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Microsoft Excel doesn’t have to be scary. This $29.99 training breaks it all down.
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12 February, 2020
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<p>If you’re looking to save time and be more efficient, Microsoft Excel is a very useful tool to get you there. For organization and data management, there’s probably never been a more impactful day-to-day aid than Excel. But just like anything else, you’ll only get out of Excel what you put in.</p><p>You’ll learn all the steps for getting the absolute most out of what Excel can do with the massive <a href="https://shop.bigthink.com/sales/the-complete-microsoft-excel-vba-bundle-2013-2019-versions-included?utm_source=bigthink.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=the-complete-microsoft-excel-vba-bundle-2013-2019-versions-included&utm_term=scsf-368941&utm_content=a0x1P000004NEcE&scsonar=1" target="_blank">Complete Microsoft Excel and VBA Bundle</a> of coursework. Right now, it’s marked down to <a href="https://shop.bigthink.com/sales/the-complete-microsoft-excel-vba-bundle-2013-2019-versions-included?utm_source=bigthink.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=the-complete-microsoft-excel-vba-bundle-2013-2019-versions-included&utm_term=scsf-368941&utm_content=a0x1P000004NEcE&scsonar=1" rel="noopener" target="_blank">just $29.99, a 90 percent savings off the regular price</a>.</p><p>This collection features nine courses covering every facet of the latest three Excel iterations, Microsoft Excel 2013, 2016 and 2019. Across more than 65 hours of training, your exposure to each will showcase areas where heavy users can find the best shortcuts and efficiency tips for getting the most out of your Excel time.</p><p>Whether you need to know how to create workbooks, enter data, use functions and formulas or even run more complex duties like connecting to datasets outside of Excel or using advanced charts like Surface, Radar, Bubble or more, it’s all right here.</p><p>Meanwhile, you’ll also get two courses in the use of Microsoft VBA. In <strong>Essential VBA Training for Excel: Automate Repetitive Tasks</strong> and <strong>VBA Intermediate Training: Discover Excel Automation Secrets</strong>, you’ll understand how to use VBA, the programming language that drives Excel. Armed with that knowledge, you’ll be ready to create automation and special macros in Excel that can save hours of tedious data entry and other time-consuming Excel tasks.</p><p>A $300 value, this entire collection is available now at <a href="https://shop.bigthink.com/sales/the-complete-microsoft-excel-vba-bundle-2013-2019-versions-included?utm_source=bigthink.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=the-complete-microsoft-excel-vba-bundle-2013-2019-versions-included&utm_term=scsf-368941&utm_content=a0x1P000004NEcE&scsonar=1" rel="noopener" target="_blank">90 percent off, only $29.99</a> while this offer lasts.</p><p><em>Prices are subject to change.</em></p><div data-react-checksum="551638678" data-reactid="1" data-reactroot="" style="position: relative;"><a data-reactid="2" href="https://shop.bigthink.com/sales/the-complete-microsoft-excel-vba-bundle-2013-2019-versions-included?utm_source=bigthink.com&utm_medium=referral-cta&utm_campaign=the-complete-microsoft-excel-vba-bundle-2013-2019-versions-included&utm_term=scsf-368941&utm_content=a0x1P000004NEcE&scsonar=1" rel="noopener" target="_blank"> </a>
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Microsoft Japan switched to four-day workweek — sales skyrocketed 40%
Maybe it's time to show this report your employer?
05 November, 2019
SOPA Images / Getty
- Microsoft Japan recently completed its experimental "Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019" program.
- The program involved giving employees five consecutive Fridays off, cutting the duration of meetings, and encouraging online chats instead of face-to-face ones.
- Some research echoes Microsoft Japan's recent report, suggesting that cutting the workweek can boost productivity.
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<p>What's one way for a tech company to boost sales, increase employee satisfaction and cut overhead costs? Switch to a four-day workweek.</p><p>That's the takeaway of a new report from Microsoft Japan, which recently wrapped up its experimental "Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019." The experiment involved giving employees five consecutive Fridays off with pay, limiting meetings to 30 minutes or fewer, and encouraging online messaging as opposed to face-to-face chats. </p><p>In addition, some employees worked three-day weeks and were allowed to work remotely. The company also provided financial assistance to employees for "expenses related to self-development, family travel expenses, social contribution activities, etc."</p><p>In the new <a href="https://news.microsoft.com/ja-jp/2019/10/31/191031-published-the-results-of-measuring-the-effectiveness-of-our-work-life-choice-challenge-summer-2019/" target="_blank">report</a>, Microsoft Japan compared data on sales performance and other metrics from this summer to the same months last year. Compared to August 2018, the results showed:</p><ul><li>Number of pages printed in August 2019: -58.7% </li><li>Rise in sales per employees in August 2019: +39.9%</li><li>Amount of "30 minute meetings" in August 2019: +46%</li></ul>
'Karoshi' and karojisatsu'
<p>About 92 percent of employees said they liked switching to the four-day workweek. That's perhaps unsurprising for a company based in Japan, where the severe work culture requires many people to work overtime for little to no extra pay, sometimes leaving them dangerously exhausted. In fact, being overworked to death — by stroke, heart attack, etc. — is common enough that the Japanese have a word for it: karoshi. There's also a word for workers who commit suicide due to work-related stress: karojisatsu<em>.</em></p><p>Stories of karoshi and karojisatsu — such as a 31-year-old journalist who logged 159 hours of overtime in the month before she died of heart failure — have encouraged Japan to pass laws promoting work-life balance, including <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dentsu-overwork/japans-dentsu-gets-only-small-fine-for-overtime-breaches-despite-outcry-idUSKBN1CB0IS" target="_blank">caps on overtime hours</a>. Still, critics of Japan's work culture argue the regulations — some of which allow employees to work 100 hours of overtime in a month — don't go far enough.</p>Work-life balance
<p>But, like Microsoft Japan, some companies have taken matters into their own hands, passing strange policies to discourage overwork, such as making employees wear purple "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/japan-is-facing-a-death-by-overwork-problem-2018-3" target="_blank">embarrassment capes</a>" if they work too late, or flying music-playing drones around the office to announce it's time to leave.</p><p>More broadly, research suggests that cutting the workweek and making schedules more flexible can boost productivity and employee satisfaction. The <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/08/is-it-time-to-let-employees-work-from-anywhere" target="_blank"><em>Harvard Business Review</em></a>, for example, reported that a Chinese travel agency saw a 13-percent increase in productivity when it allowed call center employees to work remotely. In New Zealand, one <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/asia/four-day-workweek-new-zealand.html" target="_blank">company</a> permanently switched to a four-day workweek in 2018, leading to a 24-percent productivity increase.</p>Richard Branson's utopian vision of the workweek
<p>To some business leaders, switching to a less intensive workweek is inevitable, as Virgin Group founder Richard Branson <a href="https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/richard-branson-shorter-work-week" target="_blank">wrote</a> in a 2018 <a href="https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/way-we-all-work-going-change" target="_blank">blog post:</a></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The idea of working five days a week with two day weekends and a few weeks of holiday each year has become ingrained in society. But it wasn't always the case, and it won't be in the future. Could people eventually take three and even four day weekends? Certainly. Will job-sharing increase? I think so. People will need to be paid the same or even more for working less time, so they can afford more leisure time. That's going to be a difficult balancing act to get right, but it can be done. If it works for individuals and works for businesses, everyone would want to spend more time with their loved ones, more time exploring their passions, more time seeing the world outside of an office and more time getting healthy and fit."</p>
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The power of Moore’s law: Predicting the future
The power to predict the next revolution keeps companies on top.
04 November, 2019
- In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors placed in an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, meaning computing power doubles while the size of devices shrink. This is known as Moore's law.
- IBM was king of the heap in the 1950s, says physicist Michio Kaku, however it failed to read Moore's law as a sign that supercomputers would be replaced by smart phones — handheld devices that contain more computing power than NASA at the time of the Moon landing.
- Microsoft rose up in IBM's ashes by predicting the age of personal computing, but they too failed to account for an exponential change: the internet. The next revolution is 5G and AI, and companies who are setting themselves up for that future will be the ones who rise to the top.
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The great hack: A famous fraudster explains the Equifax data breach
Hackers look for open doors. If your personal data isn't protected, it's that much easier to compromise your identity.
18 October, 2019
- Legendary con-man-turned-FBI-consultant Frank W. Abagnale breaks down the 2017 Equifax data breach.
- Hackers were able to access the personal data of millions of Americans through faulty software — and they might wait years before using the stolen social security numbers and dates of birth.
- Abagnale blames Equifax for this oversight. If a company is entrusted with an individual's personal data they need to do a better job of protecting it. "Hackers don't cause breaches, people do," he says.
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<strong>Scam Me If You Can: Simple Strategies to Outsmart Today's Rip-off Artists</strong></p>
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Privacy is a human right, we need a GDPR for the world: Microsoft CEO
Half of Americans do not trust the federal government or social media sites to protect their data.
27 February, 2019
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella answers a shareholders question during the Microsoft Annual Shareholders Meeting at the Meydenbauer Center on November 28, 2018 in Bellevue, Washington. Microsoft recently surpassed Apple, Inc. to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company. (Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)
Against the backdrop of a "techlash", the CEO of Microsoft called for new global norms on privacy, data and Artificial Intelligence.
<p>Satya Nadella, who has been shifting Microsoft's focus to cloud computing, said he would welcome clearer regulations as every company and industry grappled with the data age.</p><p>In a talk at Davos, he praised <a href="https://eugdpr.org/" target="_blank">GDPR</a>, the European regulation on data protection and privacy that came into force last year.</p><p>"My own point of view is that it's a fantastic start in treating privacy as a human right. I hope that in the United States we do something similar, and that the world converges on a common standard."</p><p>The default position had to be that people owned their own data, he said.</p><a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/27/americans-complicated-feelings-about-social-media-in-an-era-of-privacy-concerns/" target="_blank"><img alt=" " src="https://assets.weforum.org/editor/1mkqZS3ka5u7UmMtqYV6x36lFbKwoUUQnZFDQjfwJeA.png"></a><p>Privacy is just one controversial area for tech companies. Nadella also addressed the growing field of facial recognition.</p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mWnUlhL4n-o?wmode=transparent" style="line-height: 1.125; box-sizing: border-box;"></iframe><p>"It's a piece of technology that's going to be democratized, that's going to be prevalent, I can come up with 10 uses that are very virtuous and important and can improve human life, and 10 uses that would cause problems," he said.</p><p>Microsoft's own website lists the below as applications to celebrate:</p><p>"Police in New Delhi recently trialed facial recognition technology and <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/delhi-facial-recognition-system-helps-trace-3000-missing-children-in-4-days/articleshow/63870129.cms" target="_blank">identified almost 3,000 missing children in four days</a>. Historians in the United States have used the technology to identify the portraits of unknown soldiers in <a href="https://www.civilwarphotosleuth.com/" target="_blank">Civil War photographs</a> taken in the 1860s. Researchers successfully used facial recognition software to <a href="https://www.genome.gov/27568319/facial-recognition-software-helps-diagnose-rare-genetic-disease/" target="_blank">diagnose a rare, genetic disease</a> in Africans, Asians and Latin Americans."</p><p>But the dark sides include invasion of privacy and bias. While Microsoft has built a set of principles for the ethical use of AI, Nadella said that self-regulation was not enough.</p><p>"In the marketplace there's no discrimination between the right use and the wrong use... We welcome any regulation that helps the marketplace not be a race to the bottom."</p><p>--</p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a href="https://www.weforum.org/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>. Read the original article <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/privacy-is-a-human-right-we-need-a-gdpr-for-the-world-microsoft-ceo/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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