What’s stopping your employees from truly logging off when they take a vacation? Quite possibly you and the rest of your staff.

Many of us are guilty of it — bothering a colleague who’s on PTO, regardless of “out of office” email reminders and “do not disturb” away messages. But if you want to attract and retain top talent and stave off employee burnout, you’d do well to mimic Dream11’s “Unplugged” policy.

The Indian company grants employees one week a year to “completely unplug” from email, Slack, WhatsApp messages, calls and all other work-related interaction. In fact, Dream11 told CNBC recently that it goes as far as ensuring vacationing staffers are “kicked out of the [company] system.”

Anyone who dares to contact an unplugged co-worker is fined 100,000 rupees ($1,200). Fortunately, the policy has worked so well, Dream11 hasn’t had to dole out the costly punishment even once. “No one wants to be that jerk who called someone who was on unplug,” said Bhavit Sheth, the company’s cofounder and COO.

Reasonable PTO policies are harder for some businesses to implement than others, but if you follow Dream11’s lead, there’s a good chance you’ll find unplugged staffers more plugged in when they return.

Nepotism: Can it bring down your business?

Rock on: Turn up the music for better performance.

Reboot: How to find harmony with a generational divide.

(Source: HBO)

The Emmy-winning series Succession, which returns to HBO in the spring, depicts plenty of reasons to not work with your family … even if you never crawl on the ground like a pig for the patriarch’s amusement or battle your siblings over cable news. While relatives and pals can work together well, doing so poses unique business risks.

The dangers of hiring family and friends

Real-world nepotism is usually less dramatic than Succession, but (as the Roy family learns) it can undercut trust and loyalty, particularly among employees who are not a part of the inner circle, according to research. A perception of favoritism decreases job performance and satisfaction while the organization’s quality control suffers.

It’s one thing to fire an underperforming employee, after all, but who’s going to fire their underperforming nephew or college roommate? Or worse, fire their boss’s underperforming nephew?

When nepotism is (maybe) OK

By the age of 30, more than 1 in 4 men have worked for the same employer as their dads, according to the U.S. Census. That’s often a part of the “human endowment,” explains industrial and organizational psychologist Robert Jones, author of Nepotism in Organizations.

Many parents teach their kids a trade or train them to run the family biz someday. In fact, banning business owners from hiring any relatives would itself present a civil rights issue, according to Jones.

“If you exclude someone from being hired from a job entirely on the basis of family membership … it should sound familiar,” he says. “That’s prejudice.”

The key is fairness and transparency

Fortunately, there’s a middle ground here. If a business owner hires family or friends but holds them to the exact same standards as other employees, it mitigates trust issues and other potential downsides. The rest of the staff must see that all decisions are based on transparent, objective metrics.

Nepotism without proper oversight is a recipe for toxicity and failure … but if your college roommate is really qualified for the role, well, they could use the work.

(Source: Shutterstock)

Dr. Steven Rogelberg is Chancellor’s Professor at UNC Charlotte and former president of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Approximately 70% of full-time employees enjoy listening to music at work. However, different types of music have different effects, according to a fascinating new paper by Dr. Kathleen Keeler and Dr. Jose Cortina of Virginia Commonwealth University. Depending on the task in question, music can have a positive or negative impact on success:

• Music in a major key (e.g., Toto’s song “Africa”) is associated with positive emotions, which can serve to promote creativity.
• Music in a minor key (e.g., Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine”) is associated with more negative emotions, which can undermine cognitive flexibility. We might not consider different courses of action, for example, but at the same time, it tends to help us ignore distractions. This can make quality control tasks occur at a higher level.
• Music with a fast tempo focuses attention, which can help with complex reasoning tasks.
• Music played at a low volume appears to broaden attention. This can be helpful for idea generation.
• For more mundane tasks requiring lower mental effort, music with a combination of the above characteristics can be beneficial.

Music appears to be helpful for job performance to the extent it “matches” the complexity and nature of the task at hand. Encourage employees to experiment with what they listen to on their headphones … and perhaps whistle while they work.

(Source: Hulu)

In Hulu’s Hollywood satire The Reboot, a meta-show about an early 2000s sitcom returning to the screen in 2022, everything seems to be going well as actors initially reunite and production gets underway. This harmony ends when lead writer Hannah Korman (Rachel Bloom) learns that her father Gordon (Paul Reiser), the original show’s lead writer, is returning too … with his dated punchlines and crass, lowbrow humor.

And so a creative cold war starts between Hannah’s political correctness and Gordon’s uncouth honesty. At first, they’re unable to break through the generational sensibilities … but over time, the unlikely team learns to work together, finding a balance to create comedic gold.

Turns out, Hannah isn’t as all-knowing as she assumes, and Gordon could update his shtick for modern audiences. They complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses, both teacher and student in their own ways, exemplifying how generations can (and should) come together in any work environment.

(Source: Firestone Walker)

Winter is stout season, and few stouts are better than those coming from this Californian brewery. Parabolita is a blend of bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout and milk stout, infused with Madagascar vanilla beans, cacao nibs, and a dash of sea salt. The result is a salted caramel sensation, though well-balanced and not too sweet.

Written by Lauren Vino, Ali Saleh, and Aaron Goldfarb. Comic by John McNamee.