Thinking of relocating? Read this first

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Many companies have given their employees the green light to work from home permanently. And that has a lot of workers thinking about living somewhere else.

But don’t start packing your bags just yet.

Just because you can work from home, doesn’t mean you can live anywhere.

Moving to another state or region can affect your job, pay, benefits and taxes, reports CNN Business’ Jeanne Sahadi.

If your company doesn’t already have workers or an office in the location you want to move to, that could create more administrative and tax burdens for the company.

Relocating to a city with a lower cost of living — and where labor is less expensive — can also result in a smaller paycheck.

Taxes could also become a nightmare — especially if you live in one of the seven states that has “a convenience of the employer” rule. That means you could owe income taxes where your company office is located and also your home state.

The clock is ticking for the airline industry… 

Thousands of airline workers could be furloughed this week if Congress doesn’t pass additional aid for the industry.

The stimulus package that Congress passed in March provided up to $50 billion to the US airline industry under the terms airlines could not lay off or involuntarily furlough staff until October 1.

But as the pandemic rages on and air travel remains slow, the airlines are still struggling.

According to an analysis by CNN’s Pete Muntean, nearly 50,000 airline workers, including mechanics, gate agents, pilots and flight attendants, are at risk of being furloughed once the deadline hits.

Lessons from the work-from-home front

When it comes to that work-from-home life, we can all use a little help making it work. This week’s tips come from Deborah Caton in Birch Run, Michigan:

  • Get up and (to a certain extent) get ready in the morning. This may mean putting on regular clothes and brushing your teeth or much more. Make it feel different than what you do on a lazy Saturday.
  • Have a dedicated work space that is not in your bedroom. Not everyone will have this luxury, but you need to be able to walk away from work even if it is in your own house.
  • If you sit at a computer all day, invest in a quality office chair if you don’t already have one.

Talking about mental health in the office

The stress of the pandemic and its economic fallout can have a major impact on our mental health and work performance.

But how much can you really talk about it with your boss?

“Be careful about how much you disclose. Once you have said something, you can’t take it back,” Liza Gold, a psychiatrist and clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University, told me.

The key to these conversations is to be proactive (don’t wait until there’s a major performance problem) and come prepared with solutions for how to make the situation better.

Read more expert tips here.

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

Hiring season!

The weather is just starting to cool off, and retailers are already looking to hire for the holidays.

But don’t expect this to be a normal shopping season. Thanks to the pandemic, there likely won’t be the usual deal-seeking crowds lining up outside stores at the crack of dawn or pushing through crowded aisles.

Instead, retailers are preparing for a surge of online and curbside pickup orders, reports my CNN Business colleague Nathaniel Meyersohn. And they’re going to need to staff up.

Walmart, for example, plans to hire more than 20,000 seasonal workers in e-commerce fulfillment centers across the US. The mega-retailer has been on a hiring spree, adding more than 500,000 workers since March.

Here are some other companies hiring for the holidays:

  • UPS plans to hire at least 100,000 seasonal employees
  • 1-800-Flowers.com is looking to hire more than 10,000 seasonal workers
  • Michaels plans to add more than 16,000 seasonal positions
To learn more about this year’s seasonal hiring plans click here.

How happy are your employees?

You’ve heard this line before: If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.

Unfortunately, that’s hardly the reality for many workers. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

For CNN Business’ Perspectives, former CEO of Volvo Pehr Gyllenhammar outlined three ways companies can show employees that their well-being is a priority.

  • Make their work meaningful: Giving employees more complex and interesting work allows them to flourish in their roles, which can improve employees’ well-being and increase profitability.
  • Grow their careers: When workers feel challenged and have more responsibility and satisfying work, it leads to a decrease in absenteeism, while productivity and morale increases, writes Gyllenhammar.
  • Emphasize their health: Small changes in the workplace, like offering adjustable desks and chairs to fit different sized bodies, can really improve workers’ time in the office.
Read more about the changes he made while running Volvo here.

Coffee break

Working from home means we miss out on those mini breaks that naturally occurred in the office.

But you can now add self-care reminders to your schedule using Google’s Assistant. The new workday routine can automatically remind you to build some breaks into your schedule, like: staying hydrated, going for a quick walk or when it’s time to shut down your computer at the end of the workday.

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