Has the traditional workday gone the way of the Edsel?

For many employees, the workday stretches beyond a nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday schedule, according to a Microsoft report from last month, as the average employee gets 50 work messages outside of business hours. That’s on top of 29% of employees checking their emails after 10:00pm and 20% of employees reading emails on Saturday and Sunday.

Working off-hours is nothing new for many corporate roles, according to Kim Seals, senior partner at consulting firm West Monroe, especially in industries like sales, accounting, or consulting where employees are often “rewarded” for working off-hours, she said.

But what’s evident in Microsoft’s findings, Seals told HR Brew, is that working off-hours has seeped into roles where it may not be required or rewarded to work late nights or early mornings.

For more on the shifting workday, keep reading here.—MC

Working in leadership at a hospital can be complicated—there are a range of education and job functions, all while everyone is ultimately responsible for patient care. Being a DEI leader in a hospital system in a border city, HR Brew recently sat down with Nancy Maldonado, chief diversity officer at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego to discuss launching the organization’s DEI team, how she measures success, and unique challenges of her job.

Pathway to diversity officer. Maldonado didn’t plan on a career in DEI, and began in health and wellness with a master’s degree in exercise physiology, then developed her own consulting business for corporate wellness programs.

She was working on her PhD in public health when an opportunity arose with the American Heart Association. “I started working [for a] nonprofit, and then just fell in love with this idea of, ‘I can make a living by doing really great work,’” Maldonado said, and worked as a community health director before moving onto the Chicano Federation, a social services organization.

The nonprofit work taught Maldonado about equity work, and advocating for communities of color, so she felt prepared when Rady Children’s Hospital created the chief diversity and inclusion officer role in 2022.

For more on this chief diversity officer and her targeted approach to DEI, keep reading here.—KP

Is getting promoted always the best thing to happen? There’s little doubt that many employees wouldn’t turn down a pay bump, but one author suggests that promotions aren’t always positive.

More companies are reconsidering promotion structures to include both non-management and management role tracks, HR Brew previously reported, so employees can advance their careers without necessarily jumping into people management.

But even when employees decide to take on a people management role, some of those “superpower skills” that got them promoted might work against them, according to Sabina Nawaz, executive coach, speaker, and author of You’re The Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need).

Nawaz shared with HR Brew how people pros can help employees be aware of some adverse effects of stepping into leadership.

For more of Nawaz’s insights on why promotions can be a double-edged sword, keep reading here.—MC