The WordPress.com team is always working on new design ideas to bring your website to life. Check out the latest themes in our library, featuring beautiful new options with bloggers, diarists, and creators in mind.
Tenaz (“tenacious” in Spanish) is a classic magazine theme with a rich, dense homepage perfect for professional bloggers or small media networks. Customizable elements are somewhat limited for this theme, but the black and white color palette is versatile and timeless.
Takashi, the designer for this theme, was inspired by a visit to a design museum in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. Among the beautiful designs displayed there, the wall labels, written in both Japanese and English, also caught his attention. Takashi then started thinking about other examples of when dual language displays are needed, from road signs to posters in large immigrant communities. This theme, tomoni (“together” in Japanese), came to life from that idea.
Tomoni uses Noto Sans and Noto Sans Japanese, which makes both texts visually harmonic. There are eight color variations to suit a wide array of aesthetic flavors.
Entry is a uniquely styled block theme designed specifically for journalling. It features a blocky grid layout for posts, with every element contained in squared or rectangular shapes. This is a design that makes a statement.
Trellick is a minimalist, raw blog theme that strips away the polished veneer of the modern “sameness” of web design — this theme shows the untamed essence of the digital realm. Embracing the architectural concept of Brutalism, Trellick showcases a bold, unapologetic aesthetic.
This design features three columns. The left (header) and the right (sidebar) columns are sticky, and only the main content in the middle column scrolls. The small, square-shaped featured image contributes a distinctive look. Trellick is available in four different color schemes.
Covr is a beautifully crafted theme that boasts a clean and modern design, specifically created to showcase images in an immersive and captivating way. Its full-width home template elegantly displays your portfolio, photography, or personal blog posts, providing an enjoyable browsing experience for your audience. Whether you’re a photographer, artist, or blogger, Covr is the perfect choice to present your work and make an impact.
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Premium themes are available to use at no extra charge for customers on the Premium plan or above. Partner themes are third-party products that can be purchased for $79/year each.
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In a professional landscape where employees are redefining their relationships with work and rethinking what they want from their employers, it’s essential that organizations align with their preferences in order to remain competitive in the employment market.
The modern workforce is in the midst of an evolution.
Today’s professionals are redefining their traditional relationships with work and, as a result, rethinking what they want from the organizations they work for.
Influenced by a diverse array of societal shifts and economic transformations, today’s professionals are seeking much more than just a paycheck from their employers.
And that means understanding and adapting to these changes is essential for organizations to remain competitive when it comes to attracting and retaining A-player talent.
In this article, we’ll explain 14 factors that help make companies truly attractive to employees in today’s professional landscape.
The Backstory: Why Employee Preferences Are Shifting in 2023
In order to understand what exactly employees look for in an employer today, it’s important to first understand why their preferences have shifted.
The rise of remote work, advancements in technology, and the lingering impacts of the global pandemic have ushered in an era where flexibility, work-life balance, and meaningful work have become more important than ever.
Society’s increased focus on social consciousness also means that employees are now looking for organizations that align with their personal values and ethics.
So, unlike in past decades, today’s employees want to work for organizations that not only support their professional and personal growth but are also committed to making a positive impact on society and the environment.
14 Areas of Focus for Organizations Striving to Attract Top Talent in 2023
In the previous section, we painted in broad strokes about shifting employee preferences. But as a business leader, where should you focus your efforts when it comes to making your organization as appealing as possible to today’s employees?
Here are 14 ideas for where to start.
1. Competitive Salaries
Today’s employees want more than just competitive salaries—but that doesn’t mean this isn’t still critically important.
Organizations that offer high-paying roles attract top-tier employees who know their worth in the marketplace.
So, it’s important that your organization does too.
2. Comprehensive Benefits Package
In a traditional employee benefits package, you’d expect to see things like health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off.
You can provide extra value to your employees by offering additional benefits that truly align with their lives.
Childcare Benefits
During the pandemic, many parents grew accustomed to the convenience and cost-savings of being at home with their kids. Now, as people return to in-office work, you can ease this stress with incentives focused on childcare.
While most organizations can’t provide daycare in their workspace, you can support your staff with complimentary access to nearby daycare centers or by helping to subsidize their childcare costs.
And now, these new pet owners are struggling with how to handle care for their dogs while working full-time jobs.
If you’ve got pet owners on your team, you can offer them things like:
Providing stipends to cover the costs of professional pet care services can alleviate concerns about leaving pets alone and ensure they receive proper care and attention.
Designating specific days or, if feasible, allowing pets in the office every day, creates a pet-friendly environment that allows employees to bring their pets to work, fostering a positive work-life balance.
Considering offering pet insurance as a valuable benefit demonstrates the company’s commitment to the well-being of both employees and their pets.
While this won’t necessarily benefit everyone in your company, it’ll go a long way for many of them. It’ll also act as an attractive benefit for potential future hires.
You can consider offering your employees commuting benefits like:
Enrolling your team in fuel discount programs or providing fuel gift cards
Offering paid parking for your employees
Offering public transit passes or unlimited public transit vouchers
Setting up a company ridesharing account that people can use if they’re in a pinch or have to be at the office extra early or late
These are just a few options. The key is to understand exactly what resonates with your employees and aligns with your brand.
3. Flexible Work Arrangements
The pandemic gave employees a taste of professional freedom, allowing them to prioritize autonomy and balance more easily in their lives. For employers, mandated remote work demonstrated that employees could still deliver outstanding results, even when they weren’t in the office.
And, as a result, flexible work arrangements have become incredibly important for employees.
Here are a few ways you can incorporate it in your organization.
Flexible Schedules
Flexibility in working hours allows employees to manage their work around personal commitments, rather than the traditional 9-to-5 schedule.
This may include options such as compressed workweeks, flextime (where employees can start and finish their workdays at varying times), or job sharing.
By accommodating various life demands like childcare, education, or hobbies, flexible schedules can enhance employee satisfaction and productivity.
Remote Work Options
The ability to work from anywhere has become increasingly important to employees.
This flexibility not only eliminates commute times but also allows them to create a comfortable work environment tailored to their personal needs.
For many, the ability to work remotely at least part of the time has become a non-negotiable aspect of job offers.
Hybrid Work Models
Hybrid models, where employees split their time between working remotely and working in the office, have emerged as a popular compromise between traditional and fully remote working setups.
These models can offer the best of both worlds: the collaboration and socialization benefits of in-office work, and the flexibility and autonomy of remote work.
4. Professional Development Opportunities
In a recent survey, 92% of employees indicated that having access to professional development is important or very important.
And in order to facilitate these opportunities, it’s important that employees have access to senior leaders within your business and that your organization has a strong employee development program in place.
Unlike past generations, today’s younger professionals have no problem leaving their current jobs in search of advancement opportunities with other organizations.
So, it stands to reason that creating—and communicating—clear pathways for career progression and the opportunity for upward mobility can attract ambitious, top-tier employees—and keep them at your organization.
That’s why modern employees are attracted to companies that:
Have robust CSR programs
Demonstrate ethical business practices
Show a commitment to making a positive social and environmental impact
This can include initiatives like:
Community service opportunities
Corporate philanthropy
Fair trade practices
Environmental sustainability efforts.
Your organization can incorporate this on a macro level, but individual departments and teams can also do it with micro initiatives, like charitable team building activities.
Here are a few you can try.
City, Park, or Beach Clean-Up
You can do some good in the world without it costing your company a dime—all it takes is some time and a little team spirit.
Consider heading out into your community—whether to a city, park, or beach—and doing a cleanup.
Pick up trash, collect recycling, and spend the day tidying up the local public amenities that everyone enjoys.
Want a way to give back while helping your team hone valuable business skills at the same time? Then you’ll love this.
With Charity Bike Buildathon, your workgroup will split into teams to build, decorate, and put together an advertising campaign for children’s bicycles.
After each group has presented their bike, you get to donate them all to a charity of your choice!
Philanthropy isn’t always about donating money or goods. Sometimes, it can just be about spreading some cheer and goodwill.
Random Acts of Kindness fuses the scavenger hunt concept with a philanthropic twist. This team building activity gets teams racing against one another to try and complete as many good deeds as possible before time runs out.
Host a Food or Toy Drive
As an organization, you’ve got a ton of connections—and so do your employees. If you’re up for a bigger project, hosting a food or toy drive can be a great way to make a difference for those in need.
It’s not a complicated process to put one together, it just requires a little bit of planning.
Here’s how to approach it:
Choose a Charity: Decide on a food bank or charity you’d like to support, then contact them to inquire about what they need. It’s also wise to ask if there’s anything they can’t accept.
Decide on Your Location: You can choose to host a one-day drive where everything brings their donations to a specific location, or you can set up multiple collection points and accept donations on certain days over an extended period of time.
Promote your food drive: Make sure to get the word out there about your drive. You can do this using email and social media, printing flyers, and personal outreach.
Collect and Deliver Donations: Once you’ve collected all of your donations, drop them off to the charity you’re supporting.
Thank your donors: Make sure to follow up and thank everyone who contributed! It’s often nice to send an overview of the drive, including how many items were donated and who benefitted.
Having your team work together to host the drive is also a valuable exercise in event planning, so your charitable initiative also has a team building and business-benefitting aspect.
Class is in session with this philanthropic activity where your team will be tested by a variety of education-themed teamwork challenges, share a special bonding experience, and support local children in need by competing to fill backpacks with school supplies and donating them to charity.
At Outback Team Building and Training, we recognize the value of helping organizations make a difference, and that’s why every one of our team building activities can be amplified with a charitable care kit component.
A positive, inclusive, and supportive culture that aligns with an employee’s values can make an organization more attractive.
And there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for creating a great company culture.
But in order to provide you with some inspiration for how to improve the culture within your organization, we recommend you read through our resource where we asked six business leaders to share their definitions of company culture—along with real-world examples.
8. Work-Life Balance
In our always-connected digital age, maintaining a healthy work-life balance has become a crucial aspect of overall well-being.
Employees increasingly seek organizations that understand the importance of balancing personal life with work demands.
This might involve flexible working hours, remote or hybrid work options, generous vacation policies, and respect for personal time outside of work hours.
Companies that promote a healthy work-life balance are viewed as caring for their employees’ well-being, leading to higher job satisfaction and reduced burnout.
9. Recognition and Reward Systems
High-performing employees value recognition of their hard work and achievements.
This recognition can be in the form of public acknowledgment, performance bonuses, promotions, or even simple thank-you notes.
An effective reward system not only boosts employee morale but also encourages continued high performance and increases employee retention.
Employees are attracted to roles that offer them a sense of purpose and allow them to make a difference. Meaningful work can boost motivation, productivity, and job satisfaction. This is particularly true for top-tier employees, who are often driven by impact and purpose more than just salary.
Today’s employees are no longer satisfied with simply going to work and punching a clock. They want more than just a job—they want purpose.
Organizations whose mission aligns with their employees’ personal values and beliefs are more likely to attract and retain these individuals.
So, it’s essential to proactively communicate your organization’s mission, vision, and values and to demonstrate how the efforts of individual employees, teams, and departments help make them a reality.
But there’s an important distinction to make when it comes to diversity and inclusivity.
In some regards, the concept of diversity in the workplace pertains more to a quantifiable metric. On the other hand, inclusivity pertains to the way people feel when they work in your organization.
That’s why creating an inclusive workplace environment should be the key focus for your organization.
This means not only welcoming diversity but also actively working to ensure equal opportunities and inclusivity in your company’s practices, policies, and culture.
12. Transparency and Communication
Open and transparent communication from leadership about your company’s strategies, challenges, and successes is valued highly by top-tier employees.
It fosters a culture of trust, encourages employee participation, and gives employees a sense of ownership and belonging in the organization.
13. Autonomy and Empowerment
Now more than ever, employees value the freedom to make decisions and have control over their work.
Empowering your employees can enhance their job satisfaction, increase their sense of ownership, and drive innovation. It demonstrates trust in the employees’ abilities and can be a significant factor in attracting and retaining high-performing individuals.
14. Employee Well-Being Programs
People are becoming increasingly conscious of their well-being, and they expect their organizations to support it.
This can include their physical health and well-being, such as:
Companies that invest in their employees’ well-being show that they care about their staff as individuals, which can lead to higher job satisfaction and loyalty.
In today’s rapidly evolving professional landscape, organizations must recognize that the expectations of modern employees have moved beyond just financial compensation and benefits.
This transformation of the modern workforce is not a fleeting trend but rather an ongoing evolution.
And, in order for your organization to remain competitive in attracting and retaining top talent, it’s essential to align your business accordingly.
What is your organization doing to remain attractive to employees in 2023? Let us know in the comments section below!
Learn about team building and group skills training sessions can help make your organization more attractive to existing and prospective employees.
If you’ve got questions about how team building and group skills training sessions can help ensure your company appeals to today’s employees, reach out to an Employee Engagement Consultant.
In context: With all the excitement, headlines, and talk about generative AI, Meta is reminding people that these systems aren’t as important as the area it has plowed over $24 billion into over the years: the metaverse. Nick Clegg, the company’s head of global affairs, just held a press conference in the virtual world to hail the metaverse as the future of computing.
Bloomberg reports that Clegg held a small press conference within Meta’s Horizon Workrooms. He was in London and spoke to Washington-based reporters who were wearing borrowed Meta Quest headsets. The publication notes that the group appeared as torsos seated around a large wooden table, and only Clegg’s avatar resembled the person wearing the headset.
“We’re going to stick with it, because we really believe, all the early evidence suggests, that something like this will be the heart of the new computing platform,” Clegg said. “But it’s going to take a while.”
It wasn’t that long ago when Facebook went all-in on the metaverse, going so far as to change its corporate name to Meta and pour billions into its Reality Labs division. But getting consumers to feel the same level of excitement has always been an uphill battle. Even teens aren’t interested in the concept.
Things have gotten even worse for Meta in recent times. The global economic slump means expensive VR headsets are pretty low on people’s shopping lists – shipments slumped more than 12% year-over-year in 2022.
But the biggest blow to Meta’s ambitions has been the rise of generative AI over the last few months. Tech firms are rushing to implement the likes of ChatGPT into their services; even Meta said it would be introducing AI-powered chat in WhatsApp and Messenger. It’s taken what little focus was on the metaverse away from that area and placed it squarely onto AI – Zuckerberg rarely mentions the virtual world anymore.
Big companies seem to have realized that spending a lot of money on the metaverse is becoming a pointless endeavor. Microsoft’s round of 10,000 layoffs saw its industrial metaverse project killed off, and Disney laid off its entire metaverse team as part of cost-cutting plans. There are also the cuts Meta has made that impacted the Reality Labs division, and senators demanding the metaverse be a place for adults only.
One supporter in Meta’s corner is Tim Sweeney. The Epic Games boss recently explained why he thinks the concept still has promise.
Clegg believes advertising and commerce will help Meta recoup the billions it has invested in the metaverse – Zuckerberg famously said it could be earning billions or even trillions of dollars in ten years – but then people actually have to be using these virtual worlds to buy things or be served ads.
There were plenty of obvious bugs during Clegg’s event, including all the avatars’ mouths moving when one person spoke. He believes the hardware is another area that will improve in time. “I just really want to stress that we’re going to look back on the headware we’re wearing now and think, ‘Gosh, do you remember the days when you would wear a Quest Pro?'” Clegg said. “We’ve always been very clear that we’re in this for the long haul. This is not going to happen overnight.”
Nvidia Corporation is expanding its product line with new software capabilities and a high-performance computing platform that scientists can use to expedite their research.
During SC22, Nvidia will also detail its collaboration with Lockheed Martin Corporation to develop a system for visualizing geophysics data such as sea temperature measurements.
Nvidia Corporation is adding new software features and a high-performance computing platform that scientists can use to speed up their research.
The updates were scheduled to debut at the Supercomputing 2022 event. During SC22, Nvidia will also detail its collaboration with Lockheed Martin Corporation to develop a system for displaying geophysical information, such as readings of sea temperature measurements.
Digital twin collaboration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States has chosen Nvidia and Lockheed Martin to construct a new computing system known as the Earth Observation Digital Twin or EODT. The system will be able to process multiple types of geophysical data, including sea temperature measurements and solar wind data. Climate and weather visualizations will be created using these data to support research initiatives.
EOTD will operate on cloud instances from Amazon Web Services Inc. equipped with graphics processing units. In addition, it will perform some computing tasks using systems from the DGX and OVX data center appliance product lines by Nvidia. The appliances include GPUs optimized for artificial intelligence applications and other workloads.
According to Nvidia, the system’s software architecture consists of multiple components.
The OpenRosetta3D application from Lockheed Martin will collect the geophysics data that EOTD will process. Once collected, the data will be processed into the Omniverse Nucleus database. Another system component is Lockheed Martin’s Agatha software tool, which makes it easier for researchers to interact with geophysics data gathered from multiple sources.
The first demonstration of EOTD’s capabilities is scheduled for September next year. According to Nvidia, the initial prototype of the system will be created to display data regarding the sea surface temperature.
New edge platform
Nvidia also intends to unveil several new product enhancements during SC22. The first feature is a platform that will facilitate the transfer of scientific data across geographically distant computers and other systems.
There are several circumstances in which researchers must be able to transmit data over extensive distances. For instance, a university may desire to share measurements from research equipment in one facility with a supercomputer hosted on another facility. Similarly, researchers may want to communicate simulation findings with many supercomputers operating in separate locations.
Senior Product Manager Geetika Gupta stated, “To overcome this problem, Nvidia has introduced a high-performance computing platform that combines edge computing and AI to capture and consolidate streaming data from scientific edge instruments and then allow devices to talk to each other over long distances.”
The platform is based on three Nvidia chip technologies: MetroX-3, Holoscan, and BlueField-3.
MetroX-3 is a soon-to-be-introduced technology that can significantly expand the reach of a data center network. With this technology, a data center can connect to IT infrastructure over 25 miles away. Researchers can transfer scientific data between servers located in different facilities using MetroX-3 network links.
The new platform from Nvidia also includes Holoscan and BlueField-3 chips. Researchers may utilize Holoscan to process data from medical devices. BlueField-3 chips from Nvidia are specialized processors optimized for network traffic coordination between servers.
Software upgrades
Omniverse is a software development platform offered by Nvidia to create digital twins and simulations. Recently at SC22, Nvidia was scheduled to unveil an update to Omniverse that makes it easier for scientists to use the platform for research projects.
Omniverse can now execute batch workloads on systems powered by Nvidia’s H100 and A100 graphics cards in data centers. Batch workloads are applications, such as physics simulators, that do not require user input to perform calculations.
As part of the update, Nvidia is also integrating popular scientific applications into Omniverse. The applications include the scientific data visualization tools ParaView, IndeX, and NeuralVDB. Modulus, a software tool for building neural networks that automatically perform physics calculations, is now compatible with Omniverse.
One of the areas in which the company’s GPUs are used to support research initiatives is quantum computing. To facilitate the work of scientists, Nvidia is releasing two new features dedicated to quantum computing.
The first functionality is being rolled out for the CUDA Toolkit of the firm. This is a collection of software components for developing apps compatible with Nvidia graphics cards. The purpose of the new functionality is to enhance the performance of scientific apps that do quantum mechanical computations.
Nvidia is concurrently improving its cuQuantum framework. Researchers utilize the architecture to mimic quantum computers on conventional computing gear. cuQuantum now enables the simulation of quantum computers with up to tens of thousands of qubits due to the upgrade introduced.
