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After the box office success of Dune last year, director Denis Villeneuve confirms a second chapter of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic is in the making.

“Right now,” he announced, “I’m in what you call ‘soft prep’… It’s that beautiful part where it’s just dreaming, looking at the ceiling and thinking about the movie storyboards… It’s the moment where everything is possible, before we have the shock of reality that will come.”

Like many films of the COVID era, Dune was originally slated for release in 2020 but wound up being postponed to 2021. Despite the roadblock, the sci-fi epic has managed to live up to the hype, with anticipation now building for a sequel.

“[The sequel] has direct continuity to the first movie,” stated Villeneuve. “[So] it's important for me that the audiences see Part Two as soon as possible.” Though an official release date is yet to be set for the new film, Warner Bros anticipates its appearance late 2023.

It is easy to see that someone in a wheelchair has a disability, and workplaces are becoming much better at making accommodations for them. But what about people whose disability doesn't show? Chronic illnesses like heart disease, lupus, or diabetes aren't visible to others. Neither are mental illnesses like depression or anxiety. Because of this, it's much more difficult for these workers to get the support they need.

How do you feel about total honesty in the workplace? Most often, in order to avoid the discomfort of offending someone, bosses, managers and colleagues find inventive ways of giving feedback that skirt around the real truth. In fact, as we develop our communication skills to navigate work relationships, we learn many phrases and expressions to soften our language and say things indirectly that otherwise could be said much more directly.

The United Nation declared a “Decade of Indigenous Languages”, beginning on January 1, 2022. There are currently over 7000 languages in the world, but roughly 40% of those languages are endangered, as adults no longer speak the language to their children. According to the U.N., one language is lost every two weeks. 

Languages become extinct due to colonization, urbanization and globalization. Colonists may purposely try to eradicate the language and culture of the indigenous people. When indigenous people leave their homelands to find work in cities, they need to speak the dominant language to survive. And young people need to use it to participate in today's global world.

How diverse is your workplace? And how inclusive is it? While many organizations may feel prepared to answer the first question, the second often causes a bit of confusion. Isn’t it just the same question rephrased?

Rita Mitjans, ADP’s chief diversity and social responsibility officer, explains.

Diversity is the “what”; inclusion is the “how”. Diversity focuses on the makeup of your workforce—demographics such as gender, race/ethnicity, age, etc.—and inclusion is a measure of culture that enables diversity to thrive. People sometimes use these terms interchangeably, but they are quite distinctly different.

So, why is it important to focus on both diversity and inclusion? Again, Rita Mitjans:

According to NPR, around the year 70,000 B.C., a volcano called Toba on Sumatra Island in Indonesia, erupted, blowing about a thousand kilometres of vaporized rock into the air. It is by far the largest volcanic eruption we know of.

That eruption dropped roughly six centimeters of ash over all of South Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian and South China Sea. With so much ash, dust and vapor in the air, science writer Sam Kean says Toba "dimmed the sun for six years, disrupted seasonal rains, choked off streams and scattered whole cubic miles of hot ash (imagine wading through a giant ashtray) across acres and acres of plants." Berries, fruits, trees, African game became rare. Early humans, living in East Africa just across the Indian Ocean from Mount Toba, probably starved, or at least, he says, "It's not hard to imagine the population plummeting."

The Dalai Lama wrote an opinion piece for the Harvard Business Review about the importance of leadership and what makes a strong leader.

He says that the world is facing an emotional crisis where rates of stress, anxiety and depression are higher than ever. The focus on turning a profit often overrules a commitment to people and society. In organizations, he explains, people work closely together every day, but many feel lonely and stressed. This is because there is a lack of responsibility toward each other.

He advises leaders to be mindful towards each other, saying that the opposite of fear is trust, which boosts our self-confidence. Compassion also reduces fear, reflecting a concern for others’ well-being. He asserts that people are naturally driven by self-interest, but we need wise self-interest that is generous and cooperative, taking others’ interests also into account.

According to The Harvard Business Review, studies on organizational change show that if you want to lead a successful transformation, communicating empathetically is critical. However, most leaders do not actually know how to do it. In fact, a survey of over 200 leading company executives found that 69% of respondents said that they were planning to launch or are currently conducting a change effort. Unfortunately, 50% of these same executives said they had not fully considered their team’s sentiment about the change.

Here are a few steps a leader must take to smoothen a transition:

Profile your audience at every stage. Change consultants typically advise leaders to create personas of various audiences when they kick-off a change initiative. Considering that people’s wants and needs will evolve throughout the process, managers should reevaluate these personas during every phase of the journey.

According to Vox Media, the idea of a basic income was, for decades, something of a policy fantasy. However, the last few years have seen it become less fringe and more mainstream. In fact, we now have many limited basic income programs running around the world.

The general idea—that the government should give every citizen a regular infusion of money with no strings attached—has been around since the 16th century. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has given the idea fresh momentum, with the crisis generating significant financial loss and uncertainty.

Critics worry that UBI will disincentivize work and hurt the economy. They also say that it is unaffordable for the government to pay every citizen enough to live on, regardless of whether they work. So far, the evidence has not supported these critiques.