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Sign up for biweekly tips and takes on all things work from the team at Bright + Early:
Guides
The Guide to Building a Creative Agency That Attracts – and Retains – Top Talent
A special collaboration between Bright + Early and Creative Niche.
Bright Reads
How to Give Tough Feedback to Your Boss
Real-talk advice, plus one sneaky hack.
Guides
The Guide to Building a Creative Agency That Attracts – and Retains – Top Talent
A special collaboration between Bright + Early and Creative Niche.
Read more
Bright Reads
How to Give Tough Feedback to Your Boss
Real-talk advice, plus one sneaky hack.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to Crafting Employee Surveys
How to get great feedback (without making things feel robotic).
Stranger than Fiction
Company onboarding guide somehow manages to be both vague as hell and way too prescriptive
Welcome to your first day as a new employee at Sink & Ship, the best online destination for bathroom reno essentials!
Bright Reads
What You Shouldn’t Do On Zoom, According to HR Experts
Are treadmills okay? Are beauty filters weird? We explore.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide To Writing Performance Reviews as a Non-Manager
So, you’ve been asked to review a colleague, yourself, or—gulp—your manager. Don’t stress, we’ll walk you through it.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to Indigenous-Friendly Work
Looking to make meaningful change? Here's how to remove barriers and reduce harm, step by step.
Stranger than Fiction
Guys You Meet at Tech Conferences, Ranked
A (satirical) guide to bro navigation.
Reports
B+E Wrapped: What's "In" at Conscious Companies?
What we saw working with 50+ people-first teams in 2023. Plus: what we think is coming next.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to (Modern) HR for Non-Profits
How to build structure without losing your soul.
Bright Reads
So You Want To (or Have To) Roll Out Transparent Pay.
All your toughest open salary questions answered.
Bright Reads
So You’re Hiring Your First HR Lead
How to get someone who "gets it".
Bright Reads
Building a Tech Career in Prada Hot Shorts
What does it really mean to dress for success?
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to (Ethical) Global Benefits
Our how-to framework for launching employee rewards across different countries.
Bright Reads
Immigrants Are an Important Part of the Tech Economy. Here’s How To Actually Support Them
Four key ways employers can help newcomers succeed.
Bright Reads
Burning Out? Treat It Like a Brain Injury
After suffering a brain injury, writer Emily Key discovered recovery was a lot like treating burnout. Here's how she healed.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to Ethical Global Pay
Three ways to approach (fair) compensation for distributed teams.
Bright Reads
Why Your Workplace Should Offer “Spiritual Days”
A perk that encourages whole-human belonging.
Bright Reads
How Is Corporate Pride Faring in a WFH World?
Our tips for celebrating remotely– minus the rainbow washing.
Guides
The (2023) Parenting Playbook
Parenting is hard. Here's how workplaces can make it easier.
Bright Reads
How to Bootstrap Your Startup’s HR (And When Not To)
How much you can get away with on your own, and how to do it.
Stranger than Fiction
Move Over, Quiet Quitting: It's Time to Link Off
Our dictionary for the modern world of work.
Bright Reads
What's It Like to Be Poly and Out at Work?
Non-monogamous folks spill on how they navigate benefits, parties and judgmental coworkers.
Bright Reads
Am I My Parents’ American Dream?
Navigating the guilt and gratitude of being a white-collar child of blue-collar parents.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to Employing Digital Nomads
Working from anywhere allows employees to live out their dreams. But without a clear and fair policy, companies can end up in hot water.
Stranger than Fiction
Cover Letter Jargon, Translated
Because there are only so many ways to say, “Please, for the love of God, hire me.”
Bright Reads
So You Want to Date Your Coworker
New, realistic rules for office romance.
Bright Reads
Work Friends: Wordle Editor Tracy Bennett Makes Problems You Can Solve
We interview the New York Times puzzle editor about her career path and perspective on games.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide To Responding To World Events
These days, employers are expected to have meaningful responses to hard issues. Here’s how to do it well.
Bright Reads
What Does ChatGPT Mean For HR?
We talk with the Bright + Early team about all things AI.
Bright Reads
Americans Returning To Work Postpartum Have it Rough
Working caregivers in the US are faced with abysmal parental leave policies. Here's how they handle it.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide To Manager Handbooks
Even good managers need a little help sometimes.
Bright Reads
The Problem With Productivity Books
From Lean In to Can’t Even, why corporate self-help books won’t save the workplace.
Bright Reads
Out Of Tens: This Meeting Trick Helps Us Build Psychological Safety
We've tinkered with lots of ways to work. Out Of 10s has stood the test of time.
Bright Reads
How Design Thinking Can Fix Your Workplace
We speak to designer Linn Vizard about using service design to build better HR.
Bright Reads
Where Did All The Babysitting Jobs Go?
The seminal teen job seems to be going extinct.
Bright Reads
Abortion Workers Are Facing Their Future
In the USA, abortion clinic staff are grappling with what to do next for work.
Bright Reads
Four-Day Workweeks. How Are They Actually Going?
(And how to do them right.)
Work Diaries
I Used An AI Generator To Do My Design Job
A creative director uses AI illustration software Midjourney to make artwork for a magazine.
Bright Reads
Career Progression Is Different When You’re Disabled
Disabled people often can’t—and don’t want to—abide by standards of professional life set by non-disabled people.
Bright Reads
The New Jobs Shepherding In The Remote Work Revolution
Corporations' awkward shift to remote work has spawned a new industry devoted to easing the friction.
Bright Reads
How Does It Work: Feeld
Inside the alt dating app with a "post-breakup makeover" budget.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide To Vacation Policies
Just how unlimited is unlimited? What's an accrual? How to get off the spreadsheets and get it right.
Bright Reads
Introducing CheckedOut, a Professional Network for the Emotionally Fatigued
You're clicks away from quitting your fast-paced marketing job and raising alpacas in the Andes.
Bright Reads
How Does It Work: The GIST
Inside a women-owned media startup where sports fans of all genders thrive.
Bright Reads
Cripping Time At Work
Katie Walsh explores disability at work and the idea that your worth cannot be determined by the schedule on which you operate.
Bright Reads
In This Economy?!
A conversation on paying people in a recession, with Compensation Consultant Trisha Neogi.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide To Giving (and Taking) Feedback
How to tell someone they're doing (not so) great, step by step.
Stranger than Fiction
Memo: Wellnezz Company Perks
A CEO walks through some minor (just minor!) changes he's making during the financial downturn.
Bright Reads
Kim Kelly On Unions, HR And Remembering Our History
The journalist and organizer talks to us after the launch of her new book Fight Like Hell.
Bright Reads
How Does It Work: Co-Star
Inside the AI-powered astrology app where employee perks include free birth chart and tarot readings.
Bright Reads
The Case Against Reference Checks
When deciding if a person is the right choice for the job, your decision should not rely on an external party.
Bright Reads
Why Is LinkedIn Like This?
Despite its cringe-worthy earnestness, LinkedIn has remained a ubiquitous companion to our changing work lives. Why?
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide To (Less Horrible) Layoffs
If you’re in the unfortunate position of planning layoffs, here’s how you can plan a kinder, smoother process.
Bright Reads
Why Office Workers Are Chasing Their Barista Dreams
Unpacking the growing ambition to ditch the desk job and get behind the bar.
Stranger than Fiction
Welcome To Your Four-Day Work Week!
Less hours? Yes! Less work? No.
Bright Reads
Work Friends: The Jobfather Is Getting 500 Black People Into Tech
Jermaine Murray is changing the tech industry one new hire at a time.
Bright Reads
Can You Keep A Secret? Here's What Goes Down On Blind
The anonymous work social app is changing worker-company dynamics everywhere.
Bright Reads
Don't Bleed At Work
Menstruators are the canary in the corporate coalmine. What can we learn from them?
Bright Reads
Retirement Is Changing. What’s Next?
Are DAOs, collective living and "returnships" on our retirement horizon?
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide To Building Your Benefits
An Ontario-focused guide to choosing decent health benefits.
Bright Reads
How Does It Work: Blockchain Cooperative Informal Systems
Get to know this member-driven co-op with a soft spot for baby swag.
Bright Reads
Why Prison Labour Doesn't Work
An explainer on how inmates are made to work and why they shouldn’t be.
Work Diaries
I’m A Software Engineer. This Is What It Took To Hire Me.
An engineer went from eight interviews to four big offers in weeks. What company does he pick and why?
Bright Reads
How Does It Work: People Consultancy Bright + Early
Our version of a Proust Questionnaire, created to reveal the inner workings of interesting companies and their people programs.
Bright Reads
Can We Fix Restaurants?
The future of restaurants might depend on rethinking the work that’s done inside of them.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to (Better) Job Postings
How to stand out in a tough hiring market.
Bright Reads
Why I Start My Work Days With Scent
Strategist and scent educator Tracy Wan shares an unexpected ritual that helps her focus.
Bright Reads
Losing Our Ambition: Is This The Year We Resolve To Work Less?
Writer James Greig reflects on the futility of New Year’s resolutions and what it really means to commit to anything other than work.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to Working in HR
What the F does HR even do?
Stranger than Fiction
Disconnected. Right?
A boss tries anything to avoid being charged under the Right to Disconnect act. How far will he go?
Bright Reads
Weirding Work as the Climate Changes
Foresight strategist Sam Venis shares the unexpected ways work will evolve in response to the climate crisis.
Bright Reads
Toxic TV Bosses: Why Does Bad Feel So Good?
Our enduring appetite for dysfunctional workplace shows is somewhere between self-soothing and sadistic.
Bright Reads
Holiday Cheer, Pandemic Style
Are you ready to navigate the office party in these *unprecedented* times?
Bright Reads
Why I Gave Y Combinator Their Money Back
An interview with Heather Payne of Juno College on her "ungrowth" vision for the future.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide To Onboarding
How to build a signature (and kickass) onboarding program.
Stranger than Fiction
Memo: The Office (Totally Optional!!)
You're totally coming back, right?
Bright Reads
How A Correctional Officer Left Prisons For Mental Health Work
After 25 years in the Ministry of Corrections, Penny MacLean realized she needed to "go upstream."
Bright Reads
What It's Like To Be Diagnosed With ADHD As An Adult
I've always had a brain with the "zoomies". It took me nearly 30 years to find out what that meant.
Bright Reads
Can Are.na Make The Internet Calm Down?
We interview the co-founders of Are.na on growing a social platform that feels less like a firehose and more like a garden.
Bright Reads
Mandy Harris Williams Knows You’re Listening
The pop star intellectual uses glamour to ship criticism to the masses.
Bright Reads
How The 9-5 City Failed Women
Despite decades of research, gender inequality in urban transit has left women behind.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to Working With Weed
Do your workplace cannabis policies hold up in 2023?
Bright Reads
Mark Townsend Believes We Can Get Better
Decades into an overdose epidemic, the revolutionary harm reduction activist is still fighting.
Work Diaries
I Microdosed At Work And Found A New Career Path
A sales manager pops mushroom pills, finds God—or something like that.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide to Work Fights
A step by step guide to squashing the beef.
Bright Reads
The Death Of Rest
A brief history of Labour Day and the vacation days you never take.
Bright Reads
Can a Worker's Co-Op Thrive in Big Tech?
We speak to Hypha, an anti-capitalist worker's co-operative, on how they work.
Bright Reads
The Invisible Work of Caring
LinYee Yuan, creator of MOLD Magazine, reflects on how the critical work of caring shows up in her life.
Bright Reads
Against Representation Without Transformation
Visibility is important, but we should be demanding so much more.
Guides
The Expecting Playbook
A guide to developing your company's first parental leave program in Ontario, Canada.
Ask Shav
Do I Really Need a Mentor?
Is it better to learn from the proverbial Boys Club, or someone who has already shattered a glass ceiling or two?
Bright Reads
Is Ergonomics Maybe Bullshit?
We talk to Jared Blake, prolific chair-sitter and co-owner of furniture store Lichen NYC, to get the unvarnished truth about office furniture.
Work Diaries
I Quit My Racist Workplace After Their Response To George Floyd
A Black designer tires of fighting for a seat and sets out to build her own table.
Stranger than Fiction
Our Totally Authentic Company Values
Get in, loser... we’re disrupting to the direct-to-consumer nail clipper space.
Editor's Letter
Welcome to Early!
A work magazine for real life.
Bright Reads
New Tools
A writer reflects on how her time in construction shaped her identity.
Bright Reads
What Does Indigenous Reconciliation Look Like At Work?
Métis HR & DEI consultant Stephanie Bergman talks to us about her experiences (and best advice) as an Indigenous woman at work.
Bright Reads
How "Girlboss" Became A Slur
For the girlboss, feminism was a brand building exercise rather than a show of solidarity.
Stranger than Fiction
Every Tech Interview (Like, Ever)
Think of it like a first date, but with much blurrier boundaries.
Guides
The Bright + Early Guide To Paying People
A step by step on how to build equitable pay systems from scratch.
Ask Shav
Help! How Do I Get My Coworkers To Care About Diversity?
Our DEI expert guides a woman deciding whether to take on the extra work of educating.
Looking for more? Sign up for biweekly tips and takes on all things work from the team at Bright + Early.
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Browse Categories
Guides
Newsletter
Ask Shav
Work Diaries
Stranger Than Fiction
About
Instagram
Twitter
Early is a work magazine for real life, produced and supported by Bright + Early, a modern HR consultancy focused on building better workplaces.
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