Author Archive: Kimberly Wiefling

Where Are All The Women Leaders? (Infographic)

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Enjoy this contributed post and wonderful infographic provided by Trainwest! – Kimberly

“We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.” – Sheryl Sandberg

Over the past century, women have made huge strides towards achieving gender equality. Following on from decades of hard work and activism, we are now seeing an inspiring number of women taking up powerful and influential leadership roles across the worlds of business, law and politics.

However, while the percentage of female leaders is higher than ever before there is still much work to be done. Despite massive advancements, women still comprise a mere 12% of board members and only 6.3% of national leaders across the world. For every Oprah Winfrey and Angela Merkel, there are millions and millions of women who are still unfairly losing out on leadership opportunities.

(For full infographic, click “Continue Reading”.)Continue reading→

How to Succeed as a Team Remotely

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Thanks to Avery Taylor Phillips for this fabulous post! Enjoy!  –  Kimberly

Across the country, more and more people are working remotely, and companies are creating innovative new ways to communicate with employees from anywhere, regardless of location. Remote work is a growing trend in the U.S., and experts think “telecommunicating will approach or even reach 50 percent by 2020,” according to Rutgers. Here are a few tips, apps and tools you can use to make communication among co-workers much easier and more efficient.

Tips for Great Communication

With over half of professional jobs in the U.S. held by women last year, women are thriving in the workforce and taking great remote work opportunities, even when certain industries aren’t hiring as many women as they should be. When working from home, it may take a bit of getting used to, and it will take a while to find a workflow that works for you. Continue reading→

Why Women Should Consider Skilled Trades

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Thanks to Avery Taylor Phillips for this fabulous post! Enjoy!  –  Kimberly

There are many reasons that the realm of skilled trade jobs has become particularly alluring to the female demographic. Aside from the need to fill an increasing gap of viable trade workers, it is a mutually beneficial work environment for women. Here are the biggest reasons to consider a skilled trade position if you are a female going to college:

Benefits of Skilled Trades

Skilled trade jobs offer high job security. The majority of blue collar workers have grown into older adults reaching closer to their retirement age. This means that as they age out and leave their positions, more and more job opportunities are going to continue to come available.

Because many of the skilled jobs that we rely on cannot easily be outsourced, it means they are here to stay and grow.

Making sure that young workers are prepared to replace retiring baby boomers is a crucial component to filling the shortage gap of skilled trade employees. Since women have not historically made up a large portion of skilled trades, integrating them into these jobs is essential to the future of trade industries. These types of positions also provide an opportunity for women to grow in a company.
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The World Needs More Women in IT

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Surprisingly, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology, women make up only 26 percent of the computing workforce — and the breakdown of this percentage is even more alarming. As of 2017, only 3 percent of the female workforce are African-American, 5 percent are Asian women, and a startling 1 percent are Hispanic women. Considering this gender gap (and pay gap), it’s easy to say the tech industry is seriously missing out on a large amount of talent, perspective, and skill. Continue reading→

Avoid Tapping Into Your Retirement

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Contributed article in our financial series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

A hefty 401(k) is in an important part of building your retirement nest egg. The best way to keep it viable is to never dip into it for any reason. Of course, emergency situations may arise over the years. However, you really need to have another financial source available when and if that situation arises. Credit cards are the traditional go-to, but if unavailable due to bad credit the next option to consider is to apply for a bad credit installment loan online. Though debt is never ideal, it’s better than the alternative; remember, tapping into your 401(k) savings may be more costly than you know.Continue reading→

You May be Due for a Sabbatical

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Enjoy this contributed post provided by Discover. – Kimberly

When’s the last time you were able to take enough time off to feel like you really were refreshed? Unfortunately if you’re like too many people, it’s been too long. Take this statistic into consideration: While time off has generally increased for most workers, vacation use has not kept pace. So we’re earning more vacation, but taking less vacation—in fact in just 2016, we left over 662 million vacation days unused. And that number hasn’t decreased over the years; it’s increased. The result is a workforce that’s stressed out and unproductive, in addition to spending too many hours in the office. But there’s a solution that you might want to consider: a sabbatical. Think of a sabbatical as a vacation, but only longer (and sometimes unpaid). A sabbatical is generally more time off—at least several weeks if not more—that an employee uses to pursue travel or some other endeavor. What else does it entail? This graphic explains it.

Continue reading→

How to Tap Into the Need for Work-Life Balance

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Enjoy this guest post, written by Avery Phillips. – Kimberly

Phones and laptops make us constantly available to work. This makes it easy to lose the clock-off time of 5 p.m. and find yourself working long into the nights and weekends. When your work-life balance gets off-kilter, you lose many valuable things, including your time, attention, and maybe even your health.

Overworking is known to lead to mistakes, stress, and overall deterioration of your wellness. In this article, we’re going to talk about the struggles to maintain a healthy work-life balance while balancing family and personal needs. We’ll also cover what you can do about it.Continue reading→

Your Credit Impacts More Than You Think

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Contributed article in our career series. Enjoy! – Scrappy Kimberly

When was the last time you checked your credit status? If it’s been more than six months to a year, you may want to make this a priority. Though it may not seem like a big deal at the moment, as companies begin to become increasingly dependent upon credit to determine eligibility for products and services, a poor credit history could mean the inability to get even some of the most basic things.

Don’t believe it? Here’s how a negative credit rating can impact your life.Continue reading→

Complex Systems View at the Emergence of Communication from Cells to Societies

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Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

The unifying theme of this book is that communication is an underlying fabric of life, as fundamental as matter and energy are to our world and, more importantly, to our understanding of the world.  This book is also a non-exhaustive account of interesting, out of pattern communication and social behaviors that we can observe in animals, or in the biological world; among us, humans, and between us humans and other species.

While we know that communication is fundamental to life, in any form or shape it comes on our planet, the goal of this book is to show that there are aspects of communication that can be universal and transferable from one species to another and that it is what enables collective behavior in social animals and humans. At the same time, there are aspects of communication that are unique to each species or ecosystem, that communication has evolved both alongside the genetic evolution, the social evolution that is characteristic to a subset of living species, and the cultural evolution that is characteristic not only to humans, but also to whales, dolphins, primates, elephants, and many more.

Continue reading→

3 Tips for Women Entering the Welding Field

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Contributed article in our career series. Enjoy! – Scrappy Kimberly

Fields like welding can seem challenging for women. While it does have its fair share of challenges, times are changing and more and more women are considering a career in welding. You may have to navigate a bit differently if you want to prevent incidents and perform to the best of your abilities. With that in mind, here are three tips for women entering the welding field. Image Ref: Royalty Free Photo

Have the Right Protective Gear

Women have different frames than man. Not only are they often shorter and lighter, but their hands also tend to smaller.Continue reading→