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It's 2025, so every piece of technology now needs to have an AI component. It doesn't matter if these AI features are useful (though some are), they just need to be there, however ham-fisted or useless they may seem—though the line between those extremes often comes down to user preference. To that end, if you've ever been reading a book on the Kindle app and wished that you could ask your device a question about the text, Amazon has an AI bot for you. Last week, Amazon announced "Ask this Book," a new AI feature for the Kindle app. Now available on the iOS version of the app, it lets you ask Amazon's AI questions about whatever it is you're reading, whether you bought or borrowed the title. You can highlight a selection from the text to include in you're queries, and ask questions relating the story's plot, characters, relationships, and theme. According to Amazon, all answers will be contextual, presumably meaning they'll all be related to the text at hand, and importantly, all answers will be spoiler-free. That should help avoid the classic mistake of googling a question you have about a book you're reading and spoiling a coming plot twist or character death. Amazon says Ask this Book is currently active for "thousands" of books written in English. As noted, as of this writing the feature is only live in the iOS version of the app, but Amazon is working on bringing it to the Android app, as well as Kindle devices, next year. Ask this Book, whether you like it or notIf this sounds like the type of feature you'd be interested in, great! If you don't care for this feature, either as a reader who doesn't want AI getting in the way of their books, a publisher who doesn't want Amazon training its AI on their IP, or a teacher who might see this as a potential cheating opportunity, there's bad news: Once Amazon makes Ask this Book available for any given title, it's permanently available, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. That comes directly from an Amazon spokesperson, who told Publishers Lunch, “[t]o ensure a consistent reading experience, the feature is always on, and there is no option for authors or publishers to opt titles out.” That response bothers me for two reasons. One, it's always frustrating when a company introduces a new feature lwithout giving users the option to turn it off. I don't use Apple Intelligence, but I appreciate that Apple lets me turn it off. Meta, on the other hand, forces me to contend with Meta AI, even though I never use it. Amazon seems to be attending the Meta school of user design. But what's more, it seems wild to me that authors and publishers don't get a say as to whether this AI bot gets to be active on their books—especially retroactively. It'd even be one thing if authors had to opt-in in order to put their books on the Kindle platform going forward. But to enable it on "thousands" of titles made available before Ask this Book was ever a thing is, to me, disrespectful to authors and publishers, to say the least. Interestingly, Amazon dodged questions from Publishers Lunch concerning licensing rights around Ask this Book, as well as protections for users, which is troubling given generative AI has a habit of hallucinating—or, in other words, making things up completely. Sure, when it's working as intended, the AI can help readers understand things they're confused about, but there's a real chance that the AI will misinterpret questions, misrepresent the text, or straight up lie, which could negatively impact a reader's experience of the work, with potential fallout for both the author and the publisher. How Kindle's Ask this Book worksWhile you won't see this feature yet on your Kindle, you will encounter it in the Kindle app. You can either access it from the menu in any book where the feature is available, or by highlighting text in said book. Once you do, Ask this Book will present a list of questions it thinks you might be interested in asking. If none of them do it for you, you can formulate your own questions, and ask followups after the bot answers. View the full article

Stretch fabrics are notoriously hard to process. When your old leggings wear out, they will probably end up in a landfill—even if you try to drop them off for recycling. But a Manhattan startup has developed a new material that could finally make this corner of the apparel industry circular. “There’s a reason why billions of pounds of textiles ends up in landfills,” says Gangadhar Jogikalmath, cofounder and chief technology officer of the startup, called Return to Vendor. “When we dial it down to the microscopic scale, it’s because everything that we wear has blends of yarn put together to create this apparel— nylon blended with spandex, wool with nylon, cotton, polyester.” Any fabric blend is hard to disassemble, and stretch fabric is especially challenging. “You can’t shred it,” says Jogikalmath. “The spandex melts at a lower temperature, gums up the recycling machinery, and your recycling system really suffers from having even a small amount of spandex in it.” To tackle the challenge, the startup has spent the last four years designing fabric that uses a single material—nylon—and transforms it so that a material with fibers that normally wouldn’t stretch suddenly can. Then, at the end of its life, since it’s a “mono material,” it can easily be recycled and turned into new fabric for new clothing. Making stretch fabric from a single material Jogikalmath, who started his career as a protein chemist, took inspiration from the way that proteins are structured. Normally, nylon has tight hydrogen bonds that make the material stiff and resistant to stretching. Using a protein-inspired approach, the startup re-formulated the structure so that the molecules can slide past each other under stress and then spring back when the stress is released. After making a proof of concept and raising a seed round of funding from Khosla Ventures, the team went through years of R&D. This year, it worked with a mill that specializes in stretch fabric to make samples of the final material. “They were equally as excited with the results,” says CEO and cofounder William Calvert. “And now we’re putting it through the paces where it can be commercialized.” With the use of the startup’s chemistry, the material can be made in any mill that makes nylon yarn, not just those that specialize in stretch. After the yarn is made, it can be made into fabric without adding any new machinery or process changes, meaning that it could easily scale up, unlike some other novel materials. The material is made from recycled nylon—turning old fishing nets or carpet into new fiber—and is already at cost parity with virgin nylon. But the cost will keep going down the more it’s recycled; as brands collect their old clothing for recycling, the next generation feedstock will cost even less. There’s strong demand across multiple categories, says Calvert, from athleisure to intimate apparel and outdoor wear. Brands are now beginning to test it in pilots. “When I put it on LinkedIn, the brands started calling,” says Jogikalmath. A bigger vision for circularity To ensure that final garments are fully recyclable, the company has also redesigned smaller components like zippers and buttons so they’re also made from 100% nylon. (One designer, Willy Chavarria, has already worked with the startup to use some of these materials to make baseball hats, swim trunks, and eyewear.) The startup’s basic approach for stretch fabric—tweaking nylon so that the material has new characteristics—can also be used in applications outside apparel. The company is currently working with a large motorcycle brand to make new injection molded parts, for example. The company will work with brands to get back the clothing that’s made with its material at the end of life. Brands can include a label so customers know that the garment or other product is fully recyclable. “We want to be the ‘Intel Inside’ of circularity,” says Jogikalmath. In the fashion world, where brands are continually looking for new ways to cut their carbon footprints, the stretch fabric has the potentially to quickly scale. “When you have a huge carbon savings, when it’s recycled, it’s recyclable, and it comes in at cost and performance parity, why wouldn’t they adopt it?” says cofounder and chief recycling officer Adam Baruchowitz. “It’s a complete win for them, and for everyone: for the brand, for the customer, for the planet.” View the full article

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Remember the letter-writer who was afraid of flying and and their job required a lot of travel? Here’s the update. Many commenters wondered why friends, family and mentors recommended I accept the new job. Despite the travel, it had clear benefits over my prior position. To name a few, I would be paid about $17k more base salary, would have a 5% bigger bonus, a better title, more responsibilities and I’d be fully remote. I had also declined another offer that had similar compensation but would’ve required three days in office with an hour commute each way. I also couldn’t stay at my old job — my last year there I was unceremoniously dumped with a new manager who would jokingly call me “bitch” and once pulled me into her office and pulled her pants to her pantyline to show me her recent procedural bruising. This was on top of the manager before that stating I’d get a promotion if I went above and beyond for a year (clear metrics given) and then telling me at my performance review that not only was I not getting a promotion, he honestly didn’t see my work as valuable. That was a BIG surprise since I had weekly check-ins where I’d ask about how I was progressing. I’d also found out that the leadership team didn’t regard me positively following the promotion conversation. I’d moved into a new role internally with a manager I really liked and respected by the end of that year, but at that point I had some “bad habits” that were very hard to break that prior managers had not mentioned to me. Given the short amount of time I was provided to respond to the offer and the late notice by which I was alerted that the travel requirement was once per month, they were attempting to provide advice in my best interest. I think they were also cautiously optimistic that my travel anxiety would dissipate as I traveled more, and it would be a momentary bump in the road. I’m now eight months into role (around six to eight work trips completed), and my flight anxiety hasn’t gotten much better. I ended up having a conversation with my manager about not traveling for a few months, which they accepted but with the caveat that I’d need to figure out strategies to show up more often in the future. I’m still exploring what options are possible, but I tried medication and did CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) with a therapist. This has largely restricted my anxiety to the day I purchase my tickets, the week leading up to the flight, and my time on the plane (I know that’s still a lot but it used to be so much worse!). I haven’t tried driving yet, but that’s the next avenue to explore. Ultimately I’ve had to confront what being a non-traveler means for this role and my future career, and the limitations it’ll impose. I still plan to work on this because it has implications for my life more broadly, but in the interim I’ve renewed my job search and am looking at remote positions where HQ is located in my state or adjacent states and is capable of being reached by car in 3.5 hours or less. While this restricts many opportunities, I’m still finding roles that meet the criteria. Outside of the travel, my relationships with my team and manager have gotten much better! I really like the day to day of the job and my boss thinks I’m doing very well. I also think the work trips I’ve taken so far have been necessary to build the relationships and organizational acumen needed for the role. Being remote has also cured me of my prior burnout! I’ve had so much more time (and money) to pour into my personal life. I’m happier and less anxious now than I was in my prior role. While this job won’t work out in the long run, I’m glad I took it. I’m getting valuable experience and feedback that will set me up nicely for future roles. Thanks again for the advice! The post update: I’m afraid of flying — and my job requires a lot of travel appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

MPs said four-hour email outage started as Ukrainian president entered the BundestagView the full article

Google's John Mueller explains that staggered site migrations may impact how the site is understood The post Google Explains Why Staggered Site Migrations Impact SEO Outcome appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

If you open a picture in the Photos app on your iPhone, and it inexplicably starts turning red, I wouldn't blame you for being a bit concerned. After all, that's not supposed to happen, and out of all the colors your photos could randomly fade into, red is among the creepiest. While you contemplate what angry and vengeful god you might have crossed recently, understand that this isn't necessarily a problem affecting all, or even most, iPhone users and their photos. In fact, it doesn't appear to be affecting photos taken on iPhones at all. Rather, the users reporting this issue see it when zooming in on photos taken on Android devices. It seems a new hue has been added to the iPhone/Android divide: green bubbles, red pictures. If this isn't happening on your own iPhone, you can see the issue play out in this Reddit post. User djenki0119 posted a screen recording of themself browsing photos on their iPhone that they had originally taken on a Samsung Galaxy S24. At first, the pictures appears totally normal. But once djenki0119 zooms in on each, it quickly turns a deep shade of red—almost as if you were looking at film developing in a dark room. This user has the same issue, only they took their photo on a Motorola Razr. At this time, it's unclear what is actually causing the issue to occur. It usually doesn't matter what type of device took any particular image: Once it's in the Photos app, it should display normally. But there must be something about Android files that the iOS Photos app isn't reading correctly, at least when users zoom in on the image. As 9to5Mac highlights, it appears that something is adding a red filter to these images in the Photos app. Since this issue is only popping up recently, my guess is there's a bug within iOS 26, though there could be an issue with Android instead. For what it's worth, I wasn't able to replicate the problem with photos I sent from my Pixel 8 Pro over to my iPhone. But perhaps there is some strange combination of hardware and software that results in this tinting: Maybe a photo taken on a certain type of Android device running a specific version of Android turns red on a certain iPhone model running a specific version of iOS. How to undo a photo that turned red on iPhoneLuckily, you don't have to wait for Apple, Google, Samsung, or Motorola to issue a fix, depending on where the actual issue is coming from. To return your image to its proper color scheme, open it in the Photos app, tap "Edit," then choose "Revert." This restores the image to its original state, and removes the red filter that was unnecessarily overlayed on top of it. View the full article

Tom Freston could easily fill a book with stories from the formative days of MTV and his celebrity encounters — Bono would merit a few chapters on his own. Ultimately, though, Freston feels that his life has a more valuable lesson to offer. His memoir, “Unplugged,” shows by example that trying to follow a straight line to success is not the only path. Freston, 80, was at MTV from the start and became its leader, along with sister networks Comedy Central, VH1, and Nickelodeon, at their greatest periods of success. He rose to become CEO of parent corporation Viacom before chairman Sumner Redstone’s impatience led to his ouster in 2006. Since then, Freston has largely freelanced, advising the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Vice, before its implosion. He made a memorable return to business in Afghanistan, and has been chairman of the ONE Campaign, the anti-poverty organization devoted to Africa that Bono spearheaded, for nearly two decades. “I was improvising,” he said. “It was like a bebop lifestyle, hitting notes instead of having a long, set classical structure.” His wanderlust unsettled Freston’s suburban Connecticut parents when he took a gap year after earning an MBA at New York University. They had reason to believe he had gotten it out of his system when he took a job at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the early 1970s. Saying no to a life convincing people to squeeze the Charmin He soon faced a crossroads when he couldn’t muster enthusiasm for a role on his agency’s important Charmin account. An old girlfriend said to him: “All those years of school, that fancy MBA degree, and you are selling toilet paper? You’re better than that.” She had a point. It was January 1972, and the woman invited him to hitchhike through France and Spain, then eventually into the Sahara Desert. He left the agency behind. Thus began several years of travel, where he particularly fell in love with Afghanistan and India. Freston started a business importing clothing from Asia. The company, Hindu Kush, was successful for a time before restrictions on imports during the Carter administration killed it. Freston landed back in New York. He read an interview where an executive in the nascent cable television industry talked about starting a music network built on videos and reached out for an interview for a marketing job. He met with a 26-year-old Bob Pittman, who wondered about the appearance of “Afghanistan” on his resume. Pittman suspected Freston was a hashish smuggler, but that “seemed to make him like me more,” he wrote. Hey, it was rock ‘n’ roll. Freston got the job. To encourage cable systems to carry the new network, Freston directed film crews that ambushed Pete Townshend on a London Street and David Bowie on a Swiss ski slope to record ads saying “I want my MTV.” Its rapid rise has been well documented, and by 1987, Freston was running MTV Networks. Music always played in Freston’s office, giving the young, creative employees the sense that it wasn’t a suit in charge. Former employees say he wasn’t afraid to take risks and empower people. It was almost a requirement — particularly Once, MTV decided it needed to reinvent itself every few years to appeal to young people, rather than follow its original audience as it aged. His international experience helped him create MTVs for different countries all around the world. “It was irreverent and edgy and nonhierarchical, a lot of creative people,” he said. “If you tried to run it in a classic MBA style, it would have been rejected.” Looking in on a ghost network Several factors led to MTV’s demise, among them the rise of streaming that turned many once-popular cable destinations into ghost networks. Record companies wouldn’t grant MTV streaming rights to play music videos online, undermining chances for a digital transformation, he said. Now, when Freston lands on MTV, “it’s like seeing your old high school burning down,” he said. From his book, Freston is clearly still stung by his sudden ouster from Viacom. He makes it a point to tell of attempts to get him back. But in retrospect, the timing couldn’t have been better. “It was a good thing, because I’m a loyal guy and I probably would have stayed longer,” he said. “In a way I got fired at the apex of the TV revolution. The digital guys were just starting to have an impact in a big way. So I really didn’t have to deal with those unpleasant facts and challenges.” He was suddenly a free agent, but in demand. Most rewarding was a return to Afghanistan, and working with an entrepreneur, Saad Mohseni, on a television network for the people there. The Taliban put an end to that when they returned to power in 2021 but recently have let Mohseni produce educational programming for girls. Freston hasn’t been back since the takeover. “I had a death sentence put on me by the Taliban,” he said. “They say we’re all friends now, but I don’t want to take the chance.” I still haven’t found what I’m looking for It’s hard to resist one Bono anecdote. The singer’s seduction of Freston to join the ONE Campaign’s board was sealed on a late night of partying in the Riviera. It was 5 a.m., closing time at a disco and Bono, a Dublin buddy, and Freston were the only ones left besides a few busboys and a waitress. On the way out, Bono spied a microphone connected to a karaoke machine. “Pick a U2 song,” Bono told the server. “Any one!” She chose “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” and the famous frontman channeled Frank Sinatra as he sang his classic. The waitress was the only one left to clap. Who wouldn’t want to have this CEO’s life? Readers of Freston’s memoir probably won’t greet the dawn with rock stars. He hopes they appreciate the musical notes of his life and apply it to their own. “Ideally, younger people would find some inspiration in the fact that you don’t have to graduate from college and start the next day at Goldman Sachs, and if you don’t you have a panic attack,” he said. “If you’re young, you should take some chances,” he said. “Take a risk. Go see the world. The world is the best classroom. Look at the United States from another person’s perspective. You’ll make yourself more interesting as a candidate for a job when you come back.” —David Bauder, AP media writer View the full article

Remote work helped fuel migration and erased the loss of rural residents that occurred in the decade prior to the arrival of Covid, Harvard researchers found. View the full article

“Christmas at Pemberley Manor” and “Romance at Reindeer Lodge” may never make it to Oscar night, but legions of fans still love these sweet-yet-predictable holiday movies—and this season, many are making pilgrimages to where their favorite scenes were filmed. That’s because Connecticut—the location for at least 22 holiday films by Hallmark, Lifetime, and others—is promoting tours of the quaint Christmas-card cities and towns featured in this booming movie market; places where a busy corporate lawyer can return home for the holidays and cross paths with a plaid shirt-clad former high school flame who now runs a Christmas tree farm. (Spoiler alert: they live happily ever after.) “It’s exciting — just to know that something was in a movie and we actually get to see it visually,” said Abby Rumfelt of Morganton, North Carolina, after stepping off a coach bus in Wethersfield, Connecticut, at one of the stops on the holiday movie tour. Rumfelt was among 53 people, mostly women, on a recent weeklong “Hallmark Movie Christmas Tour,” organized by Mayfield Tours from Spartanburg, South Carolina. On the bus, fans watched the matching movies as they rode from stop to stop. To plan the tour, co-owner Debbie Mayfield used the “Connecticut Christmas Movie Trail” map, which was launched by the wintry New England state last year to cash in on the growing Christmas-movie craze. Mayfield, who co-owns the company with her husband, Ken, said this was their first Christmas tour to holiday movie locations in Connecticut and other Northeastern states. It included hotel accommodations, some meals, tickets, and even a stop to see the Rockettes in New York City. It sold out in two weeks. With snow flurries in the air and Christmas songs piped from a speaker, the group stopped for lunch at Heirloom Market at Comstock Ferre, where parts of the Hallmark films “Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane” and “Rediscovering Christmas” were filmed. Once home to America’s oldest seed company, the store is located in a historic district known for its stately 1700s and 1800s buildings. It’s an ideal setting for a holiday movie. Even the local country store has sold T-shirts featuring Hallmark’s crown logo and the phrase “I Live in a Christmas Movie. Wethersfield, CT 06109.” “People just know about us now,” said Julia Koulouris, who co-owns the market with her husband, Spiro, crediting the movie trail in part. “And you see these things on Instagram and stuff where people are tagging it and posting it.” Christmas movies are big business—and a big deal to fans The concept of holiday movies dates back to 1940s, when Hollywood produced classics like “It’s A Wonderful Life,” “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Christmas in Connecticut,” which was actually shot at the Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California. In 2006, five years after the launch of the Hallmark Channel on TV, Hallmark “struck gold” with the romance movie “The Christmas card,” said Joanna Wilson, author of the book “Tis the Season TV: The Encyclopedia of Christmas-Themed Episodes, Specials and Made-for-TV Movies.” “Hallmark saw those high ratings and then started creating that format and that formula with the tropes and it now has become their dominant formula that they create for their Christmas TV romances,” she said. The holiday movie industry, estimated to generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year, has expanded beyond Hallmark and Lifetime. Today, a mix of cable and broadcast networks, streaming platforms, and direct-to-video producers release roughly 100 new films annually, Wilson said. The genre has also diversified, with characters from a wider range of racial and ethnic backgrounds as well as LGBTQ+ storylines. The formula, however, remains the same. And fans still have an appetite for a G-rated love story. “They want to see people coming together. They want to see these romances. It’s a part of the hope of the season,” she said. “Who doesn’t love love? And it always has a predictable, happy ending.” Hazel Duncan, 83, of Forest City, North Carolina, said she and her husband of 65 years, Owen, like to watch the movies together year-round because they’re sweet and family-friendly. They also take her back to their early years as a young couple, when life felt simpler. “We hold hands sometimes,” she said. “It’s kind of sweet. We’ve got two recliners back in a bedroom that’s real small and we’ve got the TV there. And we close the doors off and it’s just our time together in the evening.” Falling in love again… with a state Connecticut’s chief marketing officer, Anthony M. Anthony, said the Christmas Movie Trail is part of a multipronged rebranding effort launched in 2023 that promotes the state not just as a tourist destination, but also as a place to work and live. “So what better way to highlight our communities as a place to call home than them being sets of movies?” he said. However, there continues to be debate at the state Capitol over whether to eliminate or cap film industry tax credits — which could threaten how many more of these movies will be made locally. Christina Nieves and her husband of 30 years, Raul, already live in Connecticut and have been tackling the trail “little by little.” It’s been a chance, she said, to explore new places in the state, like the Bushnell Park Carousel in Hartford, where a scene from “Ghost of Christmas Always” was filmed. It also inspired Nieves to convince her husband — not quite the movie fan she is — to join her at a tree-lighting and Christmas parade in their hometown of Windsor Locks. “I said, listen, let me just milk this Hallmark thing as long as I can, OK?” she said. ___ This story has been corrected to reflect that the film title is “Christmas at Pemberley Manor,” not “Christmas at Pemberly Manor,” and the co-owner of Heirloom Market at Comstock Ferre is named Spiro Koulouris, not Spiros Koulouris. —Susan Haigh, Associated Press View the full article

SIXTY-SIX million years ago, an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs and 75% of Earth’s species. Among the survivors was a creature that would teach us critical lessons about thriving amid disruption: the octopus. While other animals’ external armor was useless against this new threat, the octopus survived by being radically adaptable. It has a rare ability; it can edit its RNA to adjust to new conditions within hours. Today’s leaders face their own asteroid strike: artificial intelligence. And like that ancient catastrophe, AI is reshaping the business landscape with breathtaking speed. The question isn’t whether your organization will be transformed, but whether you’ll lead that transformation or be overwhelmed by it. Having worked with dozens of organizations navigating AI adoption, we’ve seen that the most successful leaders don’t treat AI as just another technology implementation. Instead, they recognize it as a catalyst for fundamental organizational redesign. Here are four critical lessons for leading this transformation. 1. Distribute Intelligence to the Front Lines The octopus has two-thirds of its neural tissue in its arms, not its brain. As a result, each arm can solve problems independently while remaining coordinated with the whole. This is the ideal model for organizations: push decision-making power to where the action happens. Most companies still operate with a “hub and spoke” command structure, where information flows up for decisions and then back down for execution. This creates costly delays. AI changes the game by making sophisticated analysis available at every level. A sales rep can now access predictive customer insights. A supply chain manager can run complex optimization scenarios. A customer service agent can resolve issues that once required escalation. Take the case of Mass General Brigham, one of the world’s leading healthcare systems. AI tools help frontline clinicians identify patterns and make treatment decisions faster, while leadership focuses on ensuring these tools integrate seamlessly into workflows and align with core values. Action Step: Identify three decisions currently made at the management level that could be delegated to frontline teams with the right AI support. Then invest in making that support first-rate. 2. Create Knowledge Flow, Not Silos The octopus has a “neural necklace,” a ring of nerve bundles that connects all its arms, enabling instant information sharing without involving the central brain. Your organization needs the digital equivalent. Too many companies treat AI as a series of disconnected point solutions: a chatbot here, a forecasting tool there, an image recognition system somewhere else. But AI’s real power emerges when insights flow freely across organizational boundaries. When your customer service AI informs your product development AI, which feeds your supply chain AI, you create compounding intelligence. This requires rethinking your data architecture. Follow Amazon’s example: for over two decades, teams have been required to make every dataset accessible through well-documented interfaces. Action Step: Map the information flows your AI systems require to be most effective, then eliminate the structural barriers preventing those connections. This often means confronting uncomfortable truths about departmental turf and legacy systems. 3. Embrace Three-Hearted Leadership The octopus has three hearts: one for its body and one for each gill. These hearts serve different purposes, and one can even be stopped temporarily to redirect energy to the others. Modern AI transformation requires a similar multiplicity of leadership approaches and an ability to shift focus. First, you need operational leadership that maintains excellence in your core business while AI tools enhance productivity. Second, you need experimental leadership that explores how AI might create entirely new business models or revenue streams. Third, you need cultural leadership that addresses the very human concerns about what AI means for people’s roles and dignity. The computer accessories company Logitech has balanced all three hearts effectively. It has used AI to streamline operations, explored AI-powered new product categories, and conducted town halls where employees could voice concerns and shape how AI would be deployed. This has resulted in both productivity gains and sustained employee engagement. Action Step: Assess which of these three leadership dimensions you’re neglecting. Then tell managers which styles to focus on and when. 4. Accelerate Through Accurate Sensing The octopus has exceptional sensory capabilities. It has thousands of chemoreceptors on its arms that constantly feed information about its environment. In an AI transformation, your sensing mechanisms are how you detect both opportunities and emerging problems. Most organizations implement AI tools but fail to instrument them adequately. They can tell you if the tool is being used, but not how it’s changing workflows, where it’s introducing errors, or what new capabilities users wish it had. This is flying blind. Build comprehensive sensing into every AI initiative from day one. This means usage analytics, certainly, but also regular qualitative feedback sessions, error tracking with root-cause analysis, and competitive intelligence on how others in your industry are applying similar capabilities. When you spot patterns—positive or negative—you can respond at AI speed rather than committee speed. Action Step: Before deploying your next AI tool, design the feedback mechanisms that will tell you what’s really happening. Make reviewing this feedback a weekly ritual, not a quarterly afterthought. The Transformation Imperative The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs created the conditions for mammals to flourish. AI’s disruption is similarly clearing space for new organizational forms, ones that are more adaptive, more intelligent, and more resilient. The uncomfortable truth is that cautious, incremental approaches won’t cut it. The companies that thrive will be those willing to redesign their organizations around AI’s capabilities—distributing intelligence, connecting insights, embracing complexity, and moving at the speed of algorithms. The question facing every leader today isn’t whether to transform. It’s whether you’ll transform deliberately, learning from nature’s most adaptable creature, or be transformed by forces you didn’t see coming. The asteroid has already struck. The age of the Octopus Organization has begun. * * * Stephen Wunker is Managing Director of New Markets Advisors, a global consulting firm helping ambitious innovators—including 32 of the Fortune 500—find their next wave of growth. One of the world’s leading authorities on innovation, he’s led a decade’s worth of AI initiatives, advised hundreds of organizations, and authored five bestselling books including AI and the Octopus Organization: Building the Superintelligent Firm. Jonathan Brill is the Futurist-in-Residence at Amazon and Executive Director of the Center for Radical Change. Ranked the #1 futurist in the world by Forbes and described as “the world’s leading transformation architect” by Harvard Business Review, Brill converts the chaos of AI, geopolitical shifts, and economic disruption into bold advantage. He’s unlocked tens of billions for multinational corporations, frontier tech firms, and national governments. * * * Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas. * * * View the full article

A background check subscription is an ongoing service that gives you, as an employer, easy access to crucial screening tools like criminal record checks and employment verifications. Typically offered for a flat fee, these subscriptions allow you to manage requests through user-friendly online platforms. With features like automated workflows and compliance tools, they help guarantee you make informed hiring decisions. But how do you choose the right service for your needs? Key Takeaways A background check subscription provides ongoing access to various screening services, such as criminal record checks and employment verifications. Users pay a flat monthly or annual fee for unlimited checks, making it cost-effective for regular screenings. The process involves registering on an online platform to request and manage background checks easily. Subscriptions often include compliance tools and automated workflows to streamline hiring processes and ensure legal adherence. Regular monitoring features notify employers of any significant changes in employee status, enhancing workplace safety. Understanding Background Check Subscriptions A background check subscription can be a valuable tool for employers and individuals who need to conduct multiple screenings over time, as it often provides a more cost-effective solution than ordering single checks. With a background check subscription, you gain access to various types of screenings, including criminal record checks and employment verifications, offering thorough candidate assessments. Many providers make the process convenient through user-friendly online platforms where you can request checks, view results, and manage your subscription effortlessly. Furthermore, subscriptions often include automated workflows and compliance tools, ensuring you meet legal regulations like the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Some services offer options for an absolutely free background check or a totally free background report, allowing you to evaluate the service before committing. Regular updates may also be part of certain subscriptions, helping you monitor ongoing criminal activity or changes in a candidate’s status after hiring. Benefits of a Background Check Subscription for Employers When considering the benefits of a background check subscription for employers, it’s clear that ongoing screenings play a crucial role in maintaining a safe and compliant workplace. Here are some key advantages: Continuous Compliance: Regular screenings guarantee you remain compliant with safety and regulatory standards. Cost-Effective: Subscriptions often offer bulk pricing or unlimited checks, greatly lowering your cost per check compared to single purchases. Instant Access: Many services, including sites like BeenVerified, provide updated background data instantly, allowing for timely hiring decisions. Customization: You can tailor your subscription plan to include various checks, such as criminal history, employment verification, and credit checks, based on your specific hiring needs. With user-friendly platforms and automated workflows, background check subscriptions improve the hiring experience, making it easier for you to manage workforce risks effectively. Key Features of Background Check Subscriptions When you consider a background check subscription, you’ll find several key features that improve the hiring process. These services provide cost-effective screening solutions, enabling regular monitoring capabilities and customizable search options customized to your specific needs. Cost-Effective Screening Solution Background check subscriptions provide a streamlined and cost-effective screening solution for employers who need to conduct multiple background checks on potential hires. With these subscriptions, you gain access to unlimited screening services without the worry of extra costs for each report. Here are some key features that improve the value of these subscriptions: In-depth searches, including criminal records, employment verification, and education validation. Automated workflows and integrated compliance features that simplify the process. Customizable plans designed to fit your specific hiring needs and industry requirements. Access to customer support and resources for managing legal compliance. These features collectively reduce administrative overhead and improve the efficiency of your hiring process, making background check subscriptions a smart investment. Regular Monitoring Capabilities Regular monitoring capabilities are essential features of background check subscriptions that help employers stay informed about their employees’ ongoing suitability for their positions. These subscriptions typically include ongoing monitoring of criminal records, alerting you to any new offenses committed after initial hire. Real-time alerts guarantee you receive immediate notifications about significant changes, like new criminal charges or driving violations. Monitoring can similarly extend to driving records, professional licenses, and credit reports, depending on your selected plan. Most providers offer user-friendly dashboards for managing preferences and viewing employee statuses efficiently. Feature Description Benefit Ongoing Criminal Checks Alerts for new offenses Maintains safety standards Real-Time Alerts Immediate notifications of changes Quick response to issues Driving Record Checks Monitoring employee driving history Reduces liability risks User-Friendly Dashboard Streamlined management of background statuses Improves efficiency in monitoring Customizable Search Options Employers can improve their hiring processes considerably through customizable search options in background check subscriptions. These features allow you to modify searches designed for your needs, ensuring you gather the most relevant information. Here’s how you can benefit: Select Specific Checks: Choose from criminal history, employment verification, or education checks based on the role. Adjust Search Depth: Focus on local, state, national, or international records depending on your organizational requirements. Create Custom Packages: Combine various checks, such as integrating credit checks with criminal and employment verifications for roles involving financial responsibilities. Customize Frequency: Opt for one-time, annual, or ongoing checks adapted to different job positions within your company. These options improve your hiring strategy and help mitigate risks. Types of Background Checks Available Through Subscriptions When searching for the right background check subscription, you’ll find a variety of options designed to meet different needs across industries. Most subscriptions include vital checks like criminal record searches, employment verification, and education verification, offering extensive insights into candidates. Many services provide national criminal database searches that span all 50 states, ensuring a broader reach than county-specific checks. Furthermore, ongoing monitoring services alert employers to any new criminal activity or changes in a candidate’s background after hiring. For specific roles, some providers include specialized checks such as credit reports and drug screenings, particularly for positions with financial responsibilities or safety-sensitive duties. Customizable options allow you to select the types of background checks that best fit your industry’s requirements, ensuring compliance with relevant laws and regulations as you effectively evaluate potential hires. How to Choose the Right Background Check Subscription Service When you’re selecting a background check subscription service, it’s vital to evaluate the service offerings to guarantee they meet your specific hiring needs. You should likewise assess compliance features to verify that the service adheres to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, protecting both you and your candidates. Finally, consider the pricing structure, including any hidden fees, to make certain it fits within your budget during providing the necessary features for effective screenings. Evaluate Service Offerings Choosing the right background check subscription service requires careful consideration of several factors to confirm you meet your hiring needs effectively. Here are four key points to evaluate: Types of Checks: Verify the service offers criminal records, employment verification, and education validation customized to your hiring criteria. Turnaround Time: Assess the speed of the service, as results can range from a few days to several weeks, depending on the checks performed. Customizable Options: Look for services that allow you to adjust the screening process for different roles, aligning scrutiny with job responsibilities. Customer Support: Evaluate the availability and responsiveness of customer support, which can be crucial for managing the intricacies of background screening. Assess Compliance Features Selecting a background check subscription service also means evaluating its compliance features to protect your organization from legal issues. Prioritize providers that comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and other relevant laws to avoid potential repercussions. Look for services with built-in compliance features, such as automated adverse action workflows and detailed reporting, which streamline your hiring process during adherence to legal standards. Assess the provider’s experience and industry expertise to guarantee they understand your specific compliance requirements. Consider subscription options that allow customization of background check packages designed to meet your organization’s needs. Finally, verify that the provider offers ongoing support and resources to keep you updated on changes in laws and regulations related to background checks and hiring practices. Consider Pricing Structure Comprehending the pricing structure of a background check subscription is crucial for making an informed decision that aligns with your organization’s budget and needs. Here are some key factors to evaluate: Type of Checks: Costs for checks like criminal records, employment verification, and education checks typically range from $15 to $75 each. Subscription Models: Look for tiered pricing based on check volume, as discounts often apply for bulk orders or annual commitments. Additional Features: Evaluate if the subscription includes compliance support, ongoing monitoring alerts, and ATS integration for added value. Hidden Fees: Be aware of any extra charges for specific searches, such as international checks, which can affect the overall subscription cost. Assessing these elements will help you choose wisely. The Process of Using a Background Check Subscription When you decide to utilize a background check subscription, the process starts with registering for an account on the service’s online platform. After creating your account, you’ll gain access to a range of screening services, including criminal record checks, employment verification, and education validation, all for a flat monthly or annual fee. This setup allows you to run multiple background checks without incurring additional costs, which is ideal for companies with high turnover or frequent hiring needs. Most services offer automated workflows that streamline the process, enabling you to request and receive reports easily. Once you’ve submitted a request, you’ll typically get real-time alerts for any new criminal activity or changes in a candidate’s status. This feature helps you manage risks effectively, ensuring you stay informed even after hiring. Legal Compliance Considerations for Background Check Subscriptions Utilizing a background check subscription isn’t just about accessing information; it also involves maneuvering a complicated terrain of legal requirements. To guarantee compliance, here are key considerations you should keep in mind: Written Consent: Always obtain written consent from candidates before performing background checks, as mandated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Adverse Action Notice: If you make adverse decisions based on findings, provide applicants with a pre-adverse action notice, allowing them to dispute inaccuracies. Local Laws: Stay informed about federal, state, and local laws to avoid potential fines and lawsuits for non-compliance. Built-in Compliance Features: Choose subscription services that offer compliance features, helping navigate legal intricacies and reducing discriminatory practices. Regular training for your HR team on these legal standards is vital to maintain fair hiring practices and protect candidate rights. Frequently Asked Questions About Background Check Subscriptions Have you ever wondered what a background check subscription can do for your hiring process? These subscriptions provide employers with continuous access to crucial background screening services for a fixed fee. They typically include features like criminal record checks, employment verifications, and educational credential assessments customized to your industry. Many providers offer flexible plans that can grow with your hiring needs, guaranteeing you remain compliant with legal standards, such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). With a background check subscription, you’ll receive alerts for any new criminal activity related to your employees, which helps maintain workplace safety. Moreover, these subscriptions streamline your hiring process by giving you quick access to updated screening reports, greatly reducing the time spent on individual checks. Frequently Asked Questions What Is a Background Check and How Does It Work? A background check verifies a person’s identity and past through public records and databases. It typically includes criminal records, employment history, and education verification. Employers must get your written consent before conducting these checks, as required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The process starts with identity verification, followed by the chosen checks. The results can greatly influence hiring decisions, and you have the right to review and dispute any inaccuracies in your report. What Is the Hardest Background Check to Pass? The hardest background check to pass often involves criminal record searches, especially for jobs dealing with vulnerable populations. Felony convictions can disqualify you outright. Employment verification checks become tricky if you have gaps in your history or misrepresented your previous roles. Furthermore, poor credit histories can hinder opportunities in financially responsible positions. Finally, drug tests in zero-tolerance environments can lead to failures if illegal substances are detected, complicating your chances considerably. What Do Most Employers Use for Background Checks? Most employers utilize a variety of checks to assess candidates. You’ll often find criminal record checks, employment history verification, and education verification as standard practices. If a job involves driving, expect driving record checks too. For positions with financial responsibilities, credit checks are common. Many companies collaborate with third-party providers to guarantee compliance with regulations like the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Furthermore, some industries may require drug testing for safety reasons. What Is a Red Flag in a Background Check? A red flag in a background check signals potential concerns about a candidate’s suitability. These can include felony convictions, especially for trust-sensitive roles, which may influence hiring decisions. Employment verification revealing terminations or questionable departures raises doubts about reliability. Furthermore, significant financial issues from credit checks may indicate risks in financial management. Patterns like frequent job changes or unexplained employment gaps likewise prompt further investigation into a candidate’s stability and commitment. Conclusion In conclusion, a background check subscription offers employers a streamlined and efficient way to conduct ongoing screenings for potential hires. With a variety of checks available, such as criminal records and employment verifications, these services help maintain a safe workplace. By comprehending the features, benefits, and legal considerations involved, you can make informed decisions about which subscription best meets your company’s needs. In the end, a reliable background check subscription supports effective hiring practices and improves overall workplace safety. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Is a Background Check Subscription and How Does It Work?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

A background check subscription is an ongoing service that gives you, as an employer, easy access to crucial screening tools like criminal record checks and employment verifications. Typically offered for a flat fee, these subscriptions allow you to manage requests through user-friendly online platforms. With features like automated workflows and compliance tools, they help guarantee you make informed hiring decisions. But how do you choose the right service for your needs? Key Takeaways A background check subscription provides ongoing access to various screening services, such as criminal record checks and employment verifications. Users pay a flat monthly or annual fee for unlimited checks, making it cost-effective for regular screenings. The process involves registering on an online platform to request and manage background checks easily. Subscriptions often include compliance tools and automated workflows to streamline hiring processes and ensure legal adherence. Regular monitoring features notify employers of any significant changes in employee status, enhancing workplace safety. Understanding Background Check Subscriptions A background check subscription can be a valuable tool for employers and individuals who need to conduct multiple screenings over time, as it often provides a more cost-effective solution than ordering single checks. With a background check subscription, you gain access to various types of screenings, including criminal record checks and employment verifications, offering thorough candidate assessments. Many providers make the process convenient through user-friendly online platforms where you can request checks, view results, and manage your subscription effortlessly. Furthermore, subscriptions often include automated workflows and compliance tools, ensuring you meet legal regulations like the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Some services offer options for an absolutely free background check or a totally free background report, allowing you to evaluate the service before committing. Regular updates may also be part of certain subscriptions, helping you monitor ongoing criminal activity or changes in a candidate’s status after hiring. Benefits of a Background Check Subscription for Employers When considering the benefits of a background check subscription for employers, it’s clear that ongoing screenings play a crucial role in maintaining a safe and compliant workplace. Here are some key advantages: Continuous Compliance: Regular screenings guarantee you remain compliant with safety and regulatory standards. Cost-Effective: Subscriptions often offer bulk pricing or unlimited checks, greatly lowering your cost per check compared to single purchases. Instant Access: Many services, including sites like BeenVerified, provide updated background data instantly, allowing for timely hiring decisions. Customization: You can tailor your subscription plan to include various checks, such as criminal history, employment verification, and credit checks, based on your specific hiring needs. With user-friendly platforms and automated workflows, background check subscriptions improve the hiring experience, making it easier for you to manage workforce risks effectively. Key Features of Background Check Subscriptions When you consider a background check subscription, you’ll find several key features that improve the hiring process. These services provide cost-effective screening solutions, enabling regular monitoring capabilities and customizable search options customized to your specific needs. Cost-Effective Screening Solution Background check subscriptions provide a streamlined and cost-effective screening solution for employers who need to conduct multiple background checks on potential hires. With these subscriptions, you gain access to unlimited screening services without the worry of extra costs for each report. Here are some key features that improve the value of these subscriptions: In-depth searches, including criminal records, employment verification, and education validation. Automated workflows and integrated compliance features that simplify the process. Customizable plans designed to fit your specific hiring needs and industry requirements. Access to customer support and resources for managing legal compliance. These features collectively reduce administrative overhead and improve the efficiency of your hiring process, making background check subscriptions a smart investment. Regular Monitoring Capabilities Regular monitoring capabilities are essential features of background check subscriptions that help employers stay informed about their employees’ ongoing suitability for their positions. These subscriptions typically include ongoing monitoring of criminal records, alerting you to any new offenses committed after initial hire. Real-time alerts guarantee you receive immediate notifications about significant changes, like new criminal charges or driving violations. Monitoring can similarly extend to driving records, professional licenses, and credit reports, depending on your selected plan. Most providers offer user-friendly dashboards for managing preferences and viewing employee statuses efficiently. Feature Description Benefit Ongoing Criminal Checks Alerts for new offenses Maintains safety standards Real-Time Alerts Immediate notifications of changes Quick response to issues Driving Record Checks Monitoring employee driving history Reduces liability risks User-Friendly Dashboard Streamlined management of background statuses Improves efficiency in monitoring Customizable Search Options Employers can improve their hiring processes considerably through customizable search options in background check subscriptions. These features allow you to modify searches designed for your needs, ensuring you gather the most relevant information. Here’s how you can benefit: Select Specific Checks: Choose from criminal history, employment verification, or education checks based on the role. Adjust Search Depth: Focus on local, state, national, or international records depending on your organizational requirements. Create Custom Packages: Combine various checks, such as integrating credit checks with criminal and employment verifications for roles involving financial responsibilities. Customize Frequency: Opt for one-time, annual, or ongoing checks adapted to different job positions within your company. These options improve your hiring strategy and help mitigate risks. Types of Background Checks Available Through Subscriptions When searching for the right background check subscription, you’ll find a variety of options designed to meet different needs across industries. Most subscriptions include vital checks like criminal record searches, employment verification, and education verification, offering extensive insights into candidates. Many services provide national criminal database searches that span all 50 states, ensuring a broader reach than county-specific checks. Furthermore, ongoing monitoring services alert employers to any new criminal activity or changes in a candidate’s background after hiring. For specific roles, some providers include specialized checks such as credit reports and drug screenings, particularly for positions with financial responsibilities or safety-sensitive duties. Customizable options allow you to select the types of background checks that best fit your industry’s requirements, ensuring compliance with relevant laws and regulations as you effectively evaluate potential hires. How to Choose the Right Background Check Subscription Service When you’re selecting a background check subscription service, it’s vital to evaluate the service offerings to guarantee they meet your specific hiring needs. You should likewise assess compliance features to verify that the service adheres to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, protecting both you and your candidates. Finally, consider the pricing structure, including any hidden fees, to make certain it fits within your budget during providing the necessary features for effective screenings. Evaluate Service Offerings Choosing the right background check subscription service requires careful consideration of several factors to confirm you meet your hiring needs effectively. Here are four key points to evaluate: Types of Checks: Verify the service offers criminal records, employment verification, and education validation customized to your hiring criteria. Turnaround Time: Assess the speed of the service, as results can range from a few days to several weeks, depending on the checks performed. Customizable Options: Look for services that allow you to adjust the screening process for different roles, aligning scrutiny with job responsibilities. Customer Support: Evaluate the availability and responsiveness of customer support, which can be crucial for managing the intricacies of background screening. Assess Compliance Features Selecting a background check subscription service also means evaluating its compliance features to protect your organization from legal issues. Prioritize providers that comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and other relevant laws to avoid potential repercussions. Look for services with built-in compliance features, such as automated adverse action workflows and detailed reporting, which streamline your hiring process during adherence to legal standards. Assess the provider’s experience and industry expertise to guarantee they understand your specific compliance requirements. Consider subscription options that allow customization of background check packages designed to meet your organization’s needs. Finally, verify that the provider offers ongoing support and resources to keep you updated on changes in laws and regulations related to background checks and hiring practices. Consider Pricing Structure Comprehending the pricing structure of a background check subscription is crucial for making an informed decision that aligns with your organization’s budget and needs. Here are some key factors to evaluate: Type of Checks: Costs for checks like criminal records, employment verification, and education checks typically range from $15 to $75 each. Subscription Models: Look for tiered pricing based on check volume, as discounts often apply for bulk orders or annual commitments. Additional Features: Evaluate if the subscription includes compliance support, ongoing monitoring alerts, and ATS integration for added value. Hidden Fees: Be aware of any extra charges for specific searches, such as international checks, which can affect the overall subscription cost. Assessing these elements will help you choose wisely. The Process of Using a Background Check Subscription When you decide to utilize a background check subscription, the process starts with registering for an account on the service’s online platform. After creating your account, you’ll gain access to a range of screening services, including criminal record checks, employment verification, and education validation, all for a flat monthly or annual fee. This setup allows you to run multiple background checks without incurring additional costs, which is ideal for companies with high turnover or frequent hiring needs. Most services offer automated workflows that streamline the process, enabling you to request and receive reports easily. Once you’ve submitted a request, you’ll typically get real-time alerts for any new criminal activity or changes in a candidate’s status. This feature helps you manage risks effectively, ensuring you stay informed even after hiring. Legal Compliance Considerations for Background Check Subscriptions Utilizing a background check subscription isn’t just about accessing information; it also involves maneuvering a complicated terrain of legal requirements. To guarantee compliance, here are key considerations you should keep in mind: Written Consent: Always obtain written consent from candidates before performing background checks, as mandated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Adverse Action Notice: If you make adverse decisions based on findings, provide applicants with a pre-adverse action notice, allowing them to dispute inaccuracies. Local Laws: Stay informed about federal, state, and local laws to avoid potential fines and lawsuits for non-compliance. Built-in Compliance Features: Choose subscription services that offer compliance features, helping navigate legal intricacies and reducing discriminatory practices. Regular training for your HR team on these legal standards is vital to maintain fair hiring practices and protect candidate rights. Frequently Asked Questions About Background Check Subscriptions Have you ever wondered what a background check subscription can do for your hiring process? These subscriptions provide employers with continuous access to crucial background screening services for a fixed fee. They typically include features like criminal record checks, employment verifications, and educational credential assessments customized to your industry. Many providers offer flexible plans that can grow with your hiring needs, guaranteeing you remain compliant with legal standards, such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). With a background check subscription, you’ll receive alerts for any new criminal activity related to your employees, which helps maintain workplace safety. Moreover, these subscriptions streamline your hiring process by giving you quick access to updated screening reports, greatly reducing the time spent on individual checks. Frequently Asked Questions What Is a Background Check and How Does It Work? A background check verifies a person’s identity and past through public records and databases. It typically includes criminal records, employment history, and education verification. Employers must get your written consent before conducting these checks, as required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The process starts with identity verification, followed by the chosen checks. The results can greatly influence hiring decisions, and you have the right to review and dispute any inaccuracies in your report. What Is the Hardest Background Check to Pass? The hardest background check to pass often involves criminal record searches, especially for jobs dealing with vulnerable populations. Felony convictions can disqualify you outright. Employment verification checks become tricky if you have gaps in your history or misrepresented your previous roles. Furthermore, poor credit histories can hinder opportunities in financially responsible positions. Finally, drug tests in zero-tolerance environments can lead to failures if illegal substances are detected, complicating your chances considerably. What Do Most Employers Use for Background Checks? Most employers utilize a variety of checks to assess candidates. You’ll often find criminal record checks, employment history verification, and education verification as standard practices. If a job involves driving, expect driving record checks too. For positions with financial responsibilities, credit checks are common. Many companies collaborate with third-party providers to guarantee compliance with regulations like the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Furthermore, some industries may require drug testing for safety reasons. What Is a Red Flag in a Background Check? A red flag in a background check signals potential concerns about a candidate’s suitability. These can include felony convictions, especially for trust-sensitive roles, which may influence hiring decisions. Employment verification revealing terminations or questionable departures raises doubts about reliability. Furthermore, significant financial issues from credit checks may indicate risks in financial management. Patterns like frequent job changes or unexplained employment gaps likewise prompt further investigation into a candidate’s stability and commitment. Conclusion In conclusion, a background check subscription offers employers a streamlined and efficient way to conduct ongoing screenings for potential hires. With a variety of checks available, such as criminal records and employment verifications, these services help maintain a safe workplace. By comprehending the features, benefits, and legal considerations involved, you can make informed decisions about which subscription best meets your company’s needs. In the end, a reliable background check subscription supports effective hiring practices and improves overall workplace safety. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Is a Background Check Subscription and How Does It Work?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Outfitting that garage with the right gear is the difference between a useful and organized space and a chaotic black hole of junk. If you want your garage to be a place where you can get work done, where you can actually find stuff, and maybe also where you can park your car, here’s what you should have, ranging from the must-have essentials to some luxuries you could stretch for. What every garage needsIf you want to get the most of any garage, here’s the short list of essentials: Overhead storage. An empty garage might seem like endless storage, but it fills up fast. If you don’t want to navigate a maze of junk every time you go in there, some overhead storage shelving is a must. Wall storage. For more readily accessible storage, some bike hooks and wall hooks for yard tools (like rakes and shovels) will keep those things easy to grab but off the floor. Absorbent mats. Your car will leak oil and other fluids, and the garage is where you do a lot of messy jobs. A large-format absorbent mat will save you a lot of cleanup. Fire safety. Every space in your home should have a fire extinguisher within easy reach, and your garage is no exception. You might also consider keeping some fire blankets, which are often more effective for small, contained fires. Sports caddy. If you’ve got a collection of balls for every possible sport, plus other implements, having a place to dump them all so they don’t roll around is a must. Tool storage. Whether you go with a classic tool box or a set of magnetic strips on the walls, don’t let your expensive, delicate tools get dirty, damp, and lost. Workbench. Even if you’re not a hobbyist or much of a DIYer, having a workbench in the garage is a good idea. If space is an issue, a wall-mounted folding one like this is an ideal solution. Creeper seat. Similarly, you don’t have to be a total gearhead to appreciate a creeper seat. Working in the garage often means working down low to the floor, so unless you enjoy sitting on he cold, greasy floor for a few hours, a creeper seat is a necessity. What would be nice to have if you own a garageYou can always find an upgrade for any space, and your garage is no exception. Some useful-but-not-essential upgrades include: Rubber door bottom. Your garage door probably isn’t a very good seal. When the weather’s hot or cold, that can make the space uncomfortable. A simple adhesive rubber door bottom provides a nice seal to make the space a little nicer to be in. Climate control. You don’t necessarily have to install central air or a mini-split in your garage. There are plenty of portable heating and cooling solutions that will keep you comfy while you work without breaking the bank. Tire rack: If you have a growing collection of spare tires, or you’re rotating between all-weather and winter tires regularly, having a stable storage shelf for them is a lot better than stacking them up or having them rolling around. Stopper mats: It’s a universal frustration: trying not to ram into the wall or crush a bunch of stuff every time you pull your car into the garage. If you don’t want a tennis ball hanging from a string, some simple mats like these will let you know when to hit the brakes. Tile flooring: Even if you have a nice floor in your garage—maybe especially if you have a nice floor in there—a protective tile floor is a good idea. It’ll keep everything pristine and protected from damage (from dropped tools, for example). Best garage upgradesWant your garage to be even nicer? No problem—here are some very useful add-ons that fall into the “luxury” category for most garages: Speakers. These days, you don’t need a whole entertainment system in your garage—your phone and a Bluetooth speaker will do. But the speaker needs to be waterproof and designed for work spaces if you want it to survive. Fridge. If you’re still nipping into the kitchen for a fresh beverage while you’re working in the garage, it’s time to upgrade to a garage-specific fridge. Retractable extension cords. Necessary? Not really, but very useful: A retractable extension cord keeps wires out of the way when you’re not using them and prevents them from knotting up in maddening ways. Extra bonus: Have an outlet installed in the ceiling of the garage and mount the extension cord up there, too, so you just pull it down when you need it. Utility sink. Having a place to wash up and clean dirty tools in the garage is a godsend. If the garage isn’t plumbed and you don’t want to sink that kind of cash into it, an outdoor sink hooked up to a garden hose will do the trick. Hoist. Suckers get on ladders and lift with their muscles. Smart folks install an overhead hoist that can lift cargo boxes or other heavy things out of the way with ease. Garage door screen. It’s nice to open the garage door while you’re working in the warm weather—unless it invites every bug in the universe to assault you. A nice garage door screen lets you enjoy the breeze without the bugs. Laser guides. If a rubber mat or a tennis ball on a string isn’t high-tech enough for your parking needs, why not install a laser-guided system? You’ll never scrape a door or crush a garbage can again. Paper towel dispenser. Necessary? Maybe not, but being able to grab a paper towel hands-free as needed just makes garage life easier. Wall-mounted inflator. If you’ve got cars and bikes in your garage, installing a wall-mounted inflator will make keeping tires properly inflated and maintained a breeze. Seating area. And if you’ve got a large garage—or no car—why not create a comfortable place to sit and relax in-between projects? Some durable outdoor furniture and an outdoor rug are all you need. View the full article

A lot has been written about how AI is coming for your job, but EY’s latest AI survey found some surprising results. Out of 500 top executives at major U.S. companies who said artificial intelligence was boosting productivity at their companies, only 17% of those polled actually turned around and laid off workers or cut their jobs. Instead, the new survey found they are reinvesting those gains back into the company. “Executives are plowing productivity gains right back into more AI tools and more talented people,” EY America’s consulting leader Colm Sparks Austin said. “The real breakthrough isn’t automation—it’s amplification. Leading companies are using AI to scale human capacity at a pace we’ve never seen before.” The EY US AI Pulse Survey, the fourth in a series of polls, surveyed 500 key U.S. business decision-makers (senior vice presidents and above) across sectors, and found nearly all organizations investing in artificial intelligence are experiencing some amount of AI-driven gains in productivity (96%), including 57% that say their gains are “significant.” However, among those organizations experiencing AI-driven productivity gains, only 17% say these gains led to reduced headcount; far more reported reinvesting those gains into existing AI capabilities (47%), developing new AI capabilities (42%), strengthening cybersecurity (41%), investing in R&D (39%), and upskilling and reskilling employees (38%). “While AI readily raises the floor by improving efficiency, the transformative potential comes from raising the ceiling,” according to Dan Diasio, EY global consulting AI leader. “Organizations that shift from a productivity mindset to a growth agenda are using AI to drive innovation, create new markets and achieve what was previously considered impossible.” Diasio said the survey results reveals that successful companies are reinvesting their gains today to build the businesses of the future, not just optimizing the current operations. Greater investment, greater returns The survey also found the amount of money a company invested in AI influenced how much productivity gain it saw in 2025. For example, senior leaders at organizations currently investing $10 million or more in AI across all business units or teams were more likely than those investing less than $10 million to say their organization has seen significant AI-driven productivity gains over the past year, at 71% versus 52%. Finally, when asked about the impact of AI investments on their financial outcomes, a majority of the senior leaders (56%) who have seen positive ROI from AI investments report it has led to significant measurable improvements in overall financial performance. As a result, that performance is leading to increased planned AI spend by companies. While 27% of respondents investing in AI currently commit a quarter or more of their IT budget to AI, that figure is set to roughly double to 52% in 2026. And the group spending half or more of their total IT budget on AI is expected to quintuple, jumping from just 3% in 2025 to a whopping 19% in 2026. The businesses investing the most in AI today will likely be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition in the future, says the report. “The companies out in front on AI investment are pulling farther ahead,” Whitt Butler, EY Americas vice chair of consulting, explained. “The magnitude of investment matters: the organizations committing more funding to AI are seeing the strongest productivity gains, showing that AI is moving beyond pilots to become a true driver of enterprise value.” View the full article

In theory, AI should have transformed manufacturing by now. From predictive maintenance and fatigue detection to real-time quality control, the promise has always been smarter, faster, and safer operations. But in practice, the factory floor is still a place where AI ambitions often run into real-world limitations. That’s a huge problem, especially because the size and weight of this industry are hard to ignore. U.S. manufacturing alone contributes $2.9 trillion to the economy, accounting for over 10% of total output and supporting nearly 13 million workers, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. Globally, manufacturing represents 16% of world GDP and a total market value well over $16 trillion, per a new report from Cargoson. Now, as AI advances even further and policymakers push for reindustrialization in the U.S.—aiming to restore domestic production capacity, regain supply chain control, and modernize strategic infrastructure—the spotlight is back on factories. There’s momentum and money behind the movement, but without restructuring the fragmented digital systems that dominate most production floors, that momentum may stall. An estimate by MarketsandMarkets projects the global AI in manufacturing market would grow to $155 billion by 2030, up from $34 billion in 2025 — but that growth will remain theoretical unless companies solve the bottlenecks slowing down adoption. Outdated infrastructure According to a 2025 survey of more than 500 manufacturing leaders, 92% say outdated infrastructure is holding back GenAI progress. Another report on the state of AI infrastructure by A10 Networks found that 74% of global IT decision-makers believe their current infrastructure is not fully prepared to support AI workloads. For all the talk of digital transformation, many factories are still running on architecture that predates smartphones, most of which cannot support new AI capabilities. “The hype around AI in manufacturing is real, but so are the technical barriers,” Shahid Ahmed, EVP of New Ventures and Innovation at NTT DATA, tells Fast Company. “Modern connectivity is unlocking the next wave of AI-driven innovation in manufacturing. Private 5G and next-gen Wi-Fi give manufacturers the speed and reliability to finally turn AI into a productivity engine.” However, better connectivity is just one part of the big problem with getting AI to produce optimal results on the factory floor. What’s really stopping AI from working on the ground isn’t just weak networks but also a mismatch between how factories run and how AI systems think. At aiOla, a conversational AI company that works with Fortune 500 manufacturers, Assaf Asbag sees a common pattern: data silos, fragmented systems, and little end-to-end accountability. Even when manufacturers bring in advanced models and top-tier talent, the results rarely scale. “Even with expensive AI talent, teams can’t generate value if they don’t have clean, connected data,” explains Asbag, aiOla’s Chief Technology & Product Officer. “You need aligned data, integrated workflows, and clear accountability—otherwise pilots never scale.” That’s because many manufacturing systems were never built to support AI in the first place. Legacy enterprise systems—like outdated ERP (enterprise resource planning) tools, old-school CRMs (customer relationship management platforms), and manual data entry—still dominate much of the landscape. When critical insights are buried across disconnected platforms—or worse, written down in logbooks—it becomes nearly impossible to feed AI models the context they need. Ahmed points to a recent deployment with materials manufacturer Celanese, where private 5G and edge AI were introduced to improve worker safety and equipment monitoring. “They were able to identify fatigue risk factors and detect hazards in real time,” he claims. “It was only possible because the infrastructure was there to support that intelligence.” For him, the key to successful AI deployments in manufacturing isn’t just having data but also having the right data, in the right place, and at the right time. Without that, he warns, “factories will keep seeing failed pilots, no matter how powerful the model.” Not all use cases are built the same While the buzz often centers on predictive maintenance and visual inspection, those aren’t plug-and-play features. They require reliable data flow, ultra-low latency, and hardware compatibility that many plants simply don’t have. In remote or offline environments, traditional cloud-based systems can’t keep up. “Use cases that demand real-time decision-making—like voice-enabled workflows or autonomous quality checks—are especially sensitive to network and system performance,” Asbag notes. “That’s why edge computing matters. It allows speech recognition or LLM-driven tasks to happen on-site, without depending on cloud access.” Picture a factory line that shuts down every time it loses Wi-Fi. Without local processing—meaning the ability to run AI tasks on devices in the factory instead of sending them to the cloud—even a short loss of connectivity can stop production and make AI tools more of a problem than a help. For factories operating with limited or unreliable connectivity, edge AI offers a way forward. By processing data locally, companies can cut lag time, protect sensitive data, and reduce downtime. But again, these benefits only materialize if the surrounding infrastructure—from sensors to routers—is up to the task. “Think of it like trying to run a modern electric vehicle on outdated roads,” Ahmed says. “No matter how powerful the engine, if the path is broken, you’re not going anywhere fast.” Getting real ROI One of the biggest traps in AI adoption is mistaking model accuracy for business success. Just because a model performs well during testing doesn’t mean it will drive positive outcomes on the floor. “The most successful AI initiatives begin with a clear vision—improving quality, boosting efficiency, or unlocking insights,” says Ahmed. “From there, quick wins build momentum.” Asbag agrees with him. “ROI in AI is not about proving that the model works or that accuracy improves on a benchmark. Those are technology goals, not business goals,” he notes. “Companies should avoid fluff by defining ROI in clear, specific business terms—faster processes, better decisions, or measurable savings.” That means tracking metrics like how many more inspections a worker can perform with a voice assistant or how predictive maintenance reduced unexpected machine downtime. When AI is tied to concrete, operational KPIs, it becomes a tool for transformation—not just a tech experiment. And that’s the big difference between the hype-induced claims of faster operations in the AI space and real measurable impact. It’s one thing to say your model is 96% accurate in a test environment. It’s another to show that it actually helped to cut defect rates by 12% in real production. While the first might get a nod from the technical team, the second gets leadership to sign off on a bigger rollout. The path forward Getting AI to work in manufacturing isn’t about chasing the most advanced model. It’s really about understanding the problem, cleaning up the data, modernizing the systems, and making sure every deployment serves a real business need. “Too many companies fall into endless discussions, pilots, and meetings without ever delivering value,” says Asbag. “Success with AI comes from being precise about the problem, aligning with the business outcome, and giving teams the autonomy to execute.” Ahmed puts it even more directly: “AI without infrastructure is like trying to build a smart city with no roads. You need the foundation in place before you scale.” Sateesh Seetharamiah, CEO of Edgeverve, also agrees. “Without a defined set of use cases and outcomes, manufacturers will be stuck without a clear strategy to prioritize the right emerging tech capabilities for business success,” he says. Conversations about building AI infrastructure in manufacturing often stall because leaders assume it means ripping everything out and starting from scratch. But meaningful progress rarely requires a full overhaul. Some of the biggest wins come from small, targeted changes—like installing local edge devices to reduce lag, connecting isolated systems, or clarifying who owns what data so teams can move faster. Manufacturing may be one of the toughest environments for AI, but it’s also one of the most rewarding. The factories that get it right won’t just optimize how work gets done. They’ll also lead a new era of industrial work, while the ones that hesitate may fall behind. “This isn’t the time to sit on the fence,” says Seetharamiah. “Manufacturers who delay risk missing out on enormous opportunities to create digital experiences for their customers.” View the full article

The threshold regards loans where the annual percentage rate is at least 1.5 percentage points higher than the average prime offer rate on first liens. View the full article

Across the internet, eagle-eyed sleuths are crying “AI slop” after Saturday Night Live aired segments with what looks like AI-generated imagery. The first instance, from Saturday’s cold open, shows an illustrated Christmas storybook. The images feature a hazy, yellow-ish hue and an image of streets that don’t connect. The next, in “Weekend Update” showed an image of a woman playing a slot machine in an otherwise empty casino while using an oxygen tank with tubes that weren’t connected. While the images were on screen for a fraction of the episode, they have led to some very vocal backlash by fans, who are convinced they are AI-generated.On Reddit, viewers called them “gross” and “a shame” while a Bluesky user said simply, “Booooooo.” “That Week In SNL,” a podcast, was having none of it. AI fatigue is real, and the accusations against Saturday’s episode landed amid a wider conversation about AI-generated media. McDonalds Netherlands pulled an AI-generated ad from its YouTube page last week following widespread negative comments. Meanwhile, the studio behind Coca-Cola’s widely criticized new AI-generated holiday ad admitted it wasn’t 100% ready. Merriam-Webster on Sunday named “slop” its 2025 word of the year. Slop in an ad is one thing. But slop on a show like SNL strikes a nerve considering how well known the long-running show is for its intricate human-made sets and costuming. This is a show made by hand, and the janky Photoshop jobs during Weekend Update are part of the joke. SNL has joked about AI in sketches this year, including one in January starring Timothée Chalamet and Bowen Yang that poked fun at AI’s proclivity for producing images of people with extra fingers. And in a sketch last month, Glen Powell played a grandpa pictured in old photos brought to life in an AI app gone wrong. NBC, which airs SNL, has not confirmed that the images are AI-generated, and the network did not respond to a request for comment. SNL‘s visual effects workers unionized in July, and their contract included AI protections that VFX artist Richard Lampasone said at the time was “a worker-centric AI policy that will help us keep doing our best work as our craft evolves.” View the full article

In an ever-evolving job market, LinkedIn Premium has rolled out a suite of new perks designed to empower professionals, particularly small business owners and entrepreneurs, as they navigate their careers and grow their enterprises. Recently announced enhancements include three months of complimentary access to two popular platforms: YouTube Premium and Spotify. This initiative aims to help users not only learn and develop professionally but also take breaks to recharge. The motivation behind these perks is clear: to foster stronger connections and skill development that can lead to new opportunities. LinkedIn’s data indicates that nearly 40% of Premium subscribers have leveraged AI-driven profile tools to enhance their online presence. These tools can be instrumental for small business owners looking to refine their personal and business profiles, making them more appealing to potential clients and employers. A particularly impactful feature is the Top Applicant status, which significantly improves job application visibility. With candidates boasting this status receiving nearly four times as many interview requests, small business owners seeking to attract top talent can leverage their Premium capabilities to showcase their businesses as desirable workplaces. LinkedIn also highlights the success of its Premium Company Pages, designed to bolster small business visibility. These pages are growing rapidly, helping businesses generate leads about 6.7 times faster and driving engagement by a staggering 7.5 times. This is vital for small business owners who may not have extensive marketing budgets but need to maximize their outreach. Engagement through exclusive content further enriches the Premium experience. LinkedIn has hosted over 40 Premium Conversations with industry leaders like Brené Brown, Melinda Gates, and Malcolm Gladwell. Such insights can provide invaluable perspectives for small business owners looking to innovate and adapt in their respective fields. However, with these enhanced features come challenges that small business owners should consider. The effective utilization of these tools requires a commitment to time and resource allocation. Owners must not only familiarize themselves with the new features but also engage actively to see meaningful results. While the potential for increased visibility and connection is significant, lack of engagement can lead to underwhelming outcomes. Moreover, understanding how to evaluate the ROI of these Premium features may take time. As small business owners invest in tools like AI profile enhancements and exclusive content access, they need to develop strategies for tracking their effectiveness. A clear understanding of metrics such as lead generation, engagement levels, and job application outcomes can provide crucial insights into how well these tools meet their business objectives. The practical applications of these features are vast. Small business owners can harness the power of LinkedIn Premium to establish a strong professional network, enhance their brand presence through Company Pages, and use premium content to gain a competitive edge in their industry. For those looking to attract talent or clientele, the opportunities presented by LinkedIn Premium can be game-changing. For small business owners keen on navigating the complexities of modern work environments, integrating LinkedIn Premium features into daily operations may hold the key to unlocking new growth avenues. As they explore these offerings, the potential for increased engagement and networking could lead to stronger connections and, ultimately, improved business performance. For further information about the new perks and how they can benefit small businesses, you can view the original announcement on LinkedIn’s press release. Image via Google Gemini This article, "LinkedIn Premium Expands Benefits with Free Access to YouTube and Spotify" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

In an ever-evolving job market, LinkedIn Premium has rolled out a suite of new perks designed to empower professionals, particularly small business owners and entrepreneurs, as they navigate their careers and grow their enterprises. Recently announced enhancements include three months of complimentary access to two popular platforms: YouTube Premium and Spotify. This initiative aims to help users not only learn and develop professionally but also take breaks to recharge. The motivation behind these perks is clear: to foster stronger connections and skill development that can lead to new opportunities. LinkedIn’s data indicates that nearly 40% of Premium subscribers have leveraged AI-driven profile tools to enhance their online presence. These tools can be instrumental for small business owners looking to refine their personal and business profiles, making them more appealing to potential clients and employers. A particularly impactful feature is the Top Applicant status, which significantly improves job application visibility. With candidates boasting this status receiving nearly four times as many interview requests, small business owners seeking to attract top talent can leverage their Premium capabilities to showcase their businesses as desirable workplaces. LinkedIn also highlights the success of its Premium Company Pages, designed to bolster small business visibility. These pages are growing rapidly, helping businesses generate leads about 6.7 times faster and driving engagement by a staggering 7.5 times. This is vital for small business owners who may not have extensive marketing budgets but need to maximize their outreach. Engagement through exclusive content further enriches the Premium experience. LinkedIn has hosted over 40 Premium Conversations with industry leaders like Brené Brown, Melinda Gates, and Malcolm Gladwell. Such insights can provide invaluable perspectives for small business owners looking to innovate and adapt in their respective fields. However, with these enhanced features come challenges that small business owners should consider. The effective utilization of these tools requires a commitment to time and resource allocation. Owners must not only familiarize themselves with the new features but also engage actively to see meaningful results. While the potential for increased visibility and connection is significant, lack of engagement can lead to underwhelming outcomes. Moreover, understanding how to evaluate the ROI of these Premium features may take time. As small business owners invest in tools like AI profile enhancements and exclusive content access, they need to develop strategies for tracking their effectiveness. A clear understanding of metrics such as lead generation, engagement levels, and job application outcomes can provide crucial insights into how well these tools meet their business objectives. The practical applications of these features are vast. Small business owners can harness the power of LinkedIn Premium to establish a strong professional network, enhance their brand presence through Company Pages, and use premium content to gain a competitive edge in their industry. For those looking to attract talent or clientele, the opportunities presented by LinkedIn Premium can be game-changing. For small business owners keen on navigating the complexities of modern work environments, integrating LinkedIn Premium features into daily operations may hold the key to unlocking new growth avenues. As they explore these offerings, the potential for increased engagement and networking could lead to stronger connections and, ultimately, improved business performance. For further information about the new perks and how they can benefit small businesses, you can view the original announcement on LinkedIn’s press release. Image via Google Gemini This article, "LinkedIn Premium Expands Benefits with Free Access to YouTube and Spotify" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. After announcing another 25-basis-point cut to the Federal Reserve’s short-term rate, Fed Chair Jerome Powell—whose term ends on May 15, 2026—was asked about the U.S. housing market. Powell acknowledged that recent rate cuts won’t restore affordability to the U.S. housing market. He suggested that the country needs to build more housing units—and noted that central bankers “don’t really have the tools to address” it. Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters on December 10, 2025: “So the housing market faces some really significant challenges, and I don’t know that, you know, a 25 basis point decline in the federal funds rate is going to make much of a difference for people. You know, housing supply is low. Many people have very, very low, low, low rate mortgages from the pandemic period, and they kept refinancing and caught the really low. So it’s expensive to them to move. And you know, we’re a ways away from that changing. Also, we’re just, we haven’t built enough housing in the country for a long time, and so a lot of estimates suggest that we just need more housing of different kinds. So housing is going to be, you know, a problem, and you know, really the tools to address it are we can, we can raise and lower interest rates, but we don’t really have the tools to address, you know, a secular housing shortage, a structural housing shortage.” While Powell appears to suggest that a “structural housing shortage” is the underlying issue in the U.S. housing market, he acknowledged back in October that the Fed may have kept purchasing mortgage-backed securities (MBS) for too long during the Pandemic Housing Boom—though he added that it’s “challenging to determine” if and by how much it actually helped overheat the housing market during that period. Over the past year-plus, as the U.S. labor market has softened—with the last published U.S. unemployment rate (4.4%) a solid clip above the cycle low in April 2023 (3.4%)—and as the Federal Reserve has sought to move from restrictive toward neutral policy by making several cuts to short-term rates, we’ve also seen long-term yields and mortgage rates come down from their cycle highs. While Powell may be right that Fed policy changes right now alone are unlikely to return the U.S. housing market to average levels of affordability—we’re currently in the upper band—it’s worth noting that the recent mild decline in long-term interest rates, which the Fed does not directly set but which are influenced by financial market’s expectations for the economy and future Fed policy, has been one of the levers that has helped nationally aggregated housing affordability improve a little this year. Indeed, last week the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate, as tracked by Freddie Mac, was 6.22%—well below the cycle high of 7.79% reached in October 2023. “The bottom line is it appears 30-year mortgage rates will be in current range for some time barring a recession or a crisis,” wrote housing analyst Bill McBride earlier this week. Mortgage rates could still drift modestly lower next year, particularly if the spread between the 10-year Treasury yield and the 30-year fixed mortgage rate continues to compress. But the easiest mortgage-rate declines may already be behind us. To see a truly material downward shift in mortgage rates next year, many analysts believe it would take a more significant weakening in the labor market. Hypothetically speaking, if the unemployment rate were to spike and the economy weakened, financial markets could respond with a flight to safety—driving up demand for Treasuries, which would push bond prices higher and yields (including mortgage rates) lower. At the same time, the Fed could respond with emergency cuts to the federal funds rate and, if the downturn were severe enough, potentially resume purchases of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), adding further downward pressure on mortgage rates. View the full article

Airbnb may finally pay the price of long-simmering tensions about overtourism in Spain. The Spanish government announced on Monday that it has fined the online rentals giant 64 million euros ($75 million) for advertising unlicensed rental listings in the country. This decision is the latest in several months of back-and-forths, as the government previously ordered Airbnb to remove more than 120,000 listings it identified as unlicensed. While Spain’s Consumer Affairs Ministry said the fine was a final decision and couldn’t be appealed, San Francisco-based Airbnb is reportedly planning to challenge it in court. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Fast Company. ADDRESSING HOUSING CRISIS A record 94 million foreigners visited Spain last year, a 10% increase from 2023, making it one of the most-visited countries in the world by tourists. But the proliferation of private tourist accommodations has contributed to a housing crisis and there have been several, large anti-tourism protests in the country in recent years. Tasked with addressing the housing crisis is Pablo Bustinduy, the consumer affairs minister. “There are thousands of families living on the edge because of the housing situation, while a few enrich themselves with business models that force people out of their homes,” Bustinduy said in a statement. “No company in Spain, however large or powerful, can be above the law.” AIRBNB RESPONDS Airbnb issued a statement to several news organizations indicating that it has been working with the Spanish government since short-term rental rules changed in July to enforce a new registration system. On its website, Airbnb also has a lengthy explanation about “responsible hosting” in Spain. “Airbnb is confident that the ministry actions are contrary to applicable regulations in Spain and we intend to challenge this fine in court,” a company spokesperson said in a statement published by Reuters. Rental listings in Spain are still available for booking on Airbnb’s website. While other companies similarly facilitate private rental agreements, this particular platform’s popularity has made it a target of anti-tourism sentiment in Spain and beyond. In the southern beach town of Tarifa, for example, Airbnb indicates there are more than 800 listings available for a one-week, off-season rental in January. What’s more, there are also dozens of hotels in the area. The town has a population of less than 20,000 people. For the three months ended in Sept. 30, Airbnb reported quarterly revenue of nearly $2 billion for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, its second-largest market behind North America. That marked a 14% gain from the same period a year ago, more than the company’s revenue growth of 10% across all regions. For a company with a market cap of more than $79 billion, investors don’t seem too concerned about the prospect of a $75 million fine. Airbnb shares rose more than 2% in mid-day trading Monday, even as the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index fell about 0.5%. View the full article

The holidays are the perfect time to show people that you appreciate their time, their effort, and the value they bring. But when it comes to giving gifts at work, most people are confused about what to do. Should you, or shouldn’t you, buy your boss a present? What about your coworkers or direct reports? How much should you spend for the office gift exchange? What about your office bestie? We asked the experts to weigh in, and here’s what they had to say. Is it acceptable to give holiday gifts at work? “To gift someone in the workplace is always acceptable, Alyse Dermer, founder of Mr. Considerate, a luxury gift concierge service, tells Fast Company. “Gifting can reinforce positive working relationships, strengthen team connection, and create moments that feel personal in a world that often feels transactional.” “People work hard,” Dermer adds. “You spend a lot of time with your coworkers, and they want to be seen. It’s different from a company bonus. It doesn’t need to be expensive, it just needs to be thoughtful. And thoughtfulness really lands.” Dermer says a good gift shows you appreciate people’s work and pay attention to their interests: “You work with these people everyday, you depend on them, they depend on you”—and a gift should reflect that. Ask yourself: “Where are they in their life?” For example, is someone getting married? How about matching mugs or luggage tags? Or, does your coworker want to learn how to cook? You could get them a cookbook. Should I get my boss a gift? “If you feel compelled to gift your boss, it should be something modest,” national etiquette expert Diane Gottsman tells Fast Company. “Something they can use, such as an inexpensive office gadget, baked goods, or a box of fruit. Not wine, cologne, or a tie.” Choose a minimal price point to show you aren’t “sucking up” to the boss, or trying to get special treatment from a supervisor or a colleague. What about colleagues? “Many offices have a Secret Santa or White Elephant exchange. Always stay within the price range,” Gottsman advises. But what if you want to gift your office bestie or “work wife” something special? “Anything else should be given out of the office, if you are only going to gift a few people and not others,” she says. “It avoids hurt feelings.” What are some expert-approved gifts? Gottsman recommends a thermal tote bag, a multi-prong cell phone charger, a beautiful bottle of olive oil, or a warm scarf. “One thing I have been gifting is games,” Dermer says. “Chess, checkers, Rummikub, or a Majong set. Games are fun and they bring you together.” Some of Dermer’s favorite gifts include: Flamingo Estate olive oil and vinegar set Leatherology tech organizer Aura digital frame Rummikub set Backgammon set Coffee table book Blunt umbrella View the full article

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day. Remember the letter-writer asking whether she had to share her story on a “women in industry” panel? Here’s the update. So … I ended up doing the panel. I talked to multiple trusted women at work and outside of work, who almost always encouraged me to do it, even if just for the experience and to showcase myself. For what it’s worth (now that the panel is over), I work in the construction industry as a superintendent. My job is to organize the logistics, schedule, trades, safety, handle crisis management, and quality control of an entire 50+million dollar project. It is a role that is not popular compared to management, and comes with long hours and lots of dirt. I love it! Thankfully, during the practice for the panel, the leaders realized they had too many people with too many questions, so I was assigned to answer only three of the nearly 20 questions they wanted to ask. I was able to answer my assigned questions by keeping to the facts and using points that would be beneficial to most people, not just women, which is what I was comfortable with. According to my project team and close coworkers, I rocked the panel and looked cool and confident. According to my smart watch and heartbeat, I had consumed a gallon of caffeine and was being chased by a werewolf for an hour. For the entire virtual panel, I had to sit on my hands to prevent them from shaking. Clearly panels about my experience are not my forte. In other news, I got much more involved in our intern program this summer (I myself being a previous intern) and determined that I am much more comfortable teaching than sharing my personal story. I taught a few different classes to the interns, and I am proud to say I was voted “Best Mentor” this summer. I’m ready to help grow the next generation of industry leaders, and if there are any women (or men) who are interested in my role, they are more than welcome to ask me questions directly. The future me may say otherwise, but present me says she will decline any future panel requests. If you want to include them, these are very basic summaries of the questions I ended up answering… What are key strategies you use that make you successful? (Generally, be self-aware of your own struggles and find ways to mitigate them. I don’t trust my brain to be perfect so I set myself up for success. I set alarms for meetings because I get sidetracked, and always keep a big note pad with me because I field questions and solve problems all day.) How has a relationship with a mentor impacted your career? (I spoke about a teacher who taught me about this industry and encouraged me to get a related college degree!) What do you wish the industry as a whole could do better for women? (I wish the industry had as much variety in gear for women as there are men. I have to get harnesses, vests, and gloves special ordered because women’s XS isn’t kept in stock. I will say, it’s interesting that within the week of the panel there were more sizes available on our internal ordering site!) I know people may have problems with how I answered these, but my answers won’t be applicable or helpful to everyone because they are about me and my experiences, and it is what I was comfortable sharing in a large group. The post update: do I have to share my story on a “women in industry” panel? appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

You identify them, record them, monitor them and plan for them: risks are an inherent part of every project. Some project risks are bound to become problem areas—like executing a project over the holidays and having to plan the project timeline around them. But there are many risks within any given project that, without risk assessment and risk mitigation strategies, can come as unwelcome surprises to you and your project management team. That’s where a risk management plan comes in—to help mitigate risks before they become problems. But first, what is project risk management? What Is a Risk Management Plan? A risk management plan defines how the project’s risk management process will be executed. That includes the budget, tools and approaches that will be used to perform risk identification, assessment, mitigation and monitoring activities. /wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Risk-management-plan-template-1.jpg Get your free Risk Management Plan Template Use this free Risk Management Plan Template to manage your projects better. Get the template A risk management plan describes all the activities that will be taken throughout the process of managing project risks. Project risk management activities can be grouped into the following categories: Risk Planning: Before risks can be managed, the overall approach must be defined. The risk management plan establishes the methodologies, roles, responsibilities, budget allocation and timing for all risk management activities throughout the project life cycle. Risk Identification: The first step to managing project risks is to identify them. The risk management plan explains the tools and data sources, such as information from past projects or subject matter experts’ opinions to estimate all the potential risks that can impact the project. Risk Assessment: Once the project risks are identified, they need to be prioritized by looking at their likelihood and level of impact. In most cases, the risk management plan includes a risk assessment matrix to do so. Risk Mitigation: Now it’s time to create a contingency plan with risk mitigation actions to manage your project risks. You also need to define which team members will be risk owners, responsible for monitoring and controlling risks. Risk Control: Once risk mitigation responses are in place, they must be actively controlled. The risk management plan describes how risk responses will be executed, evaluated for effectiveness and adjusted as project conditions or risk exposure change. Risk Monitoring: Risks must be monitored throughout the project life cycle so that they can be controlled. The risk management plan describes the procedures, tools and techniques to monitor the occurrence and mitigation of project risks. Risk Ownership: To ensure accountability, risks must be assigned to specific team members. The risk management plan defines risk owners and outlines their responsibilities for tracking, monitoring and implementing approved risk response actions. Risk Reporting: Risk information must be shared clearly and consistently with stakeholders. The risk management plan describes how risks will be reported, escalated and communicated to support timely awareness and informed decision-making. Even one risk can jeopardize the entire project plan. There isn’t usually just one risk per project, either; there are many risk categories that require assessment and discussion with stakeholders. That’s why risk management needs to be both a proactive and reactive process that is constant throughout the project life cycle. Manage Risks and Projects Online with ProjectManager For example, it’s easy to create a risk register using online project management software. Use the risk list view on ProjectManager to capture all project risks, add their priority level and assign a team member to identify and resolve them. Then manage those risks alongside detailed project plans with in-depth data. Manage projects in five different views: Gantt, sheet, list, kanban and calendar Track and report on tasks and risks with dashboards Give stakeholders first-hand access to data and progress with free guest licenses. Try it free /wp-content/uploads/2024/03/CTA-light-mode-risk-view.pngLearn more What Is the Purpose of a Risk Management Plan? The purpose of a risk management plan in project management is to define how risks will be systematically identified, analyzed, prioritized, responded to and monitored throughout the project lifecycle. It establishes a consistent approach to managing uncertainty, protects project objectives related to scope, schedule, cost and quality, and supports informed decision-making by clarifying risk ownership, thresholds and response strategies. While its primary role is project-focused, it can also support broader organizational risk awareness when projects operate in complex or regulated environments. When to Use a Risk Management Plan A risk management plan originated in project management, where it formalizes how risks are identified, analyzed, prioritized and addressed to protect project objectives. Over time, its structured, repeatable approach proved valuable beyond projects. Today, organizations use risk management plans whenever uncertainty must be managed deliberately, including operations, construction, IT, finance and compliance. Project risk management plan: Defines how project-specific risks are identified, assessed and managed to protect scope, schedule, cost and quality objectives throughout the project lifecycle. Business risk management plan: Addresses operational and strategic risks affecting ongoing business activities, focusing on continuity, process stability, compliance and performance rather than time-bound deliverables. Enterprise risk management plan: Provides an organization-wide framework to identify, assess and govern risks aligned with strategic objectives, risk appetite and executive-level decision-making. Financial risk management plan: Focuses on identifying and mitigating risks related to budgets, cash flow, funding, pricing and financial exposure that could impact organizational or project viability. IT risk management plan: Manages risks related to information systems, cybersecurity, data integrity and system availability, emphasizing controls, incident response and technology resilience. In these contexts, the plan provides a consistent framework for anticipating threats, evaluating exposure, defining response strategies and monitoring risk over time, even when no project timeline exists. Free Risk Management Plan Template This free risk management plan template will help prepare your team for any risks inherent in the project. This Word document includes sections for your risk management methodology, risk register, risk breakdown structure and more. It’s so thorough, you’re sure to be ready for whatever comes your way. Download the template today. /wp-content/uploads/2023/09/risk-management-plan-template-for-word-screenshot-600x564.jpgFree download What Should Be Included in a Risk Management Plan? Making a risk management plan is essential for identifying, analyzing and responding to risks that could affect a project’s success. For a risk management plan to be effective, it should include certain key components. A risk management plan usually includes the following sections. Risk Management Methodology A risk management methodology defines the structured approach a project uses to identify, analyze, respond to and monitor risks. It establishes the tools, techniques and data sources used to evaluate uncertainty, assess probability and impact, and determine appropriate responses. In a risk management plan, the risk management methodology section explains how risk activities will be performed on the project. It documents the tools, techniques and documentation to be used for risk identification, analysis and prioritization so stakeholders understand how risks are managed. This section ensures risk management is repeatable, aligned with organizational standards and applied consistently throughout the project life cycle execution. Risk Identification Techniques Risk identification techniques are systematic methods used to recognize potential problems, uncertainties, or threats that could impact a project’s objectives. By proactively identifying risks, project teams can assess their likelihood and impact, prioritize responses and develop mitigation strategies. These techniques help ensure that risks are managed before they escalate, supporting smoother project execution and informed decision-making. Brainstorming: Collaborative sessions where team members generate a list of potential risks, encouraging diverse perspectives and creative thinking. Delphi Technique: Experts anonymously provide risk input in multiple rounds, refining ideas until consensus is reached, reducing bias from dominant voices. SWOT Analysis: Evaluates internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats to identify areas of potential risk. Checklists: Uses predefined lists of common risks based on previous projects or industry standards to ensure nothing is overlooked. Root Cause Analysis: Investigates underlying causes of potential problems, identifying risks by understanding what could trigger failures or obstacles. Risk Scoring and Prioritization Tools Risk scoring assigns numerical or qualitative values to identified risks based on their probability of occurrence and potential impact. Risk prioritization then ranks these risks to determine which require the most immediate attention and resources. In a PMI-aligned risk management plan, scoring and prioritization are critical for focusing mitigation and response strategies on high-priority risks. By systematically evaluating each risk, project teams can allocate resources efficiently, monitor critical threats and integrate response actions into project schedules, budgets and decision-making, ensuring alignment with PMBOK principles for proactive and structured risk management. ProjectManager makes it seamless to understand risks and how they can impact your project. Our built-in risk management features enable you to identify risks, set a priority, assign an owner and more. Use it to take action to keep your projects on track. Get started by taking a free 30-day trial, no credit card required. /wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Risks-New-Risk-Card.jpg Organizational Risk Tolerance or Risk Appetite Organizational risk tolerance, or risk appetite, defines the level and type of risk an organization is willing to accept in pursuit of its objectives. In a risk management plan, understanding this threshold guides decision-making, prioritizes risk responses and ensures that mitigation strategies align with the organization’s strategic goals, helping project teams manage uncertainties without exceeding acceptable risk levels. Risk acceptance criteria: Define when a risk can be accepted without further mitigation, ensuring decisions stay within organizational tolerance, align with project objectives and are formally documented. Risk exposure thresholds: Set the maximum impact or likelihood a risk can reach before action is required, helping teams prioritize responses, allocate resources effectively and stay aligned with risk appetite. Risk Reporting Guidelines and Documentation Risk reporting is the systematic process of communicating identified risks, their status, potential impact and mitigation measures to project stakeholders. Within a risk management plan, risk reporting ensures transparency, enables informed decision-making, supports proactive risk response and tracks the effectiveness of mitigation strategies throughout the project lifecycle, keeping stakeholders aligned and facilitating timely escalation of critical issues. Popular risk reporting documents include: Risk Register: A centralized document listing all identified risks, their probability, impact, mitigation strategies and ownership, updated throughout the project to track risk status. Issue Log: Tracks current problems affecting the project, linking them to identified risks, documenting resolutions and ensuring accountability and timely corrective action. RAID Log: Captures Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies, providing a holistic view of project uncertainties and facilitating structured reporting and management. Risk Heat Map: Visual representation of risks by probability and impact, helping stakeholders quickly identify high-priority risks requiring attention. Risk Status Report: Periodic report summarizing active risks, progress on mitigation actions, changes in risk exposure and emerging threats to keep stakeholders informed. Related: 12 Free Risk Management Templates for Excel & Word Risk Register A risk register is a chart to document the risk identification information. It serves as a centralized repository that captures and tracks all identified risks throughout the project life cycle. This provides a comprehensive overview, systematic tracking, prioritization of critical risks, stakeholder engagement and more. /wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Risk-Tracking-Screenshot.webpFree download Risk Response Plan A risk response plan is a project management document that explains the risk mitigation strategies that will be employed. Its purpose is to proactively manage uncertainties, reduce potential impacts on project goals, and ensure preparedness. By assigning responsibilities, defining timelines, and outlining procedures, the plan provides a clear, structured approach to maintaining control and keeping the project on track. This plan enables project teams to anticipate and address potential issues before they escalate, reducing delays, cost overruns, and quality problems. It ensures that risks are managed systematically rather than reactively, improves decision-making, aligns stakeholder expectations, and provides a documented framework for accountability. Ultimately, it helps protect project objectives and supports smoother, more predictable project execution. Risk mitigation strategies: Proactive actions designed to reduce the likelihood or impact of identified risks. In a risk management plan, these strategies help minimize disruptions, protect project objectives, guide resource allocation, support contingency planning and provide structured responses to uncertainty before risks escalate. Risk management roles and responsibilities: Define who identifies, owns, monitors and responds to risks throughout the project. Clearly assigned responsibilities—from the project manager and risk owners to stakeholders and support teams—ensure accountability, consistent risk oversight and effective execution of risk response actions. Risk Management Budget Have a section to identify the funds required to perform risk management activities. This financial plan will allocate resources specifically for identifying, assessing and managing risks within a project. The budget ensures there’s enough funding available to implement risk management strategies and mitigate negative impacts on project objectives. Risk Breakdown Structure This is a chart that identifies risk categories and the hierarchical structure of project risks. It provides a structured risk identification, which makes it easier to analyze and manage risks. The risk breakdown structure also provides clear definitions and descriptions of risks at various levels, which helps the team to understand the nature and source of each risk. Risks can be prioritized more effectively, too. Risk Assessment Matrix A risk assessment matrix allows teams to analyze the likelihood and the impact of project risks so they can prioritize them. Using a risk assessment matrix provides a visual representation of the relationship between the likelihood of risks occurring and their potential impact. It helps teams to focus on critical risks by categorizing them into different levels. The risk assessment matrix also facilitates communication to ensure everyone is aligned on risk prioritization. /wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Risk-Matrix-Screenshot.jpgFree download How to Write a Risk Management Plan For every web design and development project, construction project or product design, there will be risks. That’s the nature of project management. But that’s also why it’s always best to get ahead of them as much as possible by developing a risk management plan. We’ve outlined the steps to make a risk management plan below. 1. Risk Planning You can’t create a risk management plan without understanding the overall risk planning approach. In other words, what methodologies, roles, responsibilities, budget allocation and timing will be used throughout the project life cycle? This information will set the foundation for the plan itself. 2. Risk Identification Risk identification occurs at the beginning of the project planning phase, as well as throughout the project life cycle. While many risks are considered “known risks,” others might require additional research. Create a risk breakdown structure to identify project risks and classify them into risk categories. You can do this by interviewing all project stakeholders and industry experts. Many project risks can be divided into risk categories, like technical or organizational, and listed out by specific sub-categories like technology, interfaces, performance, logistics, budget, etc. Additionally, create a risk register to share with everyone interviewed for a centralized location of all known risks revealed during the identification phase. 3. Risk Assessment In this next phase, review the qualitative and quantitative impact of the risk—like the likelihood of the risk occurring versus the impact it would have on the project—and map that out into a risk assessment matrix First, you’ll do this by assigning the risk likelihood a score from low probability to high probability. Then, map out the risk impact from low to medium to high and assign each a score. This provides an idea of how likely the risk is to impact project success as well as how urgent the response will need to be. To make it efficient for all risk management team members and project stakeholders to understand the risk assessment matrix, assign an overall risk score by multiplying the impact level score by the risk probability score. 4. Risk Mitigation: Create a Risk Response Plan A risk response is the action plan taken to mitigate project risks when they occur. The risk response plan includes risk mitigation strategies to mitigate the impact of project risks. Doing this usually comes with a price—at the expense of your time or your budget. So you’ll want to allocate resources, time and money for your risk management needs before creating the risk management plan. 5. Control & Monitor the Risk As soon as the risk mitigation response has been established, it’s time to actively control any risks. In other words, how will the responses be executed, evaluated for effectiveness and altered as project conditions or risk exposure change? 6. Assign Risk Owners Next, assign a risk owner to each project risk. Those risk owners become accountable for monitoring the risks assigned to them and supervising the execution of the risk response if needed. Related: Risk Tracking Template When creating the risk register and risk assessment matrix, list out the risk owners; that way, no one is confused as to who will need to implement the risk response strategies once the project risks occur, and each risk owner can take immediate action. Be sure to record the exact risk response for each project risk with a risk register and have the risk response plan approved by all stakeholders before implementation. That way, there’s a record of the issue and the resolution to review once the project is finalized. /wp-content/uploads/2025/02/PM-101-eBook-banner-ad.jpg 7. Understand Your Triggers This can happen with or without a risk already having impacted the project, especially during project milestones as a means of reviewing project progress. If they have, consider reclassifying those existing risks. Even if those triggers haven’t been met, it’s best to come up with a backup plan as the project progresses—maybe the conditions for a certain risk won’t exist after a certain point has been reached in the project. 8. Make a Backup Plan Consider your risk register and risk assessment matrix a living document. Project risks can change in classification at any point, and because of that, come up with a contingency plan as part of the process. Contingency planning includes discovering new risks during project milestones and reevaluating existing risks to see if any conditions for those risks have been met. Any reclassification of a risk means adjusting your contingency plan. 9. Measure Your Risk Threshold Measuring your risk threshold is all about discovering which risk is too high and consulting with project stakeholders to consider whether or not it’s worth it to continue the project, worth it whether in time, money or scope. Here’s how the risk threshold is typically determined: consider your risks that have a score of “very high”, or more than a few “high” scores, and consult with your leadership team and project stakeholders to determine if the project itself may be at risk of failure. Project risks that require additional consultation are risks that have passed the risk threshold. To keep a close eye on risks as they arise in the project, use project management software. ProjectManager has real-time dashboards embedded in our tool, unlike other software that requires teams to manually build them. We automatically calculate the health of projects, checking if teams are on time or running behind. Get a high-level view of how much you’re spending, progress and more. The quicker the risk is identified, the faster you can resolve it. /wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AI-Project-Insights-Dashboard-Edited-Lightmode.png 10. Keep Stakeholders Informed Stakeholders should always be aware of how risks are progressing and being handled throughout the project. The plan should note how risks are reported, escalated and communicated as needed. Risk Management Plan Example This risk management plan defines the approach used to identify, analyze, prioritize and manage risks for a multi-story residential parking garage construction project. The plan establishes consistent methods and thresholds to support proactive decision-making throughout the project lifecycle. Risk Management Methodology The risk management methodology defines how risks will be identified, assessed, prioritized and monitored throughout the project. It establishes a structured, repeatable process to ensure risks are managed consistently and aligned with project objectives related to safety, schedule, cost and quality. Methodology Step Description Tools and Techniques Responsible Party Risk identification Systematically identify potential project risks Workshops, checklists, site reviews Project manager Qualitative analysis Assess likelihood and impact of identified risks Probability–impact matrix Project team Risk prioritization Rank risks based on exposure Risk scoring model Project manager Risk monitoring Track risks and response effectiveness Risk register updates, reviews Project manager Risk Identification Techniques Risk identification techniques are used to proactively uncover potential threats that may impact project objectives. These techniques draw on historical data, expert judgment and field-level observations to ensure comprehensive coverage. Technique Description Application Participants Risk workshops Facilitated sessions to identify risks collaboratively Planning and early execution Project team, subcontractors Historical data review Analyze risks from similar past projects Preconstruction phase Project manager Site inspections Identify risks related to site conditions Throughout construction Site supervisor Expert judgment Input from engineers and specialists Design and execution phases Design consultants Risk Scoring and Prioritization Risk scoring and prioritization evaluate identified risks based on their probability of occurrence and potential impact on project objectives. The resulting risk exposure score is used to rank risks and determine response priority. Risk ID Risk Description Probability Impact Risk Score Priority Level R-01 Unexpected subsurface conditions High High 9 Critical R-02 Concrete supply delays Medium High 6 High R-03 Weather-related work stoppages Medium Medium 4 Moderate Organizational Risk Tolerance Organizational risk tolerance defines the level of risk exposure the organization is willing to accept in pursuit of project objectives. These thresholds guide decision-making, escalation and the selection of risk response strategies. Risk Category Risk Acceptance Criteria Risk Exposure Threshold Required Action Escalation Authority Safety No tolerance for high-severity safety risks Score ≥ 6 Immediate mitigation required Project sponsor Schedule Minor delays acceptable if recoverable Score ≥ 5 Mitigation and resequencing Project manager Cost Cost increases limited to contingency Score ≥ 5 Management approval required Finance lead Quality Rework acceptable within standards Score ≥ 4 Corrective action plan Project manager Risk Register The risk register serves as the central repository for all identified project risks. It documents risk descriptions, ownership, priority levels and current status, enabling ongoing monitoring and informed decision-making throughout the project lifecycle. Risk ID Risk Description Category Risk Score Risk Owner Status R-01 Unexpected subsurface conditions Technical 9 Project manager Open R-02 Concrete supply delays Supply chain 6 Procurement lead Open R-03 Severe weather impacts on schedule Environmental 4 Site supervisor Monitoring R-04 Safety incidents during elevated work Safety 8 Safety officer Open Risk Response Plan The risk response plan defines specific actions to address prioritized risks. Response strategies are selected based on organizational risk tolerance and are assigned to accountable roles responsible for implementation and monitoring. Risk ID Risk Description Risk Mitigation Strategy Response Type Roles and Responsibilities R-01 Unexpected subsurface conditions Conduct early geotechnical surveys and include contingency plans Mitigate Project manager coordinates studies and approvals R-02 Concrete supply delays Prequalify alternate suppliers and place early orders Mitigate Procurement lead manages supplier agreements R-03 Severe weather impacts Build schedule buffers and resequence non-critical work Accept Site supervisor adjusts daily work plans R-04 Safety incidents during elevated work Implement enhanced safety training and inspections Avoid Safety officer enforces compliance and reporting Risk Management Budget The risk management budget allocates funds specifically for risk mitigation and contingency activities. This budget supports proactive risk responses and reduces the likelihood of unplanned cost impacts during execution. Budget Item Purpose Estimated Cost (USD) Approval Authority Geotechnical investigations Reduce subsurface condition uncertainty 25,000 Project sponsor Safety training and audits Prevent high-severity safety incidents 15,000 Safety manager Schedule contingency Address weather-related delays 20,000 Project manager Total — 60,000 — How ProjectManager Can Help Your Risk Management Plan A risk management plan is only as good as the risk management features you have to implement and track them. ProjectManager is online project management software that lets you view risks directly in the project menu. You can tag risks as open or closed and even make a risk matrix directly in the software. You get visibility into risks and can track them in real time, sharing and viewing the risk history. /wp-content/uploads/2024/01/risk-image-lightmode.png Tracking & Monitoring Risks in Real Time Managing risk is only the start. You must also monitor risk and track it from the point at which you first identified it. Real-time dashboards provide a high-level view of slippage, workload, cost and more. Customizable reports can be shared with stakeholders and filtered to show only what they need to see. Risk tracking has never been easier. /wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Project-portfolio-status-report.png Best Practices for Maintaining Your Risk Management Plan Risk management plans only fail in a few ways: incrementally because of insufficient budget, via modeling errors or by ignoring your risks outright. Your risk management plan is constantly evolving throughout the project life cycle, from beginning to end. So the best practices are to focus on the monitoring phase of the risk management plan. Continue to evaluate and reevaluate your risks and their scores, and address risks at every project milestone. Project dashboards and other risk-tracking features can be a lifesaver for maintaining your risk management plan. Watch the video below to see just how important project management dashboards, live data and project reports can be for keeping projects on track and budget. In addition to routine risk monitoring, at each milestone, conduct another round of interviews with the same checklist you used at the beginning of the project, and re-interview project stakeholders, risk management team members, customers (if applicable) and industry experts. Record their answers, adjust the risk register and risk assessment matrix if necessary, and report all relevant updates of your risk management plan to key project stakeholders. This process and level of transparency help identify any new risks to be assessed and show if any previous risks have expired. /wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Steps-to-a-risk-management-plan-600x1079.png Risks are bound to happen, no matter the project. However, if you have the right tools to better navigate the risk management planning process, you can better mitigate errors. ProjectManager is online project management software that updates in real time, giving you all the latest information on your risks, issues and changes. Start a free 30-day trial and start managing your risks better. The post How to Make a Risk Management Plan (Template Included) appeared first on ProjectManager. View the full article

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