We are halfway through the work week, well into summer, and, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a reading break!

I know it’s time to kick my feet up, grab a coffee, and pull out ye old iPad whenever I start getting super excited by headlines like “How Flexible Work Culture Can Make Business More Social”… 

Not that it’s a boring headline, but it’s no “Bat Boy cheats on Lobster Girl with her reptilian sister,” if you know what I mean?!

But, without fail, come Wednesday morning I need to know all about how a talent hungry business wouldn’t consider an incredibly skilled and talented candidate, living in London – one of the world’s best cities in which to build a career because she needed a small degree of flexibility.

If you feel the same way give the article a read. It is actually quite fascinating, Bat Boy or no!

Flexible culture is not just a great way to attract candidates, it is also a great way to improve retention. Providing your staff with a little flexibility is well worth the improvements it provides in both engagement and productivity.

Not convinced?

“Disengagement and unproductivity is costing the US $4,621 per full time working employee.” – Click to Tweet

That number shocked the pants off of me! For more about how the cost of workplace disengagement is real and is much more of a priority than many of us ever thought, head over to Blogging4Jobs and read Jessica Miller-Merrells eye-opening new blog post.

Janine Truitt, another fantastic woman of HR, also shared a fascinating article this week called “Is Too Much Cross-Functional Work Killing Your Employees?” 

“Despite a society in love with doing the most, the truth is that we can do only one thing well at a time.” – Click to Tweet

We all know that trying to tackle too many projects at once is a recipe for disaster, but according to Janine many of today’s companies are witnessing this disaster first hand because they have condensed jobs to a point where employees simply cannot cope.

If you’re experiencing employee burnout at your company, you may want to check out Airtasker. 

Airtasker is like Odesk, but for employers looking to hire locally. Unlike similar sites such as TaskRabbit and Gigwalk, Airtasker is less curated. It’s founders describe it as more of an open market place approach to hiring temporary staff more like eBay and Airbnb.

So far Airtasker is only available in Australia, but they plan on expanding to the US in the near future. Australian or not, I highly recommend checking them out as the casualization of labour the company represents is a growing trend.

Let’s end on a fun note. This one’s an oldie, but a goodie… It’s probably the funniest HR related video I have EVER seen. Language has been beeped out, but the end is NSFW. You have been warned!

Dr. X fires Wolverine: 

So, how about it, would you fire Wolverine? Would you use a service like Airtasker? Is you culture flexible?

Let us know in the comments!