Looks matter in business. According to a Newsweek survey of 202 corporate hiring managers, 57% said that it’s harder for unattractive people to get hired and 68% said that once hired, looks would affect job performance ratings. Sixty-six percent said that some managers would hesitate to hire people significantly overweight and 84% said that some managers would hesitate to hire people significantly older looking than their would-be co-workers. Nevertheless, although looks were more important than where a candidate went to school or a sense of humor, experience and confidence were more important than looks – which is good for “lookers-on” to know.

Once hired, employees are inundated with e-mails. A 2010 Harris Interactive survey questioned approximately 340 small business employees. According to the results, only 6% said they could keep up with more than 50 e-mails a day. For the 38% of smartphone-using employees, 37% experience e-mail overload compared to 12% of regular-phone-using employees. In 2009 it’s estimated 90 trillion e-mails – 247 billion a day – were sent. In 2010 it’s estimated 1.9 million people worldwide use e-mail and that number is expected to reach 2.5 billion by 2014. In business e-mail has replaced the telephone and has become the new “hang-up” at work.

The majority of brides-to-be plan their wedding at work. In an online poll of Brand Levitra 1,000 women, about 90% said they used company time to make wedding plans. Although on average they spent 10 hours a week planning – with 30% being done on the job – only 33% thought their work was negatively affected, while 15% said someone had commented on it. In fact, 38% of the women thought being engaged or married had a positive effect on how they were perceived at work. Nevertheless, experts report that post-wedding women are more focused on their job – perhaps gaining a “(wed)lock” on it.

There’s no statistical evidence about how many employees plan their vacations at work. However, a Netherlands study tracked happiness levels of 974 vacationers and 556 non-vacationers for several weeks. The vacationers were surveyed pre-, during and post-vacation; and their post-happiness levels were the same as non-vacationers’ – except for those who described their vacation as “very relaxing”. Their happiness levels remained elevated for 8 weeks. Because the length of relaxing vacations had no effect on post-happiness levels, the researchers recommended taking multiple, short, very relaxing vacations – or you could send yourself a postcard to remind yourself you’d been away.

Author Bio: Knight Pierce Hirst takes a second look at what makes life interesting and it takes only second at http://knightwatch.typepad.com

Category: Culture and Society
Keywords: employment, e-mail, wedding, vacation