“Hiring is your most important task,” the late Steve Jobs, former chief executive officer of Apple, Inc., told his managers. The reason? “The team with the best players wins,” according to Jack Welch, a chemical engineer and former chief executive officer of General Electric.

In 2002, when Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, California, decided to build the Molecular Foundry laboratory, they employed the help of Steve Greenberg, an in-house energy management engineer.

Work hazards usually not to blame for employees missing work, research says

Are you motivated? Is everyone motivated? Yes or no? Take a look around your lab.

Last year I wrote a column about how “soft skills” are required to succeed in virtually every business today. Even in the sciences, a career path that has traditionally allowed insular personalities to thrive, soft skills are more important than ever.

Following this procedure does several things. It forces you to decide what the rules and policies are going to be, shows everyone that you are concerned about health and safety, and keeps a permanent record of your safety standards.

This column will focus on ethylene oxide, a frequently used and potentially dangerous sterilizing agent. Also known as EtO or EO, it is highly compatible with today’s polymer-based single-use medical devices, procedure kits, surgical trays, etc.

“Steve Jobs, technologist and tastemaker of modern digital culture, described himself as a captain of product design inspiring his teams of workers, as he once said, to go ‘beyond what anyone thought possible’ and to do ‘some great work, really great work that will go down in history.’”

When the individual’s supervisor offers emotional and instrumental support, a stressed employee is more likely to recover without needing to take that extra afternoon or day off.

As the prospect of personalized medicine transitions from concept to reality and begins to truly impact the pharmaceutical industry, almost everyone who works in the sciences could be affected.