For years, companies have left employees to figure out their careers on their own. Now, a handful of firms are helping workers map out their next steps. Big companies like Aflac Inc., Genentech Inc. and American Express Co. are hiring career counselors, training some managers to give job advice and launching in-house career centers similar to those found on college campuses. Other companies, such as Accenture PLC, are taking steps to better market internal job opportunities and make clear what it takes to land a new position. (The Wall Street Journal)

Today the Swiss National Bank shocked the world when it announced it would remove the cap it had in place to prevent the Swiss franc from rising too high against the euro. Here's what that means and what it's all about. Switzerland has a long reputation for having an incredibly stable financial system (everyone knows about its legendary banks). In 2011, during the scariest times for the euro zone, the country's safe-haven status turned the nation into an island of tranquility. Money poured into it from elsewhere in the euro zone as investors sought a safe place to park their cash. (Businessweek)

If you want to inspire the next generation of workers – and attract them to your company--new research shows that nothing works like a rock-solid mission statement. Millennials think the best leaders possess an overarching "sense of purpose," according to a study released on Wednesday from consulting and accountancy firm Deloitte. (Inc.)

Take notes on the brave career moves of the most important Civil Rights leader in black history. Born 84 years ago into the harsh, segregated realities of the South, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quickly became known as the face of the Civil Rights Movement. His lifetime of service where he fought tirelessly to bring justice to America through non-violent protests, boycotts and marches is forever engrained in the history books of our country. (Black Enterprise)

It’s difficult to tell from an application or interview if somebody will succeed, so firms often default to referrals and direct industry experience. They want to reduce uncertainty any way they can, and the way it plays out in the job market places people switching industries at a big disadvantage, says a new study. Firms, particularly small and less prestigious ones, are just highly cautious. (The Atlantic)

Of course we all like to think that the work we do is important and makes a difference in the world. But chances are few of us are dealing in matters of life and death on a daily basis. So what's with all the "high priority" emails? This week we help a reader curb her coworker's fanatic email habits. (Fast Company)

If you’ve ever been told, "We’re sorry, we really liked you and it was a very difficult decision, but we ended up going with a slightly more qualified candidate," you know that it’s not a great feeling. You can drive yourself crazy wondering, "What did the winning job-seeker say or do to gain that slight edge over me to land the job?" (Money Magazine)

Even star performers sometimes stall. Where they once won regular promotions, they’re suddenly passed over-leaving them feeling stale and stuck. Their old ways no longer work. Yet they don’t understand why. If this sounds like you, it’s time to take action and revive your trajectory. Plateaus are inevitable during the decades of a work life. But as businesses raise expectations for managers’ performance, even a little coasting can kill a career, leadership experts say. (The Wall Street Journal)

Mark is an HR director looking to improve his company’s cross-cultural skills, especially in Germany where his company is doing an increasing amount of business. After considerable research, Mark hires a firm to deliver a training solution that seems like just what the doctor ordered. It’s a tool that enables employees to discover their "cultural profile" and then compare that profile to those from a range of other cultures. The program – which is self-study and available on any digital device – also enables employees to click on a country and learn about its history, values, and cultural "assumptions." (Harvard Business Review)

What's keeping women from the top ranks of U.S. business and politics? Yesterday, the Pew Research Center released a report on women and leadership, which included some intriguing bits. When asked in November about reasons "why there aren’t more women in top executive business positions," only 23 percent of American adults surveyed said a major reason is that "women’s responsibilities to family don’t leave time for running a major corporation." (Bloomberg)

Roche Diagnostics and Royal Bank of Canada have launched internal initiatives in hopes of increasing workforce diversity. Equality is a worthy goal – but its tough to achieve when unconscious bias so pervades the American workplace. Certainly women have made inroads in corporate America, but a Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday points at why women struggle to climb to the corporate world’s highest ranks – and often tone down their ideas, hide behind an agreeable facade or leave the workplace altogether. (Fortune)

Why would Switzerland let its currency jump by 13% in a single day against its largest trading partners? The move will hammer exporters, bring more woe to the beleaguered wealth management industry, risk importing deflation through the current account and, always important for a central bank, wreck its reputation as a reliable and credible force in international markets. (Fortune)

On September 3, 2014, Agnes Ngekia learned by phone that her son was dead and that there would be no burial. He had died of Ebola. Ngekia is a nurse in the Kono district of Sierra Leone, and when her son had fallen ill she had diligently followed disease-prevention protocol and brought him to the local hospital. Nonetheless, not long after she learned of his death, police officers wearing blue protective gowns over their camouflage uniforms arrived at her family compound in the village of Borbodu and nailed a flimsy wooden bar across the entrance. For 21 days, Ngekia and 17 family members were quarantined inside. (The Atlantic)

Among New Year’s resolutions shared on Twitter, unplugging digitally came right after losing weight and quitting smoking. People are flocking to digital detoxes, screen-free bedrooms and apps that nudge you off your phone. It is all in response to the notion that digital technology – like round-the-clock email and friends’ envy-inducing Instagram photos – is stressing us out and making us unhealthy. (The New York Times)

Talko, developed by software legend Ray Ozzie is a coworking and communication app attempting to reinvent the phone call. It falls in the same genre as popular online tools like Slack and HipChat, but unlike those chat-based platforms, it relies heavily on vocal interactions. It's also mobile based – for now. (A web component is coming soon.) The app allows for calls, texts, and pictures between groups and individuals all happening in the same stream instantaneously and simultaneously. (Fast Company)

Venture capitalists invested more in 2014 than in almost any year in the industry's history. VC firms put a total of $47.3 billion into U.S. companies last year, a 62 percent annual increase and the highest funding level since 2001, according to CB Insights' latest venture capital report. Mega-financings of companies in the mobile sector such as Uber, Square, Snapchat and Instacart drove much of the spike in dollars invested, while the total number of VC deals rose 8 percent year-over-year to 3,617. (Inc.)

When it comes to content, these 10 tips will help: 1. Know your competition. Be prepared to name them and tell what makes you different from (and better than) each of them. But do not disparage your competition. (Entrepreneur)

After almost 15 years of a disappointing economy, it’s easy to get pessimistic. Incomes for the middle class and poor have now been stagnating over a two-term Republican presidency and well into a two-term Democratic one. The great wage slowdown of the 21st century has frustrated Americans, polls show, and raised serious questions about what kind of policies, if any, might change the situation. (The New York Times)>

Cheaper oil is good for the economy – it's basically the equivalent of a tax cut. Unless it's bad for the economy, which can be the case if falling prices spur deflation and hurt countries and companies that depend on oil exports. Whether the impact is good, bad, or a little of both, will depend on how long prices stay low. (Businessweek)

Sean Covey, author of the wildly successful book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote, "Depending on what they are, our habits will either make us or break us. We become what we repeatedly do." It’s true. Habits – the healthy and consistent ones, that is – can make all the difference in helping us go from good to great in any area of life, especially our finances. (Bad habits can be just as powerful...in the opposite direction.) (Money Magazine)

Without even knowing it you might be doing things that are damaging your credit score, which affects your ability to get credit and the interest rate you pay when you do get credit. A 2014 survey by Credit.com found that consumers sometimes don’t understand which actions will and will not help them improve. (Kiplinger's)

Reports that Samsung Electronics has approached BlackBerry briefly sent the battered smartphone maker's stock soaring. Any deal is far from done and BlackBerry denied it, but the possibility does raise the question: Why would Samsung want to acquire BlackBerry? Yes, the Korean conglomerate would get a robust suite of patents, BlackBerry's powerful (though unloved) new mobile platform, and a history of highly lauded hardware design. Still, there is really only one reason the Canadian phonemaker is attractive to Samsung right now: security. And security is the gateway to the highly valuable enterprise market. (Businessweek)

Can a computer program be racist? Imagine this scenario: A program that screens rental applicants is primed with examples of personal history, debt, and the like. The program makes its decision based on lots of signals: rental history, credit record, job, salary. Engineers "train" the program on sample data. People use the program without incident until one day, someone thinks to put through two applicants of seemingly equal merit, the only difference being race. The program rejects the black applicant and accepts the white one. The engineers are horrified, yet say the program only reflected the data it was trained on. So is their algorithm racially biased? (Slate)

Obamacare is about to collide with the U.S. tax-filing season, adding frustration for millions of taxpayers trying to figure out how to comply and how much they will owe the government. Tax filing for 2014 opens Jan. 20. The biggest change for most taxpayers is on Line 61 of Form 1040: a box to check if you have health insurance and a tax to pay if you don’t. Millions who received insurance through Obamacare’s exchanges will have a more complicated set of calculations to complete. (Bloomberg)

Difficult conversations – whether you’re telling a client the project is delayed or presiding over an unenthusiastic performance review – are an inevitable part of management. How should you prepare for this kind of discussion? How do you find the right words in the moment? And, how can you manage the exchange so that it goes as smoothly as possible? (Harvard Business Review)

As compelling a thought as it is that tomorrow is always a fresh start, in business failing to plan for tomorrow means our mistakes lay waiting for us to stumble upon. By 2020 more than half of the workforce in most countries will be Millennials, more non-Caucasian babies are born in the United States than Caucasian, women are earning more degrees and advanced degrees than men, and McKinsey estimates that by 2025 half of the world’s largest companies will be headquartered in emerging economies. (Fast Company)

Today, President Obama's proposing legislation that would give American workers 7 days a year of paid sick leave. The U.S. remains the world's only wealthy nation that does not mandate a minimum of paid sick leave, vacation leave or parental leave. (The Washington Post