Results indicate significant backsliding in lab health and safety practices

It’s the week before Easter, but outside my window there are still patches of snow on the ground. To which I say, enough already! Bring on Spring and make it snappy.

The good news from this year’s confidence report is that the laboratory industry, by and large, is moving in the right direction—forward—though in slightly smaller steps than we would have hoped.

Perhaps you’ve made your usual New Year’s resolutions: Get to the gym more often, be a better friend, eat more fruits and vegetables, for which I commend you. However, if you’re looking to make resolutions that will have a direct impact on your job performance and career development, you’ve come to the right place.

Talking to your staff, your customers, and to upper management is common sense, natural and instinctive, right? Think again.

In many quarters, bragging about oneself or one’s accomplishments is considered bad form. Modesty and humility are the virtues most ascribe to. However, things have changed.

As in our previous Salary & Employee Satisfaction surveys, the results this year continue to reinforce the idea that laboratory professionals are for the most part happy in their careers and derive meaning and satisfaction from the work they do.

In this month’s cover story, author John Borchardt describes the changes that have taken place since 2008 in priorities for hiring new laboratory employees.

While the need for trans-global collaboration was obvious in 1991, the reluctance of the scientific community to embrace the social media aspects of the Internet for that same purpose seems curious

Last month we provided important and practical information about project management techniques and their usefulness in laboratory management. This month we turn our attention to a different management challenge that becomes more commonplace every day in every industry.

Three years ago we began surveying our readers to find out about their lab safety practices and to track how those practices change moving forward.

According to PMI (the Project Management Institute), project management is the application of knowledge, skills and techniques to execute projects effectively and efficiently.

Some expect the mobile apps market to quadruple over the next four years, from $6.8 billion to $25 billion. Others forecast revenues at $29.5 billion by 2013, increasing from $7 billion in 2010.

Here in my neck of the woods in Northwestern New Jersey, spring arrived weeks ago, which the early and abundant forsythia flowers outside my office window testify to. No guarantee, however, that we won’t see snow on Easter.

“The year 2011 was tumultuous for the laboratory industry. In comparison, the outlook for 2012 looks only slightly positive. Laboratory decision makers generally expect their funding conditions either to remain the same or to minimally improve.”