “Get Keyword Overview.” (You might see different options depending on the specific tool you use.) You can choose whether to see the keyword data in all regional databases, or just one region. In this task, you’ll map the “Phrase” to the “Keyword” column from your Google Sheet. Then, choose what you want to get as an output. (In this case, I only want to see the search volume.) Now, let’s create another Semrush model to “Get Related Keywords” to gather relevant keywords from Semrush. Again, you’ll map the “Phrase” to the keyword column from our Google Sheet, and choose what data you want to export. (I chose the keyword and search volume.) You can also decide: How the results are sorted Whether to add filters How many results to retrieve Now, you’ll need to add a text aggregator into your workflow. This tool compiles the results from Semrush so we can use them in a Google Doc later on. Here, simply map the source (our Semrush module). Then, in the “Text” field, map the data as you want it to appear. Next, we’ll create a Semrush module that runs “Get Keyword Difficulty.” Again, we’ll map the “Phrase” to our keyword from the Google Sheet, and choose to export the “Keyword Difficulty Index.” Next, run the “Get Organic Results” module from Semrush to export the sites that are ranking for your new target keyword. Select the “Export Columns,” or the data that you want to see, and limit the number of results you get (we chose 10). Since we’re getting multiple results, this module will also need a text aggregator to transform those results into plain text for our Google Doc. We’ll set it up exactly the same way, but this time map the “Get Organic Results” module. In the “Text” field, I’ve added “Bundle order position” (where that result is ranking in the SERP), and the URL of the ranking page. Now, for the fun part. It’s time to build your basic content brief in a Google doc. Before you add this into Make, you’ll need to create a Google Doc as a template. This template should have variables that can be mapped to the results you get in your automation. To show up as variables, you’ll need to wrap them in curly brackets. So, your template will look something like this: Primary Keyword = {{keyword}} Keyword Difficulty = {{difficulty}} Related Keywords = {{related_keyword}} Competing URLs = {{organic_result}} (Want to save some time? Copy this template here.) Now, you’ll create a new module in your Make scenario to “Create a Document from a Template.” Once you connect the Google Doc template you created, you’ll see all of the variables you added in curly brackets as fields in the configuration page. Now, all you have to do is map those variables to the results you’ve gotten from Semrush and your text aggregators. Now it’s time to add this new brief into your project management tool. Make lets you connect several tools, including Asana, Trello, Monday, and Notion. In this scenario, I already have an Asana project for content production. So I choose the “Create a Task or a Subtask” module for Asana, and map that existing project. I can also add project custom fields (like a link to the brief in Google Docs), choose the task name (like the keyword), and automatically assign it to someone on my team. Lastly, I want to go back and update my original Google Sheet so that I can see which keywords have already been run, and where their briefs and tasks live. So, I add Google Sheets again as the final step in the automation and connect the same spreadsheet that we had at the beginning. Under “Values,” I can map the brief URL from Google Docs and the new task URL from Asana to columns in my spreadsheet. I also set this so the “Status” column is updated to “Done.” Now, let’s run this scenario and see what happens. First, I add a new keyword to my Google Sheet. This triggers the automation to run. The first thing that’s produced is a brand new Google Doc with all of the SEO data from Semrush. You’ll see this new doc appear in your Drive, and you’ll find the link in Asana. Next, I’ll see a new task appear in my Asana project (with the brief link included). And finally, the Google sheet will be updated to show us that the task has been completed. Plus, it adds in the links to the new brief in Google Docs and the new task in Asana. And there you go: you now have a basic content brief builder automation. Are these complete briefs? No. But the information provides a great start, gives the writer SERP context, and frees up more time to fill out other important content brief elements. Resources for this automation: To get started faster, use these templates: New Content Ideas (Google Sheets Template) New Content Brief (Google Doc Template) Brief Builder Automation (Make Scenario Template) 2. Content Workflow Tools required: Your favorite project management tool (paid or free options available) Project management tools are great for organizing your content workflow. But the more tasks you create over time, the harder it is to keep track of and manage those systems. Many project management platforms give you built-in automation tools to help things run more smoothly. Let’s talk about automations that can help your content workflow specifically. Triggers might include: A new task is added to a project A custom field changes A new assignee is added A subtask is completed Due date is changed (or coming up soon) A task is overdue And actions could be: Add to a new project Auto-assign to a team member Update a status Move task to a new section Create a subtask Add a comment For this example, we’re going to use the Rules system in Asana, but the same basic principles apply to almost any major project management tool. To start, click the “Customize” button in the upper-right corner of your content management project, and create some custom fields. Especially important here is the “Status” field. The options here should follow the steps in your content process, and will probably mirror the sections in your Project. Once your “Sections” and “Fields” are set up, you can create some rules. These can help dictate what happens when a new brief enters your content workflow and assign it to whoever is in charge of moving it forward in the process. Use a Rule to auto-assign someone on your team (for example, your content manager or editor) to the task. Now, let’s say a new article is now in progress with a writer. Create a rule that moves the task to the corresponding section of your project when the status is set to “Writing.” If your content tasks have subtasks (like “create outline,” “write article,” “edit,” or “design”), you can track completion and use that to move pieces forward. In this case, you can set a rule that once all subtasks are complete, the task moves to the “Ready to Publish” section. Once the task moves to that section, set a rule to auto-assign it to the team member who publishes posts. Then, when the status is set to “Published,” the task could be moved into a separate project where completed tasks of published content are stored. This allows you to clear the tasks from your main production workflow, but still keep them on hand in case the piece needs to be updated in the future. What if a piece of content isn’t completed by its deadline? Set up an automation that checks in with the team to see what the status is. There are plenty of other automations you can run in Asana or other tools. But these basic workflow automations will help your content production process have better handoffs and less friction. We do this at Backlinko using Monday.com as our project management tool. Read more about how we scale content creation here. Go Beyond Basic Email Nurtures Email nurtures are relatively easy to put together in any basic email tool: for example, sending a welcome email to a new newsletter subscriber, or a transactional email to a new customer. But let’s talk about some ways to take those automations even further. Email marketing automation involves: A trigger: Such as someone signing up for an email list An action: The new contact is added to a list or segment An output: They new receive a series of pre-made emails An exit condition: The sequence finishes once all the emails are sent, or once the contact takes a specific action, like buying a product Exit conditions are especially important, because you don’t want people to receive another email from you after they’ve already completed an action. (Hello, promo email that arrives after I already made a purchase.) Let’s walk through how to use marketing automation tools for email. 3. Behavior-Based Nurtures and Follow-Ups Tools required: ActiveCampaign (paid plans start at $15/month, although other email platforms offer automation capabilities too) When you trigger an email sequence based on real behavior, you’re catching people in the moment when they’re more likely to engage. For example, if you want to help a new user get to know your platform, you can trigger onboarding emails based on the actions they’ve taken so far. Or, if you want to reduce cart abandonment, you can send a special promotion for customers who have items in their cart. This improved targeting can lead to better engagement from your email list. All you have to do is match the right trigger to the right action. For example: Trigger Action Someone downloads a resource They receive a series of emails on that topic A customer purchased a product a few months ago They get a reminder to replenish their stock A contact browses a product category, but doesn’t make a purchase They get an email reminding them of what they looked at A new user subscribes to your platform They get a series of emails walking them through specific actions Your exit condition could be when the person: Completes their purchase Books a call Starts a free trial Replies to your email For example, let’s say you want to send a series of emails reminding someone that their subscription is reaching its end date. It could look something like this: Trigger: End date is within 20 days from now Action: Send series of three emails up to the last day of their subscription (we don’t want to send too many) Exit condition: Customer responds to the email, or renews their subscription Here’s a great example for home insurance renewal: ​​Or, let’s say a new lead just signed up for a free trial or freemium account. You could create a workflow that pulls information from the onboarding survey in your tool, and builds a personalized, 1:1 email sequence. Check out this example from HubSpot: When I signed up for the account, I identified myself as a self-employed marketer. HubSpot pulled that information into this new trial campaign to make the email even more personalized. So the question is: how do you get started? Here’s a quick overview of how you could build a behavior-based email nurture automation in ActiveCampaign. Let’s say you want to send an email sequence to a known contact who visited a certain page on your website. For example, imagine someone who subscribes to your email newsletter, but isn’t a customer, just visited your pricing page. (In other words, they may be close to signing up — they just aren’t quite convinced yet.) Before you start this automation, you’ll need to enable Site Tracking on your account in ActiveCampaign. To do this, install the tracking code on your website so ActiveCampaign can see page views. To start the automation, you’ll add new contacts who enter through any pipeline. Now, when a known contact (someone who’s already in your database) visits a tracked page, ActiveCampaign associates that page view with the contact’s record, and can start an automation. The real trigger is the next step: “Wait until conditions are met.” In this case, the condition is that the contact has visited an exact URL on your website. Pro tip: You can also adjust this so the email series only runs when the person visits a page multiple times, showing a higher level of interest. Next, set a waiting period from the time the person sees the page to when the email is sent. And finally, write your email and add it to the workflow. After that, you could: Wait a certain amount of time, then send another email Set an exit condition if the contact replies or makes a purchase All of this effort turns into an email like this one that I received from Brooks after visiting one of their product pages: This makes me way more likely to revisit the shoes I was looking at than a generic reminder email (or no email at all). 4. Webinar Lifecycle Automation Tools required: Demio (plans start at $45/month) HubSpot (limited free plan available) Webinars are an entire customer journey, including promotion, confirmation, reminders, and post-event follow-ups. The trigger is normally one event: Someone signed up for your webinar. The actions include: Confirmation email Day before and day-of reminders “Happening now” email Post-event replay email For example, here’s a great reminder email from Kiwi Wealth: Immediately after the webinar is finished, you might send an email like this one from Beefree: And you’ll also want to follow up later with a replay and some action items for people who attended, like this: Note: We got these examples from Really Good Emails, which is a great resource for getting inspiration for your own campaigns. So, how do you create this automation? Most great webinar tools allow you to do this. Demio, for example, allows you to automate marketing emails when you create a new event: ​​ If you want to get really fancy, you can segment your post-webinar follow-up emails by whether or not the contact attended the webinar: Demio’s built-in email is somewhat limited beyond an actual event. So, you can connect it to HubSpot to add a new layer of segmentation to your lists. Once this connection is live, Demio will import webinar attendance data into HubSpot. For example, you can import data like: Contacts who registered for the webinar People who registered, but missed the event People who attended the event How long a contact stayed in the webinar People who watched the replay You can even add new contacts to lists directly in Hubspot if they don’t exist there already. This automation will help your pre- and post-webinar flows run more smoothly. And hopefully get you more valuable engagement with those webinars. Grow Your PR Strategy For small marketing teams, PR outreach can use up a lot of valuable time. Here are some easy automations to keep doing inbound and outbound PR requests, without spending your entire week on it. Resource: Get your free PR Plan Template to help you pick the right goals, discover journalists, and make pitches that get press coverage. 5. PR Radar Tools required: BrandMentions (paid plans start at $79/month) Zapier (free for 100 tasks/month, paid plans start at $19.99/month) Google Sheets (free option available) Want to keep an eye on new articles that are related to your brand that you could potentially get featured in or a backlink from? Let’s build an automatic PR radar. Note: Most monitoring tools send alerts, but those notifications disappear into your inbox. This workflow creates a shared, searchable log your whole team can access without extra logins—plus you’ll have a historical record for spotting PR trends over time. This workflow looks like: Trigger: A new article mentions your brand or related topics Action: Pull all new mentions into one place to scan through them easily Output: A simple, regularly-updated list of PR mentions There are several tools that do this, but for this example, we’re going to use BrandMentions. Once you set up your account and your project, head into settings to adjust which sources you’ll collect data from. Remove social media, and just leave the web option. That way, you’ll get a clean list of articles and webpages that mention your brand or the keywords you added. Once this is set up, you can connect your BrandMentions project to Zapier. This will trigger the automation to start when any new mentions are added. You can choose whatever output works best for you: whether that’s a Slack message, a new row in Airtable, or an addition to an ongoing Google Sheet. For this example, I chose Google Sheets as my output. All I had to do was tie the data pulled from BrandMentions to the right columns in my spreadsheet. Once that’s done, the automation adds new articles like this automatically into my spreadsheet: Pro tip: Want to add a reminder? You can add another step that sends a daily Slack message summarizing all the newly added rows. 6. Media Request Matchmaker Tools required: RSS.app (free plan available) Zapier (free for 100 tasks/month, paid plans start at $19.99/month) Airtable (free plan available) PR would be nothing without the relationships we build with journalists and writers. But it’s hard to know who’s writing about a topic that’s related to your brand. Or where your company’s internal subject matter experts can add their thoughts to promote your brand. So, let’s build an automation to match new requests to your internal experts. This involves: Trigger: A new media request that matches relevant topics Action: Classify new requests and match them to the internal expert with the most relevant expertise Output: New requests are automatically routed to the right person One of the most frequently updated places to find PR requests is on X/Twitter. Search the hashtag #journorequest, and you’ll see hundreds of writers asking for expert contributions. To prepare this for your automation, start by setting up an RSS feed with the hashtag #journorequest or #prrequest along with a relevant keyword. You can do this for free with RSS.app. Then, you’ll get results like this: For the simplest version of this, you can connect RSS.app directly to Slack and send a new message every time a new request is added to the feed. But let’s be real: that could get overwhelming pretty quickly. So, we’ll use Zapier for a more in-depth automation. Start by adding “RSS by Zapier” as the trigger, and paste your RSS feed link into the configuration. Pro tip: If you want to track journo requests for multiple topics, change the trigger event to “New Items in Multiple Feeds.” Then, simply paste in all of the RSS feed links. That way, they’ll all run through the same automation. Next use “Formatter by Zapier” to extract the necessary information from the tweets. First, in Formatter, choose the Action event “Text.” Then, in the Configure menu, select “Extract Email Address,” and map the input to the description from your RSS feed. Next, with another Formatter step, select “Text,” and “Extract Pattern.” The input is still the same description (the original tweet). In the Pattern box, in parentheses, add the keywords you want to track separated by a vertical bar, like this: (cybersecurity|fintech|pets|saas) Make sure that IGNORECASE is set to “Yes” so that the search isn’t case sensitive. Now, it’s time to add that to a system you can use to keep track of new requests and route them to SMEs. For this example, I’ve chosen to use Airtable. If you want to use this exact database, you can copy it here and we’ll use it as we move forward. This database has tabs to keep track of your SMEs, the topics they can respond to, and the new requests that come in. So, let’s connect that Airtable base to Zapier. Our first step will be to find the right SME for the topic of our journo request. To start, set the Action as “Find Record,” and link your Airtable base. We’ll pull from the SMEs table, and for “Search by Field” we’ll choose “Topics,” where we’ve previously added our SME’s favorite topics into the Airtable base. Lastly for this step, map the “Search Value” to the previous step’s result (the topic from the PR query on X/Twitter). Now, we’re going to create a new row in our “Requests” table in Airtable. Add Airtable as the next step in this Zap, and select “Create Record” as the action. Link the same Airtable base, but this time select “Requests” as the Table. Then, map the columns in that base to the information you’ve gathered. In this case, that would include: Source = X/Twitter Raw Text = The “Description” from RSS feed Contact name = The “Raw Creator” from RSS feed Contact Email = The output from our first Formatter step, which pulled the email from the original post URL = Link from RSS feed Topics = The output from our second Formatter step, which pulled the topic from the original post SMEs = The “Fields Name” from our Airtable search step Status = New In the end, it should look like this: And a new record is added into Airtable, like this: If you want to get fancy with this, you can dig down into: Which publications are requesting expertise, and rank them by their credibility Automate messages to your SMEs to let them know there’s a new request for them Get the Most Out of Social Media For busy marketers, social media can be an incredible time-suck. Keeping track of trends. Trying to post consistently. All without getting stuck in an infinite doomscroll. But a few simple automations can help you get back some of the time you spend on manually managing your socials. 7. Video Clip Automator Tools required: Zoom (free plan available) Dropbox (free plan available) OpusClip (plans start at $15/month) Zapier (free for 100 tasks/month, paid plans start at $19.99/month) Short-form video has been gradually gaining a bigger voice in marketing. In fact, 39% of marketers said that videos under 60 seconds are the most effective. The problem: they take time to make. If you’re already creating long-form video (or even just doing recorded interviews with in-house experts), we have a handy automation to help you create video clips faster. Here’s how it works: Trigger: New Zoom cloud recording is ready Action: Auto-create clips, burn captions, and create a new task in Asana Output: You get social-ready video clips, and a new task to publish them First, adjust your Zoom settings so your recordings upload automatically into a folder in Dropbox. Next, head over to Zapier. Your trigger step will be a new video uploaded to that folder in Dropbox. Your next step will use OpusClip, an AI video editing tool. Select “Clip Your Video,” and map that new video file to the one uploaded in Dropbox. OpusClip will then take your long-form video from Dropbox and use AI to clip key pieces. It also crops the video for vertical sharing and embeds captions. You can also add your own brand template so that videos are edited with your brand’s colors and font. Now that you have new video clips to share, it’s time to add a task to review and publish them. So the final step in your Zap is “Create Task” in Asana (or your preferred project management tool). You’ll tie this to a project you’ve already created in Asana, and link the project ID from OpusClip. In the end, you’ll have a few video clips prepared and ready — all you have to do is download, review, and publish them to your social channels. 8. Comment & Community Nudge Tools required: Social media monitoring tool (like BrandMentions, paid plans start at $79/month) Automation tool (like Zapier, free for 100 tasks/month, paid plans start at $19.99/month) Are people talking about your brand online? To keep positive sentiment high, you need to engage in those conversations. But finding the right conversations, and knowing how to reply, can take a lot of time. Using a tool like BrandMentions, you can create a similar automation to what we built for the PR Radar earlier: Trigger: A new mention of your brand appears on Reddit, Facebook, or LinkedIn Action: Those new mentions are added to a Google Sheet, and you get a daily Slack message summarizing new mentions To build this, all you’d need to do is swap out the Sources in your BrandMentions settings. Instead of Web, you’d include all of the social media channels you want to track. After that, you can build an automation with Zapier, the same way we did in the PR Strategy automation above. If you want to get notifications for every new mention, you could connect the workflow to Slack. Then, a new message will be sent in the channel every time your brand is mentioned. This basic automation could work for smaller brands. But when you start getting hundreds of mentions per day, this will quickly become chaotic. Here’s an example of how one company faced with this issue was able to automate this process in a deeper way: Webflow was getting over 500 mentions per day. Their two-person team couldn’t keep up with monitoring and responding (alongside their regular workload). So, they built an automation. With Gumloop, they monitor, analyze, and flag only the posts that require a response. They started with a Reddit scraper to pull relevant threads. Then, they added an AI analyzer to gauge sentiment, rank priority, and assign a category. After that, they added a step that would send all high-priority mentions to Slack for a team member to handle directly. The result? After testing and scaling this process, they were able to build an automation that processes 500+ mentions per day and escalates only the 10-15 that need immediate attention. If you’ve ever thought, “How can I use AI to automate my marketing tasks?” This is a great example of an AI automation that works for you without taking over your job. Is Automation the Right Move? Ask Yourself These Questions First Automation is the hottest trend. But it’s hard to know what’s going to save you time and money, and what’s just another fad. If you’ve ever spent more time trying to automate a task than it would’ve taken you to do the task manually, you’ll know what I mean. To weigh up whether an automation is worth building, ask yourself these questions: How much time does it take me to do this task manually every week? Is the automation available with a tool I currently use, or would I have to pay for a new tool? Is there a documented automation/integration I can follow? Would this task still require human intervention (even with automation)? Does this fit easily into our current workflow or process? If the task: Doesn’t take much time to do manually Would still require human intervention even when automated Isn’t easy to build an automation for …it may not be worth your time. On the other hand, if the task: Is repetitive Uses up hours of your workweek Can be automated in tools you already have in your stack …it’s probably time to give automation a try. Build Your Automation Foundations, Then Keep Growing The hype cycle of automation and AI can be overwhelming. But don’t feel like you’re behind just because you haven’t automated away your entire marketing team yet. Instead, focus on the automations that save you time and are sustainable. We’ve just discussed eight different automations. Why not choose one or two that are most relevant to your business and team? Start with the foundational automations that help smooth out your existing processes. Then, you’ll have a better basis for building more complex automations. To automate even more areas of your marketing workflows, check out our curated list of our favorite AI marketing tools right now. The post How to Automate Marketing With 8 Simple Workflows appeared first on Backlinko. View the full article

Tri-merge mandates prop up a credit bureau/FICO oligopoly, raising mortgage costs with little benefit despite risk concerns, the chairman of Whalen Global Advisors argues. View the full article

In today’s competitive environment, tracking key HR metrics is crucial for effective workforce management. By focusing on seven fundamental metrics, you can gain valuable insights into recruitment efficiency, employee retention, and overall productivity. Metrics like Time to Fill and Turnover Rate reveal trends that help improve hiring processes and employee satisfaction. Comprehending these figures can greatly influence your organization’s success, and there’s more to explore about how they can shape your HR strategy. Key Takeaways Time to Hire: Measure the average days from application to job offer acceptance to optimize recruitment efficiency and reduce candidate drop-off rates. Cost per Hire: Track total hiring expenses to identify budget efficiency and optimize talent acquisition strategies within the organization. Turnover Rate: Analyze overall employee exits annually to identify retention issues and enable proactive strategies for improving workplace culture. Employee Engagement Scores: Measure engagement through surveys to assess satisfaction and predict retention, directly impacting productivity and profitability. Performance Review Ratings: Use performance metrics to evaluate individual contributions, facilitating constructive feedback and goal alignment with organizational objectives. What Are HR Metrics? HR metrics are vital quantitative measures that help you track various aspects of human resource management, which includes areas like recruitment, retention, training, and employee performance. These metrics provide valuable insights that allow you to assess the effectiveness of your HR strategies. By focusing on common HR metrics such as Time to Fill, Cost per Hire, Turnover Rate, and Employee Engagement Scores, you can identify trends and make informed decisions. Analyzing HR metrics enables you to optimize talent management processes. For example, comprehending your Turnover Rate can highlight areas needing improvement, whereas Employee Engagement Scores can reveal how satisfied your workforce is. By effectively using HR metrics, you align your human capital strategies with organizational goals, nurturing a healthier work environment. The Importance of Tracking HR Metrics Tracking HR metrics plays a pivotal role in enhancing organizational performance and workforce management. By analyzing these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into various aspects of your workforce, leading to better decision-making and improved outcomes. HR Metric Importance Employee Engagement Correlates with retention; high scores boost retention by 25%. Turnover Rate Identifies cultural issues, allowing for proactive retention strategies. Training Effectiveness Reflects commitment to growth; can increase productivity by 20%. Compliance Metrics Guarantees legal standards are met, reducing the risk of fines. Recruitment Metrics Provides insights into hiring efficiency and budgeting. Recruitment Metrics: Time to Hire and Cost per Hire Grasping recruitment metrics like Time to Hire and Cost per Hire is crucial for improving your hiring process. Time to Hire measures the average days from when a candidate applies to when they accept a job offer, with industry benchmarks typically between 30 and 45 days. A longer Time to Hire can lead to a 27% increase in candidate drop-off rates, highlighting the need for efficiency. Cost per Hire, conversely, sums all hiring expenses, including advertising and onboarding costs, which can range from $4,000 to $6,000 depending on the industry. By tracking these metrics through hr analytics, you can identify inefficiencies in your hiring process and make informed, data-driven decisions. Recognizing these recruitment metrics not just helps in optimizing your budget but also improves overall talent acquisition strategies, ensuring you attract and retain the right candidates effectively. Turnover Metrics: Understanding Early Turnover and Overall Turnover Rate After you’ve streamlined your recruitment process, it’s important to turn your attention to turnover metrics, which offer insights into employee retention and organizational health. Early turnover refers to the percentage of new hires who leave within their first year. High rates can signal problems with job fit or onboarding, affecting your training investments and team dynamics. The overall turnover rate, calculated annually, reflects the percentage of employees who exit the organization, helping you understand retention trends and refine recruitment strategies. High turnover can be costly—replacing an employee may cost 1.5 to 2 times their annual salary. Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Metrics Employee engagement and satisfaction metrics are essential for comprehending how content your workforce is and how invested they feel in their roles. By measuring factors like job satisfaction, emotional investment, and workplace engagement, you can gain valuable insights into your employees’ experiences. This data not just helps identify areas for improvement but additionally greatly impacts overall organizational performance and retention rates. Measuring Employee Contentment To effectively measure employee contentment, organizations often rely on various metrics that provide insights into engagement and satisfaction levels. Here are some key human resource metrics to evaluate: Employee Engagement Metrics: Tools like the Net Promoter Score (eNPS) gauge employees’ likelihood of recommending your organization as a workplace. Employee Satisfaction Surveys: Regular assessments help determine overall contentment and can correlate with retention and productivity. Absenteeism Rates: Tracking how often employees are absent can indicate dissatisfaction and potential turnover. Enhancing Workplace Engagement Enhancing workplace engagement is vital for nurturing a productive and satisfied workforce, as engaged employees tend to contribute more effectively to organizational goals. Utilizing human resource analytics, you can track key metrics like the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) and employee satisfaction surveys. These tools help you gauge overall contentment and identify areas for improvement. High engagement correlates with increased profitability and productivity, making it fundamental to monitor these metrics regularly. Metric Importance Employee Net Promoter Score Indicates likelihood of recommendation Satisfaction Surveys Tracks overall contentment over time Participation Rates Measures commitment to engagement initiatives Tracking Emotional Investment Tracking emotional investment in the workplace involves a careful analysis of various employee engagement and satisfaction metrics, which are essential for comprehending how connected employees feel to their roles and the organization as a whole. To effectively monitor this emotional investment, consider focusing on these key metrics: Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) – Measures the likelihood of employees recommending the workplace. Absenteeism Rates – High rates may indicate dissatisfaction or issues in workplace culture. Feedback Frequency – Regular, constructive feedback can improve emotional investment and job satisfaction. Utilizing hr data analytics to track these metrics not only informs you about employee sentiment but likewise helps identify areas needing improvement, nurturing a more engaged and satisfied workforce. Training and Development Metrics Effective training and development metrics are essential for organizations aiming to improve employee skills and overall performance. Tracking the Training Completion Rate helps you measure engagement, as it shows the percentage of employees finishing training programs. Furthermore, analyzing Training Expenses per Employee gives insight into your investment in development, reflecting your commitment to improving skills. Training Effectiveness can be evaluated by evaluating performance metrics before and after training sessions, helping you understand its direct impact. Conducting a Skills Gap Analysis identifies areas where employees lack necessary skills, guiding you to implement targeted training initiatives. Finally, calculating Training Return on Investment (ROI) allows you to compare financial gains from improved performance against training costs, demonstrating the value of your investment. Utilizing HR data analytics in these areas will enable you to make informed decisions and strategically improve your workforce’s capabilities. Performance and Productivity Metrics After focusing on training and development metrics, it’s important to shift attention to performance and productivity metrics, which play a significant role in evaluating workforce effectiveness. Tracking these metrics provides insights into employee contributions and identifies areas needing improvement. Here are three key metrics to contemplate: Performance Review Ratings: This offers valuable feedback on individual employee performance, setting the stage for future growth. Goal Completion Rate: Monitoring this metric helps you track the achievement of set objectives, ensuring alignment with organizational goals. Revenue per Employee: This productivity metric measures organizational efficiency by calculating total revenue divided by the number of employees. Utilizing hr data analytics allows you to assess how quickly new hires reach full productivity, enhancing onboarding processes. Frequently Asked Questions How Often Should HR Metrics Be Reviewed and Updated? You should review and update HR metrics regularly to guarantee they reflect current trends and organizational needs. Typically, quarterly reviews are effective, but depending on your organization’s dynamics, monthly checks might be necessary. Focus on key performance indicators, such as employee turnover and engagement levels, to identify patterns. What Tools Can Help Track HR Metrics Effectively? To track HR metrics effectively, you can use various tools, such as HR software platforms like BambooHR or Workday, which offer extensive dashboards for real-time data analysis. Furthermore, Excel remains an influential tool for custom reporting. Business intelligence tools, like Tableau, help visualize data trends, making insights clearer. Consider using survey platforms, like SurveyMonkey, to gather employee feedback, which can likewise inform your metrics. These tools facilitate informed decision-making and improve your HR strategy. How Can HR Metrics Influence Employee Retention Strategies? HR metrics can greatly influence your employee retention strategies by providing insights into workforce trends and behaviors. By analyzing data on turnover rates, employee satisfaction, and engagement levels, you can identify areas needing improvement. Moreover, tracking performance metrics helps you recognize high-potential employees who might benefit from development programs. This targeted approach guarantees you address specific issues, nurturing a more positive work environment that encourages employees to stay with your organization longer. Are There Industry Benchmarks for HR Metrics Comparison? Yes, there are industry benchmarks for HR metrics, which help you compare your organization’s performance against peers. These benchmarks vary by industry, covering areas such as turnover rates, time to hire, and employee engagement scores. Utilizing these standards allows you to identify gaps in your processes and set realistic goals for improvement. You can find benchmark data through industry reports, HR associations, or research firms that specialize in workforce analytics. How Do I Communicate HR Metrics Findings to Stakeholders? To communicate HR metrics findings effectively, start by identifying your audience’s needs. Use clear visuals like charts or graphs to illustrate data points. Present key insights succinctly, focusing on trends and implications rather than raw numbers. Tailor your message to highlight how these metrics impact business goals. Encourage questions to promote engagement, and provide context to improve comprehension. Finally, summarize findings in a clear format to guarantee stakeholders grasp the crucial information. Conclusion In conclusion, tracking these seven vital HR metrics is important for effective workforce management. By monitoring Time to Fill, Cost per Hire, Turnover Rate, Employee Engagement Scores, Absenteeism Rates, Performance Review Ratings, and Revenue per Employee, you can gain valuable insights into your organization’s efficiency and employee satisfaction. This data enables you to make informed decisions, improve processes, and finally improve overall performance, ensuring your organization remains competitive and successful in today’s dynamic work environment. Image via Google Gemini This article, "7 Essential HR Metrics and Analytics Leaders Should Track" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

In today’s competitive environment, tracking key HR metrics is crucial for effective workforce management. By focusing on seven fundamental metrics, you can gain valuable insights into recruitment efficiency, employee retention, and overall productivity. Metrics like Time to Fill and Turnover Rate reveal trends that help improve hiring processes and employee satisfaction. Comprehending these figures can greatly influence your organization’s success, and there’s more to explore about how they can shape your HR strategy. Key Takeaways Time to Hire: Measure the average days from application to job offer acceptance to optimize recruitment efficiency and reduce candidate drop-off rates. Cost per Hire: Track total hiring expenses to identify budget efficiency and optimize talent acquisition strategies within the organization. Turnover Rate: Analyze overall employee exits annually to identify retention issues and enable proactive strategies for improving workplace culture. Employee Engagement Scores: Measure engagement through surveys to assess satisfaction and predict retention, directly impacting productivity and profitability. Performance Review Ratings: Use performance metrics to evaluate individual contributions, facilitating constructive feedback and goal alignment with organizational objectives. What Are HR Metrics? HR metrics are vital quantitative measures that help you track various aspects of human resource management, which includes areas like recruitment, retention, training, and employee performance. These metrics provide valuable insights that allow you to assess the effectiveness of your HR strategies. By focusing on common HR metrics such as Time to Fill, Cost per Hire, Turnover Rate, and Employee Engagement Scores, you can identify trends and make informed decisions. Analyzing HR metrics enables you to optimize talent management processes. For example, comprehending your Turnover Rate can highlight areas needing improvement, whereas Employee Engagement Scores can reveal how satisfied your workforce is. By effectively using HR metrics, you align your human capital strategies with organizational goals, nurturing a healthier work environment. The Importance of Tracking HR Metrics Tracking HR metrics plays a pivotal role in enhancing organizational performance and workforce management. By analyzing these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into various aspects of your workforce, leading to better decision-making and improved outcomes. HR Metric Importance Employee Engagement Correlates with retention; high scores boost retention by 25%. Turnover Rate Identifies cultural issues, allowing for proactive retention strategies. Training Effectiveness Reflects commitment to growth; can increase productivity by 20%. Compliance Metrics Guarantees legal standards are met, reducing the risk of fines. Recruitment Metrics Provides insights into hiring efficiency and budgeting. Recruitment Metrics: Time to Hire and Cost per Hire Grasping recruitment metrics like Time to Hire and Cost per Hire is crucial for improving your hiring process. Time to Hire measures the average days from when a candidate applies to when they accept a job offer, with industry benchmarks typically between 30 and 45 days. A longer Time to Hire can lead to a 27% increase in candidate drop-off rates, highlighting the need for efficiency. Cost per Hire, conversely, sums all hiring expenses, including advertising and onboarding costs, which can range from $4,000 to $6,000 depending on the industry. By tracking these metrics through hr analytics, you can identify inefficiencies in your hiring process and make informed, data-driven decisions. Recognizing these recruitment metrics not just helps in optimizing your budget but also improves overall talent acquisition strategies, ensuring you attract and retain the right candidates effectively. Turnover Metrics: Understanding Early Turnover and Overall Turnover Rate After you’ve streamlined your recruitment process, it’s important to turn your attention to turnover metrics, which offer insights into employee retention and organizational health. Early turnover refers to the percentage of new hires who leave within their first year. High rates can signal problems with job fit or onboarding, affecting your training investments and team dynamics. The overall turnover rate, calculated annually, reflects the percentage of employees who exit the organization, helping you understand retention trends and refine recruitment strategies. High turnover can be costly—replacing an employee may cost 1.5 to 2 times their annual salary. Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Metrics Employee engagement and satisfaction metrics are essential for comprehending how content your workforce is and how invested they feel in their roles. By measuring factors like job satisfaction, emotional investment, and workplace engagement, you can gain valuable insights into your employees’ experiences. This data not just helps identify areas for improvement but additionally greatly impacts overall organizational performance and retention rates. Measuring Employee Contentment To effectively measure employee contentment, organizations often rely on various metrics that provide insights into engagement and satisfaction levels. Here are some key human resource metrics to evaluate: Employee Engagement Metrics: Tools like the Net Promoter Score (eNPS) gauge employees’ likelihood of recommending your organization as a workplace. Employee Satisfaction Surveys: Regular assessments help determine overall contentment and can correlate with retention and productivity. Absenteeism Rates: Tracking how often employees are absent can indicate dissatisfaction and potential turnover. Enhancing Workplace Engagement Enhancing workplace engagement is vital for nurturing a productive and satisfied workforce, as engaged employees tend to contribute more effectively to organizational goals. Utilizing human resource analytics, you can track key metrics like the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) and employee satisfaction surveys. These tools help you gauge overall contentment and identify areas for improvement. High engagement correlates with increased profitability and productivity, making it fundamental to monitor these metrics regularly. Metric Importance Employee Net Promoter Score Indicates likelihood of recommendation Satisfaction Surveys Tracks overall contentment over time Participation Rates Measures commitment to engagement initiatives Tracking Emotional Investment Tracking emotional investment in the workplace involves a careful analysis of various employee engagement and satisfaction metrics, which are essential for comprehending how connected employees feel to their roles and the organization as a whole. To effectively monitor this emotional investment, consider focusing on these key metrics: Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) – Measures the likelihood of employees recommending the workplace. Absenteeism Rates – High rates may indicate dissatisfaction or issues in workplace culture. Feedback Frequency – Regular, constructive feedback can improve emotional investment and job satisfaction. Utilizing hr data analytics to track these metrics not only informs you about employee sentiment but likewise helps identify areas needing improvement, nurturing a more engaged and satisfied workforce. Training and Development Metrics Effective training and development metrics are essential for organizations aiming to improve employee skills and overall performance. Tracking the Training Completion Rate helps you measure engagement, as it shows the percentage of employees finishing training programs. Furthermore, analyzing Training Expenses per Employee gives insight into your investment in development, reflecting your commitment to improving skills. Training Effectiveness can be evaluated by evaluating performance metrics before and after training sessions, helping you understand its direct impact. Conducting a Skills Gap Analysis identifies areas where employees lack necessary skills, guiding you to implement targeted training initiatives. Finally, calculating Training Return on Investment (ROI) allows you to compare financial gains from improved performance against training costs, demonstrating the value of your investment. Utilizing HR data analytics in these areas will enable you to make informed decisions and strategically improve your workforce’s capabilities. Performance and Productivity Metrics After focusing on training and development metrics, it’s important to shift attention to performance and productivity metrics, which play a significant role in evaluating workforce effectiveness. Tracking these metrics provides insights into employee contributions and identifies areas needing improvement. Here are three key metrics to contemplate: Performance Review Ratings: This offers valuable feedback on individual employee performance, setting the stage for future growth. Goal Completion Rate: Monitoring this metric helps you track the achievement of set objectives, ensuring alignment with organizational goals. Revenue per Employee: This productivity metric measures organizational efficiency by calculating total revenue divided by the number of employees. Utilizing hr data analytics allows you to assess how quickly new hires reach full productivity, enhancing onboarding processes. Frequently Asked Questions How Often Should HR Metrics Be Reviewed and Updated? You should review and update HR metrics regularly to guarantee they reflect current trends and organizational needs. Typically, quarterly reviews are effective, but depending on your organization’s dynamics, monthly checks might be necessary. Focus on key performance indicators, such as employee turnover and engagement levels, to identify patterns. What Tools Can Help Track HR Metrics Effectively? To track HR metrics effectively, you can use various tools, such as HR software platforms like BambooHR or Workday, which offer extensive dashboards for real-time data analysis. Furthermore, Excel remains an influential tool for custom reporting. Business intelligence tools, like Tableau, help visualize data trends, making insights clearer. Consider using survey platforms, like SurveyMonkey, to gather employee feedback, which can likewise inform your metrics. These tools facilitate informed decision-making and improve your HR strategy. How Can HR Metrics Influence Employee Retention Strategies? HR metrics can greatly influence your employee retention strategies by providing insights into workforce trends and behaviors. By analyzing data on turnover rates, employee satisfaction, and engagement levels, you can identify areas needing improvement. Moreover, tracking performance metrics helps you recognize high-potential employees who might benefit from development programs. This targeted approach guarantees you address specific issues, nurturing a more positive work environment that encourages employees to stay with your organization longer. Are There Industry Benchmarks for HR Metrics Comparison? Yes, there are industry benchmarks for HR metrics, which help you compare your organization’s performance against peers. These benchmarks vary by industry, covering areas such as turnover rates, time to hire, and employee engagement scores. Utilizing these standards allows you to identify gaps in your processes and set realistic goals for improvement. You can find benchmark data through industry reports, HR associations, or research firms that specialize in workforce analytics. How Do I Communicate HR Metrics Findings to Stakeholders? To communicate HR metrics findings effectively, start by identifying your audience’s needs. Use clear visuals like charts or graphs to illustrate data points. Present key insights succinctly, focusing on trends and implications rather than raw numbers. Tailor your message to highlight how these metrics impact business goals. Encourage questions to promote engagement, and provide context to improve comprehension. Finally, summarize findings in a clear format to guarantee stakeholders grasp the crucial information. Conclusion In conclusion, tracking these seven vital HR metrics is important for effective workforce management. By monitoring Time to Fill, Cost per Hire, Turnover Rate, Employee Engagement Scores, Absenteeism Rates, Performance Review Ratings, and Revenue per Employee, you can gain valuable insights into your organization’s efficiency and employee satisfaction. This data enables you to make informed decisions, improve processes, and finally improve overall performance, ensuring your organization remains competitive and successful in today’s dynamic work environment. Image via Google Gemini This article, "7 Essential HR Metrics and Analytics Leaders Should Track" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, is suing Pattie Gonia, the drag queen and environmentalist, for trademark infringement—a move the company says is necessary to “protect the brand [it has] spent the last 50 years building.” In a lawsuit filed in California federal court this week, Patagonia argues that Pattie Gonia’s name, particularly when used on apparel or in support of environmental sustainability, competes “directly” with the products and advocacy work core to Patagonia. Patagonia claims in its complaint that the overlapping names have already confused customers, and that a recent move from the drag queen to sell her own branded apparel goes against a prior agreement the two parties had. The company is seeking a “nominal” $1.00 in damages. “We’re not against art, creative expression, or commentary about our brand,” Patagonia says in a statement. “We want Pattie to have a long and successful career and make progress on issues that matter—but in a way that respects Patagonia’s intellectual property and ability to use our brand to sell products and advocate for the environment.” Overlapping work According to the lawsuit, the company and the environmentalist have long openly discussed how Pattie Gonia can continue her advocacy work and brand deals without infringing on Patagonia’s trademarks. Pattie Gonia reportedly previously agreed to not use her name “in any form” on products, to not use or display Patagonia’s logos, and to not use the same font, Belwe, that Patagonia uses. But according to Patagonia, in 2024, Pattie Gonia sold branded apparel online and used versions of the company logo, and then in September 2025, she sought to trademark the brand “Pattie Gonia” for use on clothing and apparel, and to promise environmental activism. “These rights would directly overlap with the work we do and the products we provide,” the company said. The lawsuit cites t-shirts sold on Pattie Gonia’s website that say “Pattie Gonia Hiking Club” along with stickers and gloves worn by the drag queen that seem to imitate Patagonia’s logo. At the time of publication, Pattie Gonia’s merch page showed her apparel as being sold out. Pattie Gonia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Patagonia says it can’t ‘selectively choose’ to enforce its trademark Members of the public have already been confused as to whether or not Pattie Gonia is affiliated with Patagonia, the company claims. The lawsuit includes screenshots of a Pattie Gonia social media post on which commenters praised the company, and even said they “genuinely thought this was a Patagonia ad.” While Pattie Gonia has partnered with outdoor groups and brands including The North Face, National Geographic, REI, and Backcountry, according to her website, she has not officially partnered with Patagonia. (The company has featured Pattie Gonia and her nonprofit, The Outdoorist Oath, in an interview on the Patagonia site.) If the company doesn’t prevent people or groups, including Pattie Gonia, from copying its brand and logo, it says, then it risks “losing the ability to defend our trademarks entirely.” Other groups, including the oil and gas lobby, have already misappropriated Patagonia’s name and logo. The lawsuit cites a t-shirt, for example, that says “Petrogonia” in the Patagonia font, against a silhouette of oil drilling equipment that mimics the company’s mountain silhouette. “To put a finer point on it, we cannot selectively choose to enforce our rights based on whether we agree with a particular point of view,” the company says. “For these reasons Pattie Gonia’s use of a near-copy of our name commercially . . . pose long-term threats to Patagonia’s brand and our activism.” While Pattie Gonia did not immediately respond to a request for comment, she and her business said in a statement to Bloomberg Law that they have “never and will never reference the brand Patagonia’s logo or brand,” adding that there was “plenty of room” for both the company and the drag queen to “play in this box.” View the full article

If you're a Pixel owner, you may want to update your settings for Phone by Google. 9to5Google reports that a handful of users have experienced a bug with the Take a Message feature that records and sends audio to callers as they are leaving a voicemail. Take a Message is a recently introduced feature for the Phone app that activates when the recipient is not available to answer (or declines the incoming call). The caller hears the following: “The person you have called is not available. Please leave a message after the tone.” If you, as the recipient, tap the Take a message notification on your device, you can see a transcript of the audio in real time and hit Answer if you want to pick up. (Take a Message will also detect spam calls and mark them with a warning.) A few users have reported that Take a Message has activated and allowed the caller to hear the recipient's background audio as they are leaving a message. It's important to note that this is not a widespread issue, and most of the reports come from people with older Pixel devices that no longer get OS updates. According to 9to5Google, Google is investigating the reports. Again, while this doesn't seem to be a bug affecting most Pixel users, you can disable Take a Message if you are concerned about privacy, especially with unknown callers. How to disable Take a Message on your PixelOpen the Phone app on your device and tap the icon in the top-left corner to open Settings. Tap Take a Message under the Call Assist section and toggle the feature off. View the full article

Forming a habit is a powerful tool. You work the new thing into your daily routine, and soon enough, it becomes automatic. That's the dream, anyway—in reality, you have to work at it. But how long does it take to fully form a habit? Despite what you may have heard, it’s not necessarily just 21 days. The number of days it takes to form a new habit depends on the habit, on you, and on what strategies you’re using to build and maintain that habit. Scientific estimates have ranged from as little as 21 days, to eight months or more. Let’s look at why that range is so big, and what you can do to build habits faster. The myth of the 21 day habitThe idea that a habit takes 21 days to form came from a surgeon, Maxwell Maltz. He observed that it seemed to take about three weeks for a person to get used to their new body after an operation like amputation or plastic surgery, James Clear writes. (Having gone through a few minor surgeries, I recall that it takes between two and three weeks for pain and swelling to subside enough that you aren’t constantly thinking about the fact you just had surgery; I have to wonder if that’s related.) The surgeon’s idea was that it takes 21 days for people to dissolve and re-form a “mental image” of themselves. This isn’t backed by research; it’s just one guy’s gut feeling. But I think it stuck because it fits a lot of our experiences. Let’s say you want to get up early to exercise first thing in the morning. Well, of course you can do it once. But how do you make it a habit? When I was in that situation—becoming a morning exerciser despite not being a morning person—I made myself commit for a full week before I even allowed myself to complain about it or adjust my plan. I had to be up at 6 a.m. every day, five days in a row, non-negotiable. I enjoyed having a break on the weekend, and then the second week was much easier. By the end of the third, this really was my new normal. I kept it up for at least a year after that. Even though the 21-day rule isn’t based on science, it’s a good timeframe for a “trial run” of a new habit. After all, one day can be a fluke. One or two weeks is a timeframe we’ve been through before, and we can ride out a disruption to our normal life that long (imagine a vacation, or a week’s crunch time before a work deadline). But by the time you get to three weeks, or better yet, a full month, you’ve learned some things about your new habit and how it fits into your life. Even the simplest habits are never actually simple; you need to learn and practice a bunch of mini-skills in the process of building almost any habit. So, by that 21-day mark, you’ve done the thing a bunch of times. Importantly, you’ve likely weathered a few interruptions or obstacles (like the weekend) and gotten back on track. It’s probably a good rule of thumb for a timeframe that is long enough to feel like “real life.” But that doesn’t mean it’s enough. Research shows it takes months to make a habit automaticScientific research has attempted to measure how long it takes for a habit to truly become automatic. For example, this study asked participants to choose a habit and to attach it to something they did once a day (for example, “eat a piece of fruit with lunch”). The study lasted 12 weeks. Some of the participants felt their new habit was automatic after just a few weeks; many others weren’t there yet at the end of the study. The researchers concluded that most people would form an automatic habit anywhere between two and eight months...according to a model that they calculated would only apply to 62 (about 75%) of the participants. That’s a wide range, and we don’t know whether the rest of the people would have ever gotten to a point where the habit was automatic. The researchers also found that simpler habits (like drinking water) were quicker to become automatic than harder or more complex ones (like doing 50 sit-ups). A 2012 review looked at several other estimates and concluded that it would make more sense to tell people to expect at least 10 weeks for their new habit to become automatic, but also that it helps a lot just to know that any habit keeps getting easier the longer you do it. Those authors point out that expecting a habit to form in 21 days can make people discouraged, and instead it’s better to focus on the payoff of “working effortfully on a new behavior for 2-3 months.” How to form habits fasterSetting time-based commitments can be a helpful tool, like getting through the first week before changing the plan, or using your new moisturizer every day until the bottle is empty. But another school of thought holds that long-term behavior change is better described by “stages of change” than by calendar dates. There is a "contemplation" stage where you're thinking about how you'll do the new behavior, and a "preparation stage" where you're gathering supplies and testing the waters—say, buying new running shoes, or taking one fitness class to see how you like it. In some cases, a habit takes longer to form than you hope. But you may be able to get a habit to stick sooner than expected if you are intentional about the way you form the habit. Working consciously on your new habit can make it last longer, too, as we see in the maintenance stage. What to do early on to make a new habit stickYour initial habit-forming period—whether you want to think of it as 21 days, or 66 days, or, heck, eight months—is what behavior change psychologists call the action stage. You’ve begun the habit, but it’s not automatic yet and you might not be convinced that you’re really going to continue. In this stage, you can make your habit more likely to stick by doing the following: Remind yourself of your motivation to do it. For example, stick your reminder card for your next dentist’s appointment on your bathroom mirror, so that you remember not just that you should floss your teeth, but also why you want to floss your teeth. Restructure your environment to give you cues and support. For example, if you want to run every morning, set your shoes out the night before and have your spouse ask you how your run went when you return. Build self-efficacy by celebrating your small wins. This could mean checking off the days you did the thing on a calendar, but it could also involve working toward milestones (like total number of miles run) or making benchmarks of your progress (maybe you used to do your daily pushups with your hands on a chair, but now you can do them on the floor). Plan ahead for how you’ll maintain your habit even when you’re interrupted (more about that in a minute). How to sustain a habit beyond the first 21 daysOnce you’ve built some momentum, you’re in the maintenance stage. You’re doing the habit, and maybe it’s starting to feel automatic, or at least more of a part of your life than it used to be. In this stage, you may need to do some things like the following: Reevaluate your plan. Is running every day still working for you? Maybe it makes more sense to make some of the runs longer and designate other days for rest, yoga, or strength training. Think ahead to obstacles you might face. If you go on a vacation, will you continue the habit? If you end up falling off the wagon for whatever reason, how will you get back on? Make sure your motivation is something that will continue to work for you. For example, if you found it really motivating to keep up a streak on the calendar, the real test will come when you inevitably break your streak. At that point, there needs to be something other than the streak that is keeping you at it. This is often something intrinsic: You like being the person who flosses every day. You’re excited to sign up for a race with your running partner. You’re happy that your cholesterol is down from the way you’ve been eating. Building a habit is not a matter of white-knuckling it until you hit a magic number of days. It’s a process that takes effort the whole time, even when you’re five years in. Habits are work, but the ones that last are the ones where the work feels worthwhile. View the full article

Google’s head of Search warned a federal court that forcing the company to share its search index, ranking data, and live results with competitors would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to Google, its users, and the open web. The warning appears in a filed affidavit from Elizabeth Reid, Google’s vice president and head of Search, submitted with Google’s motion to pause key antitrust remedies while it appeals the final judgment in the DOJ search monopoly case. The filing spells out what Google sees as its most sensitive Search assets and why sharing them would expose proprietary systems, enable reverse engineering, and fuel spam. Disclosure of Google’s web search index The fight: Section IV of the final judgment would force Google to give “qualified competitors” a one-time dump of its core web index data at marginal cost. That data would include: Every URL in Google’s web search index A DocID-to-URL map Crawl timing data Spam scores Device-type flags Google’s argument: This would hand competitors the output and the accumulated insight of more than 25 years of indexing work. Reid described the index as the product of proprietary crawling, annotation, and tiering systems that decide which pages enter Google Search: “The selection of webpages in Google’s search index is the result of more than twenty-five years of sustained investments and exhaustive engineering efforts.” She warned that simply knowing which URLs Google indexes would allow rivals to skip large portions of crawling and analysis altogether: “Receiving the list of URLs in Google’s index will enable Qualified Competitors to forgo crawling and analyzing the larger web, and to instead focus their efforts on crawling only the fraction of pages Google has included in its index.” Metadata such as crawl frequency would reveal how Google prioritizes freshness and demand, she added: “Information regarding Google’s crawl schedule will provide rivals with insight into Google’s proprietary freshness signals and index tiering structure.” Included in the affidavit is this image, “Google’s Web Crawling and Indexing Process: The Results,” showing that Google labels the great majority of webpages as “Spam, Duplicates, & Low Quality Pages.” Google has crawled a redacted number of pages in the trillions. As of 2020, Google’s index contained roughly 400 billion documents, according to testimony from Pandu Nayak, a Google executive. Risk of spam, abuse, and reputational damage The concern: Google argues that exposing spam scores, even indirectly, would weaken its ability to fight webspam. Effective spam fighting depends on secrecy, Reid stressed: “Fighting spam depends on obscurity, as external knowledge of spam-fighting mechanisms or signals eliminates the value of those mechanisms and signals.” If spam scores leaked or were breached, bad actors could use them to bypass Google’s defenses, Reid warned: “Spammers … could bypass Google’s spam detection technologies and hamstring Google in its efforts to combat spam.” That would push more low-quality and misleading content into search results, with users ultimately blaming Google: “The compelled disclosures are likely to cause more spam and misleading content to surface in response to user queries, compromising user safety and undermining Google’s reputation as a trustworthy search engine.” Disclosure of user-side search data (Glue and RankEmbed) What the judgment requires: Ongoing sharing of “user-side data” used to run Google’s Glue and RankEmbed models. Reid says that data includes: Queries Location Time of search Clicks, hovers, and other interactions Every result and search feature shown, and their order Glue captures 13 months of U.S. search logs, according to the affidavit. Google’s argument: This would amount to a massive, ongoing disclosure of Google’s ranking output at scale. “The disclosure of Glue training data amounts to the disclosure of Google’s intellectual property, because it reveals the output of Google’s Search technologies in response to every query issued by a user located in the United States over a 13-month period.” She also warned that the data could be reused directly. “Qualified Competitors could also readily use the disclosed Glue and RankEmbed data as training data for a large language model.” On privacy, Reid emphasizes that Google would not control the final anonymization decisions. “Google will not have final decision-making authority over the anonymization and privacy-enhancing techniques to be applied to the user data before it is shared.” Users would still hold Google responsible for any fallout, Reid predicted. “Google users are nonetheless likely to fault Google for any privacy or security issues that arise from the data disclosures.” Syndication of Google’s search results and features What’s required: Section V would force Google to license and syndicate core search outputs to competitors for up to five years, including: Organic web results (“ten blue links”) Query rewriting Local, Maps, Images, Video, and Knowledge Panels Google’s warning: This would expose the live output of its search systems to competitors—and beyond. “The search results and features required to be syndicated to Qualified Competitors are the product of decades of sustained engineering effort and innovation and many billions of dollars of investment.” Even with contractual limits, Google would lose control, Reid said: “Google does not have the ability (as it does in the ordinary course) to decline to syndicate to a Qualified Competitor.” Competitors could store, analyze, or leak the data — and that third parties could scrape it as well, Reid warned. “Any third party could ‘scrape’ the syndicated results and features from Qualified Competitors’ sites and thereby also avail themselves of Google’s results and features.” The document. Read it here. What it is: Affidavit of Elizabeth Reid (Document #1471, Attachment #2) Filed: Jan. 16 at 3:46 p.m. ET Case: United States of America v. Google LLC, No. 1:20-cv-03010 (D.D.C.) Purpose: Supports Google’s motion to partially stay antitrust remedies pending appeal Reid testified previously at the remedies hearing and said the affidavit reflects her personal knowledge as the executive responsible for all of Google Search. View the full article

Everyone is talking about it in group chats, at the supermarket, and at the gas pump. No, it’s not Heated Rivalry—it is the “monster” winter storm that is set to hit the U.S. this weekend, traveling from Texas across the Southwest, into the Southeast, and finally into the Mid-Atlantic states and into New England. The storm is forecast to dump a whopping ten to 20 inches of snow, creating dangerous conditions for about half the nation, according to the Washington Post. Widespread heavy snow, sleet, damaging ice, and a potential nor’easter could affect as many as 230 million Americans from Friday, January 23 to Monday, January 26, bringing temperatures below zero, according to the Weather Channel. While it’s too early to predict the storm’s exact path and snowfall, heavy snow is forecast for Memphis, Nashville, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City, and Boston. How to prepare for the winter storm The weather could create dangerous travel conditions, both on the roads and in the air, and has the potential for power outages amid freezing temperatures. Here are some tips from the National Weather Service (NWS) on what you can do to prepare before the storm: Make an emergency supply kit with things like a first aid kit, flashlight, cell phone charger, batteries, food and water, gloves, hates, boots and warm winter clothing For your car: Get a full tank of gas, snow shovel and brush, blankets, and jumper cables In case your heat goes out, here’s what to do, according to the NWS: Wear layers of loose-fitting, lightweight, warm clothing. Remove layers to avoid overheating, perspiration, and subsequent chill Close off unneeded rooms to avoid wasting heat Stuff towels or rags in cracks under doors Close blinds or curtains to keep in some heat Do not run a generator inside your home or garage The National Weather Service says food provides the body with energy for producing its own heat, so eat and drink lots of water and other non-caffeinated, non-alcholohic drinks to prevent dehydration. Cold air is hydrating. Stay safe and warm out there! View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Samsung announced the Galaxy Watch Ultra in the summer of 2024, and then refreshed it last August with double the storage and new color options. As we all know, older versions get big discounts, and if the extra storage and colors aren't a big deal to you, you could be in a great position to get a flagship Samsung smartwatch at a big discount. The 2024 Bespoke Edition 47mm LTE Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra is selling for $389.95, originally $649.99 at launch. This is the lowest price it has reached, according to price-checking tools. The Galaxy Watch Ultra emphasizes outdoor and exercise features, but it's much cheaper than other premium fitness watches like the Apple Watch Ultra. Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Bespoke Edition 47mm LTE $383.95 at Amazon Get Deal Get Deal $383.95 at Amazon The Galaxy Watch Ultra excels over other watches in one key aspect: its outdoorsy features. If you're an avid hiker or an athlete who spends long hours outdoors, it's a great choice. Like any good rugged watch, this one is tough, made out of Grade 4 titanium, and has an IP68 water- and dust-resistant rating. You can also take it up high altitudes (up to 9,000 meters) and it can withstand up to 10ATM of pressure (about 330 feet underwater). You also get a built-in siren in case of emergencies. The screen is a 1.47-inch Super AMOLED display, brighter than previous Samsung AMOLED smartwatches. The only downside is that it comes in just one size—47mm. The watch runs WearOS from Samsung and comes with 32GB of storage. The 590mAh battery is one of the best for its price point, making it perfect for prolonged outdoor use. If you don't use any power-saving modes, it'll last 60 hours, but it can go up to 100 hours if you're conservative. One of the new features this watch brings is AI-based health metrics and advanced sleep tracking, which you can read more about in PCMag's "excellent" review. If you're looking for a more budget-friendly and smaller option for more general use, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 at $217 (originally $379.99) is a great option. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods 4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $148.99 (List Price $179.00) Apple Watch Series 11 [GPS 46mm] Smartwatch with Jet Black Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band - M/L. Sleep Score, Fitness Tracker, Health Monitoring, Always-On Display, Water Resistant — $399.00 (List Price $429.00) Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus — (List Price $24.99 With Code "FTV4K25") Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 10.9" 64GB Wi-Fi Tablet (Graphite) — $149.99 (List Price $219.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

Observers said the Supreme Court likely will allow Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook to remain at her post while she challenges her purported removal by President Donald The President. But her continued presence would slow, rather than stop, the president's quest for a voting majority on the central bank board. View the full article

Mortgage borrowers filed a third amended class action complaint against the bank over modification issues from 2010 to 2015. View the full article

When employers conduct background checks, they’re primarily looking to verify your qualifications and assess your trustworthiness. This involves examining your criminal history, employment records, and educational credentials. They aim to identify any inconsistencies or red flags that might indicate potential issues. Comprehending what employers seek can help you prepare better. But what specific elements can impact their hiring decisions? Key Takeaways Employers verify criminal history to assess potential risks, including violent behavior or substance abuse, impacting workplace safety. Employment history is reviewed to confirm job stability, reliability, and cultural fit within the organization. Education credentials are validated to ensure candidates meet the necessary qualifications for the position. Professional licenses and driving records are checked for roles requiring specific certifications or driving responsibilities. Compliance with federal, state, and industry-specific regulations is crucial to avoid legal repercussions and maintain a safe work environment. What Is an Employment Background Check? When you apply for a job, an employment background check is often part of the process that employers use to evaluate your qualifications and trustworthiness. What do employers look for in a background check? Typically, they verify your criminal history, employment history, education credentials, and identity. These elements help employers assess your suitability for the position and mitigate risks associated with negligent hiring. Approximately 95% of employers in the U.S. conduct some form of background check, making it a standard practice in hiring. Employers are looking for discrepancies or red flags that could indicate potential issues. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires employers to obtain your written consent before conducting these checks and allows you to dispute any inaccurate information. Depending on the job and industry, background checks can vary widely in scope, especially for safety-sensitive roles that may include drug testing or additional criminal history assessments. Why Do Employers Run Background Checks on Applicants? Employers run background checks on applicants primarily to verify the accuracy of the information provided during the hiring process. By confirming your credentials, they guarantee you possess the necessary qualifications for the role. Approximately 95% of employers in the U.S. conduct these checks to mitigate risks associated with negligent hiring, protecting both their business assets and reputation. Background checks are particularly important in safety-sensitive positions or industries with regulatory requirements, as they help assess an applicant’s criminal history. This process is vital for maintaining a safe work environment. In addition, compliance with federal, state, and local laws regarding background checks is critical for employers to avoid legal repercussions and uphold fair hiring practices. By running these checks, employers aim to make informed hiring decisions, ultimately promoting a trustworthy and competent workforce. Create a Safer Workplace To create a safer workplace, you need to minimize the risk of violence by conducting thorough background checks on potential hires. By ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, you not just protect your employees but additionally uphold your company’s reputation. Regular screenings can help you stay informed about any changes in your current staff, allowing you to address potential issues before they escalate. Minimize Workplace Violence Creating a safer workplace often hinges on comprehension and addressing potential risks, particularly those related to violence. Employers recognize that background checks play an essential role in minimizing workplace violence. About 94% of employers conduct criminal history checks to identify candidates with violent offenses. By filtering out applicants with concerning behaviors, you reduce the likelihood of incidents that could harm employees. Risk Factor Action Taken Industry Focus Violent Crime History Conduct thorough checks Healthcare Substance Abuse Implement drug screenings Education Prior Assaults Review past references Retail Threatening Behavior Assess behavioral patterns Security Negligent Hiring Establish extensive policies All industries Implementing these strategies can greatly improve workplace safety. Ensure Regulatory Compliance Guaranteeing regulatory compliance during the hiring process is vital for maintaining a safe workplace. Employers conduct background checks to adhere to federal, state, and local laws that dictate what information can be accessed. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires you to obtain written consent from candidates before any checks, promoting transparency and protecting their rights. Furthermore, following the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines is significant; you must avoid discriminatory practices based on criminal history and ascertain checks are relevant to the job. In industries like healthcare and transportation, specific background checks are mandatory to meet regulatory standards. Regularly updating your background check policies can help mitigate risks associated with negligent hiring, nurturing a safer work environment. Protect Company Reputation Maintaining a strong company reputation hinges on the ability to cultivate a safe and secure work environment. Employers conduct background checks to filter out candidates with criminal histories that could jeopardize workplace safety. In fact, 94% of U.S. employers perform criminal history checks to guarantee they hire individuals without violent or inappropriate pasts. By identifying candidates with violent crime records, these checks help prevent workplace violence, creating a safer atmosphere for everyone. Moreover, verifying educational and employment histories allows companies to avoid hiring unqualified individuals, which can lead to financial losses and reputational damage. Thorough background checks are crucial for compliance with industry regulations, especially in safety-sensitive roles, making sure companies fulfill their duty of care to employees and customers alike. Ensure Employees Are Qualified to Perform Their Jobs When employers want to build a competent workforce, they often turn to background checks to confirm that potential employees have the qualifications necessary for their roles. These checks help guarantee candidates meet job requirements and reduce the risk of hiring someone unqualified. Key areas of focus include: Education history: Verifying degrees and certifications to confirm qualifications. Employment history: Validating job titles and dates to assess honesty and relevant experience. Criminal background: Identifying any convictions that may disqualify candidates for trusted positions. For roles requiring specific credentials, professional license verification is essential. Employers may additionally check driving records for positions involving driving responsibilities, confirming candidates have a safe driving history. Maintain Regulatory Compliance To maintain regulatory compliance, you need to understand and adhere to federal, state, and industry-specific requirements when conducting background checks. This includes following the Fair Credit Reporting Act, obtaining written consent from candidates, and being aware of additional local laws that may impose stricter guidelines. Regularly reviewing your policies guarantees that you stay updated with changing regulations, helping you minimize legal risks and avoid potential discrimination claims. Federal Regulations Compliance Comprehending federal regulations is crucial for employers conducting background checks, as non-compliance can lead to significant legal issues. You must adhere to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which requires obtaining written consent from candidates before proceeding. Moreover, be mindful of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines, which discourage blanket disqualifications based on criminal history. To guarantee compliance, consider the following: Always provide candidates with a copy of their report if negative actions are taken. Respect confidentiality by avoiding access to expunged records and medical information. Stay informed about “Ban the Box” laws in over 180 jurisdictions that limit inquiries into criminal history. Staying compliant not only protects your organization but also cultivates trust with potential employees. State Law Adherence Comprehending state law adherence is crucial for maintaining regulatory compliance in the hiring process. Employers must stay informed about state-specific regulations that may impose stricter limits on the duration and scope of background checks compared to federal guidelines. Many states have enacted “Ban the Box” laws, which prevent employers from asking about criminal history on job applications. Furthermore, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires clear disclosure and written consent from candidates before conducting background checks. Regularly reviewing background check policies guarantees alignment with both federal and state laws, as non-compliance can lead to legal penalties and reputational damage. Some states likewise mandate that candidates have the opportunity to dispute any inaccurate information found during background checks, promoting transparency and fairness. Industry-Specific Requirements Grasping state law adherence is just the beginning; each industry has its own specific requirements for background checks that help maintain regulatory compliance. Recognizing these requirements is essential to guarantee safety and trust within your field. Healthcare employers require extensive checks for criminal histories and license verifications to protect patients. Transportation roles necessitate drug testing and driving record checks to comply with DOT regulations and guarantee road safety. Educational institutions perform thorough background checks to safeguard vulnerable populations, ensuring trustworthiness. Reduce Turnover When employers prioritize thorough background checks, they considerably improve their ability to reduce turnover rates. By verifying candidate qualifications, you can guarantee that new hires meet job requirements and possess the necessary skills. Studies indicate that effective background screening can lower turnover rates by up to 30%, identifying candidates with a history of job stability and reliability. Filtering out individuals with a record of frequent job changes or disciplinary issues improves employee retention and helps nurture a more stable workforce. Furthermore, background checks allow you to assess cultural fit and work ethic, both vital for reducing turnover and promoting long-term commitment. Organizations that implement extensive background checks often experience fewer hiring mistakes, translating to significant cost savings related to turnover, including training and onboarding expenses. In the end, investing in rigorous background checks leads to a more dedicated workforce and better organizational performance. Mitigate Liability Risks To effectively mitigate liability risks, employers must prioritize thorough background checks as a key component of their hiring process. Conducting these checks helps you identify candidates with criminal histories that could endanger workplace safety and reduce the likelihood of incidents leading to liability claims. Consider these crucial points: Verifying employment history and credentials protects against negligent hiring lawsuits. Screening out individuals with violent or fraudulent pasts safeguards both staff and customers. Regular updates on current employees’ backgrounds keep you informed about potential risks. Moreover, following FCRA and EEOC guidelines not only protects candidates’ rights but likewise shields you from legal repercussions tied to discriminatory hiring practices. Protect Confidential Information Protecting confidential information during background checks is critical for maintaining trust and compliance in the hiring process. Employers must adhere to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which requires secure handling of personal data and candidate consent before conducting checks. It’s fundamental to follow all federal, state, and local regulations to safeguard sensitive information and prevent unauthorized access or misuse. To achieve this, many organizations implement robust data protection measures, such as encryption and limited access protocols, ensuring that personal information is securely stored and handled. Conducting background checks through reputable third-party providers can equally help mitigate risks related to data breaches and identity theft. Moreover, regular training for HR personnel on best practices for managing confidential information is crucial. This training helps maintain compliance and protect candidate privacy during the background check process, creating a safer and more trustworthy hiring environment for everyone involved. Protect the Company’s Brand Brand integrity plays a crucial role in shaping an organization’s reputation, which is why employers conduct background checks on potential hires. They want to guarantee that new employees align with company values and maintain a professional image. A staggering 95% of U.S. employers perform these checks to minimize risks that could damage their brand. Consider the following: Negative findings, like a history of workplace violence, can lead to disqualification. Employers are cautious about hiring individuals with criminal records related to dishonesty, especially in customer-facing roles. Compliance with legal regulations during background checks protects candidates’ rights and reinforces the company’s commitment to ethical hiring. What Do Employers Look for in a Background Check? When employers conduct background checks, they often focus on three key areas: criminal history, employment verification, and education credentials. They check for any past convictions or pending cases to assess your suitability for the role, at the same time verifying your previous job experiences guarantees that your claims are accurate. Furthermore, confirming your educational qualifications helps employers make certain you have the right skills needed for the position. Criminal History Checks Employers often conduct criminal history checks as an essential part of their hiring process, aiming to identify any felony or misdemeanor convictions that could impact workplace safety or the organization’s reputation. Approximately 94% of employers in the U.S. rely on these checks, making them significant for evaluating candidates. Key aspects employers consider include: Serious crimes that may disqualify candidates for sensitive roles, like healthcare or finance. Compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), ensuring written consent before checks. Coverage of criminal records typically limited to the past seven years, alongside state-specific regulations. Understanding these factors can help you navigate the hiring environment and address potential concerns proactively. Employment Verification Process One crucial aspect of the employment verification process is confirming the accuracy of an applicant’s work history, which includes job titles, dates of employment, and reasons for leaving previous positions. Employers typically contact former employers directly to gather detailed information about your performance and conduct during your tenure. Approximately 95% of employers incorporate this verification as a standard part of their background checks, aiming to guarantee honesty and reliability in candidates. By conducting employment verification, they likewise mitigate the risk of negligent hiring lawsuits, as it confirms that you possess the qualifications you claim. The duration of this process can vary, often taking a few days to complete, depending on how responsive former employers are and the complexity of your job history. Education Credentials Validation Validating education credentials is a critical step in the background check process, as it guarantees that candidates actually possess the qualifications they claim. Employers typically contact educational institutions to confirm degrees, attendance dates, and honors. With approximately 30% of job applicants misrepresenting their educational background, this verification is essential for maintaining hiring integrity. When checking education credentials, employers focus on: Relevance of the degree to the job position Confirmation of the candidate’s attendance and graduation dates Any honors or special achievements received Some industries, like healthcare and education, require strict verification because of regulatory standards. Keep in mind that education verification can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on the institution’s responsiveness. What Are Employers Prohibited From Looking At? During considering potential candidates, there are specific limitations on the information that can be accessed during background checks. Employers can’t view expunged criminal records, meaning any offenses that have been legally sealed won’t show up. In many states, they’re also barred from obtaining salary history to combat pay discrimination and promote fair hiring practices. Certain medical records are off-limits except you provide explicit consent, which limits what employers can review, especially for non-healthcare roles. Furthermore, employers can’t request military service records without proper authorization to protect your privacy regarding military history. Finally, juvenile records are typically sealed, ensuring that mistakes made in youth don’t unfairly affect your job prospects. These restrictions exist to encourage a more equitable hiring environment, allowing candidates to present themselves without the burden of past mistakes or discriminatory practices. How to Prepare for a Background Check Preparing for a background check is an essential step in the job application process, and taking proactive measures can greatly improve your chances of success. Here are some steps to take into account: Review your credit report: Correct any inaccuracies since the Fair Credit Reporting Act allows you to dispute incorrect information. Gather personnel records: Collect pay stubs and tax documents to verify your employment history, as employers often check for accuracy. Check court records: Look for any potential issues that may come up during the screening process, allowing you to prepare for questions. Honesty is critical; discrepancies between your resume and background check can lead to disqualification. Furthermore, monitor your social media presence to guarantee it aligns with professional standards, as employers frequently review candidates’ online activities. Iprospectcheck: Your Employment Background Check Partner of Choice In regard to conducting employment background checks, Iprospectcheck stands out as a reliable partner for employers seeking thorough and efficient screening services. They provide extensive checks that cover criminal history, education verification, and employment history, giving you a complete view of each candidate’s qualifications. With a strong emphasis on compliance, Iprospectcheck adheres to Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) regulations, ensuring your screening processes remain legally sound. The platform shines in quick turnaround times, typically completing standard screenings within just a few days, which helps you make timely hiring decisions. Utilizing advanced technology, Iprospectcheck streamlines the background check process, minimizing delays caused by multiple locations or high volumes of requests. Furthermore, you can customize background check packages to meet specific industry requirements and job roles, ensuring that your screening aligns perfectly with your organizational needs. Frequently Asked Questions What Background Check Do Most Employers Do? Most employers perform criminal background checks, verifying any felony or misdemeanor convictions. Alongside this, they often check employment history to confirm job titles and dates. Education verification is likewise common, guaranteeing candidates possess the claimed degrees and certifications. For jobs requiring driving, employers review driving records to assess traffic violations and valid licenses. In safety-sensitive roles, drug and alcohol testing is standard to guarantee workplace safety and compliance with regulations. What Is a Red Flag on a Background Check? A red flag on a background check can be a criminal record, especially for violent crimes, indicating potential safety risks. Employment gaps or inconsistencies in your job history might raise doubts about your honesty. A poor driving record, including traffic violations, is a concern for driving roles. Furthermore, negative credit history in financial jobs can suggest irresponsibility, whereas frequent job changes may signal instability, affecting your perceived commitment to employers. What Are Jobs Looking for When They Do a Background Check? When employers conduct a background check, they focus on several key areas. They verify your criminal history to guarantee workplace safety, check your employment history for accuracy in job titles and dates, and confirm your educational qualifications. In roles involving financial responsibility, they may review your credit history. Furthermore, if the position is safety-sensitive, drug and alcohol testing could be required to maintain compliance and a safe working environment. What Is the Hardest Background Check to Pass? The hardest background check to pass often involves thorough criminal history assessments, especially for high-security positions. You may struggle if you have significant offenses or discrepancies in your employment history, like unexplained gaps or unresponsive past employers. Financial checks can be tough if you’ve faced bankruptcies or poor credit. Furthermore, drug tests are challenging for those with past substance abuse issues, particularly in safety-sensitive roles where testing is mandatory. Conclusion In summary, comprehension of what employers look for in background checks can greatly improve your job application process. They assess criminal history, employment records, and educational qualifications to guarantee candidates are trustworthy and qualified. Knowing what’s included and what’s off-limits can help you prepare effectively. By being proactive and transparent about your background, you can mitigate potential concerns and position yourself as a strong candidate, aligning with the employer’s goals for a safe and competent workforce. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Are Employers Looking for in Background Checks?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

When employers conduct background checks, they’re primarily looking to verify your qualifications and assess your trustworthiness. This involves examining your criminal history, employment records, and educational credentials. They aim to identify any inconsistencies or red flags that might indicate potential issues. Comprehending what employers seek can help you prepare better. But what specific elements can impact their hiring decisions? Key Takeaways Employers verify criminal history to assess potential risks, including violent behavior or substance abuse, impacting workplace safety. Employment history is reviewed to confirm job stability, reliability, and cultural fit within the organization. Education credentials are validated to ensure candidates meet the necessary qualifications for the position. Professional licenses and driving records are checked for roles requiring specific certifications or driving responsibilities. Compliance with federal, state, and industry-specific regulations is crucial to avoid legal repercussions and maintain a safe work environment. What Is an Employment Background Check? When you apply for a job, an employment background check is often part of the process that employers use to evaluate your qualifications and trustworthiness. What do employers look for in a background check? Typically, they verify your criminal history, employment history, education credentials, and identity. These elements help employers assess your suitability for the position and mitigate risks associated with negligent hiring. Approximately 95% of employers in the U.S. conduct some form of background check, making it a standard practice in hiring. Employers are looking for discrepancies or red flags that could indicate potential issues. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires employers to obtain your written consent before conducting these checks and allows you to dispute any inaccurate information. Depending on the job and industry, background checks can vary widely in scope, especially for safety-sensitive roles that may include drug testing or additional criminal history assessments. Why Do Employers Run Background Checks on Applicants? Employers run background checks on applicants primarily to verify the accuracy of the information provided during the hiring process. By confirming your credentials, they guarantee you possess the necessary qualifications for the role. Approximately 95% of employers in the U.S. conduct these checks to mitigate risks associated with negligent hiring, protecting both their business assets and reputation. Background checks are particularly important in safety-sensitive positions or industries with regulatory requirements, as they help assess an applicant’s criminal history. This process is vital for maintaining a safe work environment. In addition, compliance with federal, state, and local laws regarding background checks is critical for employers to avoid legal repercussions and uphold fair hiring practices. By running these checks, employers aim to make informed hiring decisions, ultimately promoting a trustworthy and competent workforce. Create a Safer Workplace To create a safer workplace, you need to minimize the risk of violence by conducting thorough background checks on potential hires. By ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, you not just protect your employees but additionally uphold your company’s reputation. Regular screenings can help you stay informed about any changes in your current staff, allowing you to address potential issues before they escalate. Minimize Workplace Violence Creating a safer workplace often hinges on comprehension and addressing potential risks, particularly those related to violence. Employers recognize that background checks play an essential role in minimizing workplace violence. About 94% of employers conduct criminal history checks to identify candidates with violent offenses. By filtering out applicants with concerning behaviors, you reduce the likelihood of incidents that could harm employees. Risk Factor Action Taken Industry Focus Violent Crime History Conduct thorough checks Healthcare Substance Abuse Implement drug screenings Education Prior Assaults Review past references Retail Threatening Behavior Assess behavioral patterns Security Negligent Hiring Establish extensive policies All industries Implementing these strategies can greatly improve workplace safety. Ensure Regulatory Compliance Guaranteeing regulatory compliance during the hiring process is vital for maintaining a safe workplace. Employers conduct background checks to adhere to federal, state, and local laws that dictate what information can be accessed. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires you to obtain written consent from candidates before any checks, promoting transparency and protecting their rights. Furthermore, following the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines is significant; you must avoid discriminatory practices based on criminal history and ascertain checks are relevant to the job. In industries like healthcare and transportation, specific background checks are mandatory to meet regulatory standards. Regularly updating your background check policies can help mitigate risks associated with negligent hiring, nurturing a safer work environment. Protect Company Reputation Maintaining a strong company reputation hinges on the ability to cultivate a safe and secure work environment. Employers conduct background checks to filter out candidates with criminal histories that could jeopardize workplace safety. In fact, 94% of U.S. employers perform criminal history checks to guarantee they hire individuals without violent or inappropriate pasts. By identifying candidates with violent crime records, these checks help prevent workplace violence, creating a safer atmosphere for everyone. Moreover, verifying educational and employment histories allows companies to avoid hiring unqualified individuals, which can lead to financial losses and reputational damage. Thorough background checks are crucial for compliance with industry regulations, especially in safety-sensitive roles, making sure companies fulfill their duty of care to employees and customers alike. Ensure Employees Are Qualified to Perform Their Jobs When employers want to build a competent workforce, they often turn to background checks to confirm that potential employees have the qualifications necessary for their roles. These checks help guarantee candidates meet job requirements and reduce the risk of hiring someone unqualified. Key areas of focus include: Education history: Verifying degrees and certifications to confirm qualifications. Employment history: Validating job titles and dates to assess honesty and relevant experience. Criminal background: Identifying any convictions that may disqualify candidates for trusted positions. For roles requiring specific credentials, professional license verification is essential. Employers may additionally check driving records for positions involving driving responsibilities, confirming candidates have a safe driving history. Maintain Regulatory Compliance To maintain regulatory compliance, you need to understand and adhere to federal, state, and industry-specific requirements when conducting background checks. This includes following the Fair Credit Reporting Act, obtaining written consent from candidates, and being aware of additional local laws that may impose stricter guidelines. Regularly reviewing your policies guarantees that you stay updated with changing regulations, helping you minimize legal risks and avoid potential discrimination claims. Federal Regulations Compliance Comprehending federal regulations is crucial for employers conducting background checks, as non-compliance can lead to significant legal issues. You must adhere to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which requires obtaining written consent from candidates before proceeding. Moreover, be mindful of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines, which discourage blanket disqualifications based on criminal history. To guarantee compliance, consider the following: Always provide candidates with a copy of their report if negative actions are taken. Respect confidentiality by avoiding access to expunged records and medical information. Stay informed about “Ban the Box” laws in over 180 jurisdictions that limit inquiries into criminal history. Staying compliant not only protects your organization but also cultivates trust with potential employees. State Law Adherence Comprehending state law adherence is crucial for maintaining regulatory compliance in the hiring process. Employers must stay informed about state-specific regulations that may impose stricter limits on the duration and scope of background checks compared to federal guidelines. Many states have enacted “Ban the Box” laws, which prevent employers from asking about criminal history on job applications. Furthermore, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires clear disclosure and written consent from candidates before conducting background checks. Regularly reviewing background check policies guarantees alignment with both federal and state laws, as non-compliance can lead to legal penalties and reputational damage. Some states likewise mandate that candidates have the opportunity to dispute any inaccurate information found during background checks, promoting transparency and fairness. Industry-Specific Requirements Grasping state law adherence is just the beginning; each industry has its own specific requirements for background checks that help maintain regulatory compliance. Recognizing these requirements is essential to guarantee safety and trust within your field. Healthcare employers require extensive checks for criminal histories and license verifications to protect patients. Transportation roles necessitate drug testing and driving record checks to comply with DOT regulations and guarantee road safety. Educational institutions perform thorough background checks to safeguard vulnerable populations, ensuring trustworthiness. Reduce Turnover When employers prioritize thorough background checks, they considerably improve their ability to reduce turnover rates. By verifying candidate qualifications, you can guarantee that new hires meet job requirements and possess the necessary skills. Studies indicate that effective background screening can lower turnover rates by up to 30%, identifying candidates with a history of job stability and reliability. Filtering out individuals with a record of frequent job changes or disciplinary issues improves employee retention and helps nurture a more stable workforce. Furthermore, background checks allow you to assess cultural fit and work ethic, both vital for reducing turnover and promoting long-term commitment. Organizations that implement extensive background checks often experience fewer hiring mistakes, translating to significant cost savings related to turnover, including training and onboarding expenses. In the end, investing in rigorous background checks leads to a more dedicated workforce and better organizational performance. Mitigate Liability Risks To effectively mitigate liability risks, employers must prioritize thorough background checks as a key component of their hiring process. Conducting these checks helps you identify candidates with criminal histories that could endanger workplace safety and reduce the likelihood of incidents leading to liability claims. Consider these crucial points: Verifying employment history and credentials protects against negligent hiring lawsuits. Screening out individuals with violent or fraudulent pasts safeguards both staff and customers. Regular updates on current employees’ backgrounds keep you informed about potential risks. Moreover, following FCRA and EEOC guidelines not only protects candidates’ rights but likewise shields you from legal repercussions tied to discriminatory hiring practices. Protect Confidential Information Protecting confidential information during background checks is critical for maintaining trust and compliance in the hiring process. Employers must adhere to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which requires secure handling of personal data and candidate consent before conducting checks. It’s fundamental to follow all federal, state, and local regulations to safeguard sensitive information and prevent unauthorized access or misuse. To achieve this, many organizations implement robust data protection measures, such as encryption and limited access protocols, ensuring that personal information is securely stored and handled. Conducting background checks through reputable third-party providers can equally help mitigate risks related to data breaches and identity theft. Moreover, regular training for HR personnel on best practices for managing confidential information is crucial. This training helps maintain compliance and protect candidate privacy during the background check process, creating a safer and more trustworthy hiring environment for everyone involved. Protect the Company’s Brand Brand integrity plays a crucial role in shaping an organization’s reputation, which is why employers conduct background checks on potential hires. They want to guarantee that new employees align with company values and maintain a professional image. A staggering 95% of U.S. employers perform these checks to minimize risks that could damage their brand. Consider the following: Negative findings, like a history of workplace violence, can lead to disqualification. Employers are cautious about hiring individuals with criminal records related to dishonesty, especially in customer-facing roles. Compliance with legal regulations during background checks protects candidates’ rights and reinforces the company’s commitment to ethical hiring. What Do Employers Look for in a Background Check? When employers conduct background checks, they often focus on three key areas: criminal history, employment verification, and education credentials. They check for any past convictions or pending cases to assess your suitability for the role, at the same time verifying your previous job experiences guarantees that your claims are accurate. Furthermore, confirming your educational qualifications helps employers make certain you have the right skills needed for the position. Criminal History Checks Employers often conduct criminal history checks as an essential part of their hiring process, aiming to identify any felony or misdemeanor convictions that could impact workplace safety or the organization’s reputation. Approximately 94% of employers in the U.S. rely on these checks, making them significant for evaluating candidates. Key aspects employers consider include: Serious crimes that may disqualify candidates for sensitive roles, like healthcare or finance. Compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), ensuring written consent before checks. Coverage of criminal records typically limited to the past seven years, alongside state-specific regulations. Understanding these factors can help you navigate the hiring environment and address potential concerns proactively. Employment Verification Process One crucial aspect of the employment verification process is confirming the accuracy of an applicant’s work history, which includes job titles, dates of employment, and reasons for leaving previous positions. Employers typically contact former employers directly to gather detailed information about your performance and conduct during your tenure. Approximately 95% of employers incorporate this verification as a standard part of their background checks, aiming to guarantee honesty and reliability in candidates. By conducting employment verification, they likewise mitigate the risk of negligent hiring lawsuits, as it confirms that you possess the qualifications you claim. The duration of this process can vary, often taking a few days to complete, depending on how responsive former employers are and the complexity of your job history. Education Credentials Validation Validating education credentials is a critical step in the background check process, as it guarantees that candidates actually possess the qualifications they claim. Employers typically contact educational institutions to confirm degrees, attendance dates, and honors. With approximately 30% of job applicants misrepresenting their educational background, this verification is essential for maintaining hiring integrity. When checking education credentials, employers focus on: Relevance of the degree to the job position Confirmation of the candidate’s attendance and graduation dates Any honors or special achievements received Some industries, like healthcare and education, require strict verification because of regulatory standards. Keep in mind that education verification can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on the institution’s responsiveness. What Are Employers Prohibited From Looking At? During considering potential candidates, there are specific limitations on the information that can be accessed during background checks. Employers can’t view expunged criminal records, meaning any offenses that have been legally sealed won’t show up. In many states, they’re also barred from obtaining salary history to combat pay discrimination and promote fair hiring practices. Certain medical records are off-limits except you provide explicit consent, which limits what employers can review, especially for non-healthcare roles. Furthermore, employers can’t request military service records without proper authorization to protect your privacy regarding military history. Finally, juvenile records are typically sealed, ensuring that mistakes made in youth don’t unfairly affect your job prospects. These restrictions exist to encourage a more equitable hiring environment, allowing candidates to present themselves without the burden of past mistakes or discriminatory practices. How to Prepare for a Background Check Preparing for a background check is an essential step in the job application process, and taking proactive measures can greatly improve your chances of success. Here are some steps to take into account: Review your credit report: Correct any inaccuracies since the Fair Credit Reporting Act allows you to dispute incorrect information. Gather personnel records: Collect pay stubs and tax documents to verify your employment history, as employers often check for accuracy. Check court records: Look for any potential issues that may come up during the screening process, allowing you to prepare for questions. Honesty is critical; discrepancies between your resume and background check can lead to disqualification. Furthermore, monitor your social media presence to guarantee it aligns with professional standards, as employers frequently review candidates’ online activities. Iprospectcheck: Your Employment Background Check Partner of Choice In regard to conducting employment background checks, Iprospectcheck stands out as a reliable partner for employers seeking thorough and efficient screening services. They provide extensive checks that cover criminal history, education verification, and employment history, giving you a complete view of each candidate’s qualifications. With a strong emphasis on compliance, Iprospectcheck adheres to Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) regulations, ensuring your screening processes remain legally sound. The platform shines in quick turnaround times, typically completing standard screenings within just a few days, which helps you make timely hiring decisions. Utilizing advanced technology, Iprospectcheck streamlines the background check process, minimizing delays caused by multiple locations or high volumes of requests. Furthermore, you can customize background check packages to meet specific industry requirements and job roles, ensuring that your screening aligns perfectly with your organizational needs. Frequently Asked Questions What Background Check Do Most Employers Do? Most employers perform criminal background checks, verifying any felony or misdemeanor convictions. Alongside this, they often check employment history to confirm job titles and dates. Education verification is likewise common, guaranteeing candidates possess the claimed degrees and certifications. For jobs requiring driving, employers review driving records to assess traffic violations and valid licenses. In safety-sensitive roles, drug and alcohol testing is standard to guarantee workplace safety and compliance with regulations. What Is a Red Flag on a Background Check? A red flag on a background check can be a criminal record, especially for violent crimes, indicating potential safety risks. Employment gaps or inconsistencies in your job history might raise doubts about your honesty. A poor driving record, including traffic violations, is a concern for driving roles. Furthermore, negative credit history in financial jobs can suggest irresponsibility, whereas frequent job changes may signal instability, affecting your perceived commitment to employers. What Are Jobs Looking for When They Do a Background Check? When employers conduct a background check, they focus on several key areas. They verify your criminal history to guarantee workplace safety, check your employment history for accuracy in job titles and dates, and confirm your educational qualifications. In roles involving financial responsibility, they may review your credit history. Furthermore, if the position is safety-sensitive, drug and alcohol testing could be required to maintain compliance and a safe working environment. What Is the Hardest Background Check to Pass? The hardest background check to pass often involves thorough criminal history assessments, especially for high-security positions. You may struggle if you have significant offenses or discrepancies in your employment history, like unexplained gaps or unresponsive past employers. Financial checks can be tough if you’ve faced bankruptcies or poor credit. Furthermore, drug tests are challenging for those with past substance abuse issues, particularly in safety-sensitive roles where testing is mandatory. Conclusion In summary, comprehension of what employers look for in background checks can greatly improve your job application process. They assess criminal history, employment records, and educational qualifications to guarantee candidates are trustworthy and qualified. Knowing what’s included and what’s off-limits can help you prepare effectively. By being proactive and transparent about your background, you can mitigate potential concerns and position yourself as a strong candidate, aligning with the employer’s goals for a safe and competent workforce. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Are Employers Looking for in Background Checks?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Tech companies are getting increasingly pushy with their large language models—prominent buttons for these AI features coat every surface designers can think of, including in three of the most prominent browsers: Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. If you want these AI features to go away, and stay away, there's a script for that. JustTheBrowser is a free and open source tool from developer and tech blogger Corbin Davenport that removes AI features, telemetry data reporting, sponsored content, product integrations, and other annoyances from Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. Basically, you can run this once and never think about these features again. To get started, head to the JustTheBrowser homepage. There are scripts to copy (which I'm not going to include here in case they change in the future). Credit: Justin Pot Windows users will need to run PowerShell as an admin—the easiest way to do that is by right-clicking PowerShell in the start menu and clicking "Run as administrator." There is a different script for Mac and Linux users—that one just needs to be copied into a regular Terminal. Either way, you will be asked which browser you'd like to update the settings for—just hit the number corresponding to what you want to do. Credit: Justin Pot In my testing, the process was very simple on Windows—just click the number and the script will do its thing. On macOS, I needed to follow a few instructions to enable a configuration policy in the Settings app, something that only took a couple of clicks. After that, Chrome was free of any and all references to AI. Credit: Justin Pot A number of other features were also gone, including those annoying prompts to switch my default browser. The way this works is kind of interesting: it uses features intended for large organizations. Basically all major browsers allow for group settings, which is how IT departments control what you can and can't do with your browser. Among these settings are ones to disable AI features. It's an interesting workaround, and hopefully one that keeps working. There is always a chance that browser companies make it so even IT departments can't disable AI features, at which point we'll all need to find a new solution (or switch to an alternative browser). View the full article

One of the giants of the gaming business has tumbled off a cliff. Ubisoft, the French game publisher best known for the Assassin’s Creed series, just announced plans to dramatically reorganize its business. In the process, the company will kill six games it had in the works, including a long-awaited Prince of Persia title that was expected this month. Ubisoft shares dropped by more than 30% following the news. The game publisher said the changes are designed to make it more agile in order to drive a “sharp rebound” for the company, which has seen its stock tank over the last five years. To chart that course, Ubisoft said it will selectively close the game studios it operates in Halifax and Stockholm, while restructuring other studios based in Abu Dhabi, Malmö, and Helsinki. The company will consolidate its studios into five genre-specific “creative houses” that combine game production and publishing. The company described the desperate measures as a “major reset” to set itself on a path to sustainable growth. For the year, Ubisoft now expects net bookings of roughly $1.5 billion euros, down by $330 million from its previous guidance. “It is a radical move, relying on a more decentralized creative organization with faster decision making and best-in-class cross functional core services supporting and serving each Creative House,” Ubisoft Founder and CEO Yves Guillemo wrote in press release, emphasizing that the changes would provide deep cost reduction designed to “rightsize” the 17,000-person company. Beyond the now-axed remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which Ubisoft said did not meet its new “enhanced” quality criteria, the publisher will abandon four unannounced games, including three new IPs and a mobile title. A dramatic decline for a AAA heavyweight The changes afoot at Ubisoft demonstrate a stunning fall from grace for a company synonymous with the gaming industry. The French gaming giant publishes many hit titles beyond its long-running Assassin’s Creed franchise, including the Tom Clancy series, Far Cry, Rayman, Just Dance, and Watch Dogs. Ubisoft’s retreat symbolizes bigger shifts in the gaming industry, but also avoidable failures. The pandemic-era game industry boom times that saw many gamers holed up at home, desperate for entertainment are now over. Persistent inflation means gamers have less cash on hand to spend, particularly after the cost of many new releases jumped up to $70. Meanwhile, big AAA studios like Ubisoft are looking to trim back budgets as the cost of making games goes up. Many people working in the gaming industry are hanging onto their jobs by a thread in the face of mass layoffs, if they haven’t decamped for another field altogether. Ubisoft has also made many of its own missteps. The publisher was forced to face its own demons during the gaming industry’s recent cultural reckoning, which revealed patterns of pervasive sexual harassment and workplace discrimination at some game companies. Last year, three former Ubisoft executives were found guilty of fostering a culture of psychological and sexual harassment by a French court. The French game maker has also suffered from a few high profile game failures, including the 2024 release of Star Wars Outlaws –- a release Ubisoft expected to be a major money maker. That game’s problems cascaded into Ubisoft’s next major release, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which the company delayed in light of the “softer than expected” reception for the prior game. Ubisoft’s role in shaping the gaming trends of the last decade is hard to overstate. At its best, the company’s games are praised for their sprawling, meticulously-detailed open worlds. But after many releases and many iterations, that formula may have overstayed its welcome. The game publisher has faced widespread criticism in recent years for churning out cookie-cutter open world games bloated by too much filler content. Gamers have more choice than ever in 2026, and they’re not afraid to opt for innovative indie titles handcrafted by small teams over AAA stalwarts that are growing stale. “On the one hand, the AAA industry has become persistently more selective and competitive with rising development costs and greater challenges in creating brands,” Guillemo said in Ubisoft’s announcement. “On the other hand, exceptional AAA games, when successful, have more financial potential than ever.” View the full article

Google is rolling out Campaign Mix Experiments (beta), a new testing framework that lets advertisers experiment across multiple campaign types, budgets, and settings within a single, unified experiment. How it works: Advertisers can create up to five experiment arms, each containing a different mix of campaigns. Campaigns can appear in multiple arms, with traffic split between them. Experiments support Search, Performance Max, Shopping, Demand Gen, Video, and App campaigns (excluding Hotels). Traffic splits can be customized (minimum 1%), with results normalized to the lowest split for fair comparison. What you can test: Budget allocation across campaign types Account structure, including consolidation vs. fragmentation Bidding strategies, targeting, and feature adoption Cross-channel performance interactions, not just single-campaign lift Why we care. Instead of testing Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, or Video campaigns in isolation, advertisers can now see how different campaign types work together — and which mix actually drives the best business results. Reporting details. Results appear in the Experiment summary and campaign-level reporting, with advertisers able to choose confidence intervals (95%, 80%, or 70%) and primary success metrics like ROAS, CPA, conversions, or conversion value. Best practices: Keep experiment arms similar, changing only one variable at a time. Align total budgets across arms unless budget is the test itself. Avoid shared budgets and major in-flight changes. Run experiments for at least six to eight weeks to reach statistical reliability. Between the lines. This is Google acknowledging that modern performance isn’t about winning one campaign — it’s about finding the right mix, especially as automation blurs the lines between channels. Bottom line. Campaign mix experiments give advertisers a clearer, more realistic way to test how different campaign types and budgets work together — and make smarter decisions about where spend actually delivers incremental value. View the full article

If you have travel plans this weekend and don’t necessarily need to travel, you may be in luck. A massive winter storm is forecasted this weekend—dubbed Winter Storm Fern by the Weather Channel—and could bring crippling ice and heavy snow to more than 30 states stretching from Arizona to Maine. With some 230 million Americans potentially affected, many airlines are preemptively warning travelers about potential weather-related disruptions and offering travel waivers in advance. The major U.S. carriers have issued alerts to travelers with flights scheduled out of airports across more than 20 states, though the terms for changing your travel plans can vary significantly by airline. If you plan to change your travel plans, for example, you will generally need to rebook in the next few days and choose new travel dates within the next year. But it’s also important to gauge your expectations: Don’t expect to score some cash from this storm. In September, the Department of Transportation updated its lengthy “fly rights” guidelines and cautioned that amenities to stranded passengers vary by airline, even if the cause is weather-related or something else beyond the carrier’s control. “Each airline has its own policies about what it will do for delayed passengers waiting at the airport; there are no federal requirements,” according to information from the Transportation Department. “Contrary to popular belief, for domestic itineraries, airlines are not required to compensate passengers whose flights are delayed or canceled.” Here are how the “big four” airlines—American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlines—are preparing for this weekend’s storm, along with some of the other popular U.S. carriers. AMERICAN AIRLINES: CHANGE FEES WAIVED American Airlines has issued a travel alert for more than 30 different airports and is likely to see some major disruptions, as its main hub is at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. The National Weather Service is currently forecasting that the Dallas metro area could see cold rain beginning on Friday that will gradually transition into freezing rain and sleet, before eventually becoming snow by Sunday. If you are booked on an American flight with travel scheduled for Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, you can change your trip, and the change fee will be waived. However, you must follow a few rules: The fee will be waived if you can travel some other time until next Wednesday, January 28; don’t change your origin or destination city; and rebook in the same cabin or pay the difference to upgrade. To take advantage of the waiver on change fees, you will need to rebook your trip by this Sunday, and your travel must be completed within one year of the original ticket date. DELTA AIR LINES: FARE DIFFERENCES WAIVED Delta Air Lines, with its main hub at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, could fare somewhat better, as the Atlanta area is on a winter storm watch and slightly below the threat of the worst of the winter storm. That said, the airline has issued a travel advisory for more than 40 airports in 10 states. Affected travelers have until next Wednesday, January 28, to rebook travel—and rebooked travel must occur on or before that date to be eligible for the fare difference to be waived. However, a fare difference may apply, the airline cautions, if you upgrade your original booking class. If you’re not able to reschedule your travel to meet these rebooking guidelines, you may cancel your original reservation and apply the unused value of the ticket toward the purchase of a new ticket for travel within one year of the original issue date. UNITED AIRLINES: CHANGE FEES, FARE DIFFERENCES WAIVED With its headquarters in Chicago, United Airlines is very accustomed to dealing with winter weather disruptions, and the city isn’t in the eye of this particular winter storm. Unlike American and Delta, United has issued two separate travel alerts—one for the Eastern U.S. and the other for the Southern U.S.—and they encompass two slightly different time periods. The travel alert for the Southern U.S. could affect airports in nine states, according to United, and applies to flights scheduled for Friday through Sunday. Meanwhile, the travel alert for the Eastern U.S. could affect airports in 14 states and the District of Columbia, and applies to flights scheduled for Saturday and extending through Monday. The options for United travelers who face potential disruptions are the same: Reschedule your travel plans, and the airline will waive change fees and fare difference. To qualify, the new flight must depart on or before next Wednesday, January 28, for flights on the East Coast, and on or before next Thursday, January 29, for flights in the South. SOUTHWEST AIRLINES: LONGER WINDOW FOR REBOOKING Southwest Airlines, the fourth-largest U.S. carrier, has always done things a little differently than its bigger competitors—and that extends to how it is handling potential disruptions from the winter storm. Its main hub is at the Dallas Love Field Airport, so like American, Southwest is likely to see some impact to its flights and has issued a travel advisory for airports in 15 states and D.C. The airline was just deemed the best in The Wall Street Journal’s ranking of airlines for 2025, beating out rivals in every category measured. If you’re a Southwest passenger with a reservation to, from, or through one of the airports on its list, you can enjoy a longer rebooking period of 14 days within the original date of travel to take advantage of the waiver in fare difference. What’s more, if you decide to cancel your trip, you may be eligible for a refund for the unused ticket, along with any optional travel charges you have already paid for on affected flights. As is true of all of the airlines, be sure to read the specific rules before making changes. HOW OTHER AIRLINES ARE PREPARING Airlines have more leeway than many passengers may realize on how they handle travel disruptions—and that’s quite evident if you scroll through the Department of Transportation’s airline cancellation and delay dashboard. That dashboard details how 10 different U.S. carriers handle “controllable” disruptions—a cancellation or delay that was due to circumstances within the airline’s control. As the agency cautions, airlines similarly can chart their own route for how to handle weather disruptions. If you have a ticket issued by Alaska Airlines or Hawaiian Airlines, which are under the same ownership, you can change or cancel your trip without a fee. The same is true for passengers on flights with Frontier Airlines and JetBlue, though the latter offers a slightly longer rebooking period (through January 31). Finally, low-fare and regional airlines may provide even fewer accommodations to travelers affected by this weekend’s disruptions. If you have a ticket with Spirit Airlines, the carrier will waive fare differences on rebooked tickets, though its travel advisory makes no mention of what happens if you cancel your trip. Allegiant Air has issued a travel alert for 15 cities it serves, but makes absolutely no mention of what accommodations it will offer to impacted travelers. And Breeze Airways has similarly issued a travel advisory, though the airline indicates that affected travelers will be notified with options—and its typical accommodations vary widely, depending on the length of the delay or type of disruption. View the full article

HP has announced the launch of its 2026 Future of Work Accelerator, aimed at fostering economic opportunities and expanding access to technology for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the U.S. As businesses continue to adapt to a fast-evolving digital landscape, this initiative aims to equip them with the necessary resources and knowledge to thrive. “Investing in organizations that provide access to technology and training is critical to building a better future for all workers,” says Jorge S. Rios, HP’s global head of social impact. The program reflects a significant investment in the principle that access to the latest technologies and skills development can empower workers and drive business growth. One of the key benefits for small business owners is the direct support through funding and training resources. The program offers grants of up to $100,000 for organizations that focus on digital skills training, technology access, and workforce development. This can be especially valuable for smaller enterprises that may lack the capital to invest in these critical areas. Moreover, the initiative provides a platform for collaboration among grantees, creating an ecosystem where best practices can be shared. By connecting SMEs with mentors, industry leaders, and peers, HP aims to foster a collaborative approach to problem-solving and innovation. Real-world applications of the program can be seen in various sectors. For example, retail businesses could leverage the accelerator to enhance their e-commerce capabilities or improve customer experience through digital tools. Manufacturing companies could invest in equipment that boosts productivity or train employees on new technologies that improve efficiency. However, small business owners should also be aware of potential challenges that come along with such initiatives. Adopting new technologies often requires a mindset shift that can be difficult for some employees. Moreover, as businesses grow more digitally intensive, they must also prioritize cybersecurity to safeguard sensitive information. This can be an ongoing concern as companies seek to balance rapid growth with secure practices. Additionally, accessing these funds often requires a rigorous application process, which can be time-consuming. Small business owners should be prepared to invest time and effort into submitting a compelling application that demonstrates their need for support and outlines how they plan to use the funds effectively. Equipping the future workforce with the right tools and skills is a significant maneuver for small business sustainability and expansion. With the backing of HP’s accelerator program, SMEs can position themselves not only to survive but thrive in an increasingly digital world. As HP continues to shape the future of work, small business owners have an opportunity to engage with initiatives that can empower their workforce and enhance their operational practices. More details on this initiative can be found in their official release here. This is a step toward a future where businesses and workers alike can benefit from new technologies and continuous professional development. Image via Google Gemini This article, "HP Launches 2026 Accelerator for Future of Work, Advancing Tech Access" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

HP has announced the launch of its 2026 Future of Work Accelerator, aimed at fostering economic opportunities and expanding access to technology for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the U.S. As businesses continue to adapt to a fast-evolving digital landscape, this initiative aims to equip them with the necessary resources and knowledge to thrive. “Investing in organizations that provide access to technology and training is critical to building a better future for all workers,” says Jorge S. Rios, HP’s global head of social impact. The program reflects a significant investment in the principle that access to the latest technologies and skills development can empower workers and drive business growth. One of the key benefits for small business owners is the direct support through funding and training resources. The program offers grants of up to $100,000 for organizations that focus on digital skills training, technology access, and workforce development. This can be especially valuable for smaller enterprises that may lack the capital to invest in these critical areas. Moreover, the initiative provides a platform for collaboration among grantees, creating an ecosystem where best practices can be shared. By connecting SMEs with mentors, industry leaders, and peers, HP aims to foster a collaborative approach to problem-solving and innovation. Real-world applications of the program can be seen in various sectors. For example, retail businesses could leverage the accelerator to enhance their e-commerce capabilities or improve customer experience through digital tools. Manufacturing companies could invest in equipment that boosts productivity or train employees on new technologies that improve efficiency. However, small business owners should also be aware of potential challenges that come along with such initiatives. Adopting new technologies often requires a mindset shift that can be difficult for some employees. Moreover, as businesses grow more digitally intensive, they must also prioritize cybersecurity to safeguard sensitive information. This can be an ongoing concern as companies seek to balance rapid growth with secure practices. Additionally, accessing these funds often requires a rigorous application process, which can be time-consuming. Small business owners should be prepared to invest time and effort into submitting a compelling application that demonstrates their need for support and outlines how they plan to use the funds effectively. Equipping the future workforce with the right tools and skills is a significant maneuver for small business sustainability and expansion. With the backing of HP’s accelerator program, SMEs can position themselves not only to survive but thrive in an increasingly digital world. As HP continues to shape the future of work, small business owners have an opportunity to engage with initiatives that can empower their workforce and enhance their operational practices. More details on this initiative can be found in their official release here. This is a step toward a future where businesses and workers alike can benefit from new technologies and continuous professional development. Image via Google Gemini This article, "HP Launches 2026 Accelerator for Future of Work, Advancing Tech Access" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Google is pushing more Demand Gen features (boosting shoppable and travel ads) into general availability, expanding its role as a full-funnel performance channel that blends discovery, video, and commerce across YouTube and Google surfaces. What’s new: Shoppable CTV via Demand Gen is now live, letting viewers browse and buy products directly from YouTube ads on connected TVs. Attributed Branded Searches are available for Demand Gen, giving advertisers visibility into how campaigns drive brand search activity across Google and YouTube (activation required via a Google rep). Travel Feeds allow advertisers to connect Hotel Center feeds to create dynamic video ads with real-time pricing, ratings, and availability. By the numbers: Demand Gen campaigns that include TV screens drive 7% incremental conversions at the same ROI, according to Google. They also report that, LG Electronics saw a 24% higher conversion rate versus paid social, while reaching high-value customers at a 91% lower CPA. Why we care. This update makes Demand Gen more actionable, measurable, and competitive with paid social, not just a discovery channel. Shoppable CTV turns previously passive TV impressions into direct commerce opportunities, attributed branded search helps prove Demand Gen’s influence beyond last-click, and travel feeds shorten the path from browsing to booking. Together, these features help advertisers drive incremental conversions, reach high-value audiences at lower CPAs, and justify upper-funnel spend with clearer performance signals — all inside Google’s ecosystem. Between the lines. Google is positioning Demand Gen as a serious alternative to paid social by combining premium video inventory, first-party signals, and improved measurement — especially as advertisers look for scalable performance outside traditional social platforms. Bottom line. With shoppable CTV, stronger brand attribution, and travel-focused automation, Demand Gen is becoming a more versatile performance engine — and a bigger part of Google’s pitch to win budgets higher up the funnel. Dig deeper. See the newest product features in January’s Demand Gen Drop. View the full article

A by-election could offer a way back to Westminster for Manchester mayor Andy Burnham. But he is not the only one in contentionView the full article