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3 ways pests can hurt businesses
Doug Haymore Facilities & GroundsIf you’ve ever been inside of a business and saw an insect flying around or a mouse dart across the floor, your thoughts probably turned to what was going on behind the scenes. Simply looking at a pest inside of an otherwise clean business makes you feel as though the place is dirty and that you don’t want to spend time there, especially if it was a restaurant or grocery store. You would probably also tell your friends and family to avoid the business at all costs. This is just one of the ways that a pest infestation can seriously hurt a business.
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America’s sleep deficiency: When you can’t snooze, you lose
Bob Kowalski Mental HealthcareAmericans seem to be closing their eyes to a problem that's growing, despite exhaustive research into the ramifications. It's time to wake up and smell the coffee: We don't get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep has been declared a "public health problem" by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which attributed an increased risk of chronic conditions such as diabetes, depression, cancer and reduced productivity to a shortage of shut-eye.
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Green meets smart: Eco-friendly packaging solutions
Delany Martinez Distribution & WarehousingFrom a manufacturing standpoint, ordering necessary packaging material seems simple enough. At its core, it's merely multiplying anticipated outgoing packages by the Styrofoam peanuts, bubble wrap, air pillows and other void-fillers needed to keep product safe.
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What is a supply chain? The alternative facts
Dr. William Oliver Hedgepeth Distribution & WarehousingI have taught courses in transportation, logistics and supply chain management for more than 20 years. In that time, I have come to understand that the world of supply chains is full of complexity, accountability, customer demand, uncertainty, mistakes and nature.
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Metals Thoughts: Pick your paradigm
Brad Yates Natural ResourcesGold broke but could not hold the 200 DMA at $1,262 Monday, and we are viewing that as a technical failure here. It is the first time since Nov. 10 that we have looked at the other side of that fence, so there is still some encouragement to be gained from the experience.
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How to avoid hiring those difficult-to-fire employees
Catherine Iste Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementThough terminations can be challenging, it is so much easier to fire a consistently poor performer than someone who is just a bad employee. Negative nellies, glory hounds and wimpy managers may not do anything wrong enough to have a bad performance review, so they end up staying around a lot longer than they should. In those cases, sometimes it is easier to avoid hiring these difficult-to-fire employees than it is to try to fire them.
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5 reasons you should integrate the floor into your exhibit design
Wendy Parsley Travel, Hospitality & Event ManagementI have walked countless trade show floors covered in the standard blue, red, black and even gray carpeting. In many cases, this carpeting extends into the exhibit booths in one of the chosen "show organizer approved" colors.
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Whole Foods is getting squeezed out of its own market
Bambi Majumdar Food & BeverageToday's trend may become tomorrow's necessity, and necessity breeds competition. This is the truth behind Whole Foods' struggling numbers. Whole Foods introduced the concept of organic food to the public, and in the process changed the way Americans eat today. In just 10 years (between 2005 and 2015), sales of organic food have seen a growth of 209 percent, according to the Organic Trade Association. The organic food industry reported $43.3 billion in sales in 2015.
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Metals Thoughts: Channel surfing
Brad Yates Natural ResourcesWhen I left the desk two weeks ago, gold was trading at $1,235 and hasn’t gone more than $20 either way from there since. With most headlines these days high on apoplectic shock and low on actual economic substance, we are all basically reduced to spewing ideological confirmation bias instead of looking at asset prices.
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From in-store to online: Charting the shutdown of digital retailers
Katherine Radin RetailSince the start of the year, Canadians have faced a few retail closures, with HMV being the most recent high-profile victim. As consumers shift their shopping behaviours toward the online marketplace, some bricks-and-mortar retail locations are becoming scarcer. Digital retailers with physical stores are especially feeling this crunch.
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