How TikTok plans to get around the US ban
This development comes amid a potential US ban on the video-sharing platform unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells its American operations.
A sale agreement is said to be in place, with the new app expected to be available in US app stores from 5 September.
Donald Trump has stated that the United States "pretty much" has a deal regarding TikTok's sale and will engage in discussions with China.
The controversy surrounding TikTok centres on national security concerns, including allegations that ByteDance could manipulate content or misuse user data.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Work-life balance: why quality data and personal development tools are crucial for employee wellbeing
Employers have long recognised that promoting wellness and helping employees achieve a good work-life balance are key to business success. Staff who have a healthy work-life balance tend to be happier, more engaged and more productive. They take less time off sick and they stick around longer because they enjoy their jobs. Moreover, companies that are known for this tend to become employers of choice and attract the best staff, creating a virtuous circle. But while many businesses strive to promote employee wellbeing, the area is in a state of flux and uncertainty, leaving many employers and HR professionals unsure about how best to approach it. Problems can be difficult to pin down, and the effectiveness of interventions can be hard to measure. For one thing, recent upheavals to typical working practices have prompted a host of fresh challenges and workplace stresses – from managing hybrid teams to knock-on effects on staff engagement and a sense of belonging. Likewise, there are still many lingering bad habits from the pandemic-related lockdowns, when work and life seemed to merge. One example is an always-on culture. When people worked from home, they would often reply to emails at 10pm because there were no boundaries between work and life. But this isn't desirable, either for the business or its employees. The accelerating pace of new technologies can present further challenges. For instance, wellness programmes devised three years ago may not factor in the impacts of AI. So what are some of the best ways to ensure a mentally and physically healthy workplace, one where staff want to be and deliver good work because they're happy? Lampros Sekliziotis, a product leader at software company Sage, says data plays a key role. 'If you spot a problem based on insights from the data, you can target it.' This might be through training or it might be flagging wellness initiatives. Both these can be targeted to individuals. Employee pulse surveys – short, quick surveys that are sent to employees on a regular basis – have long been particularly useful for gathering insights, says Sekliziotis. 'You could ask: 'Are you aware of the various wellness initiatives that we have?'' Alternatively, he says, data around holidays, timekeeping, and job satisfaction might suggest 'the company isn't as good as we think in terms of life balance'. Again, interventions can be targeted, and their effectiveness can be measured. Pulse surveys are one of the features built into Sage People, an all-in-one HR and payroll solution. Another key part of wellness is a feeling of personal fulfilment and life progression. HR systems have therefore been extending their capabilities and offerings to help businesses nurture a more fulfilled, happy and productive workforce. For example, micro-learning platforms can give employees all the joy of gaining new skills and knowledge in their own time and at their own pace without them feeling overwhelmed. One such offering is Uptime, a learning and personal development app that Sage offers to its customers. Kate Travers, principal solutions consultant at Sage, explains how Uptime can help: 'This has been designed to help users absorb key insights from books and podcasts, documentaries and courses, but all filtered down into just five-minute chunks.' It taps into the way people use streaming platforms to pick and choose the content they consume. 'It's designed to provide user engagement through learning, combining smart technology with a people-first approach.' Another way Sage's platform can be used to improve wellness and ensure a good work-life balance is by providing a single point-of-entry for employees. This is important because properly promoting wellness and wellbeing can be an extremely wide-ranging and holistic undertaking. After all, wellness takes in areas ranging from time management and job satisfaction to engagement and office design. For example, what kinds of new training needs should HR identify to help people upskill and reskill? How can office spaces be better planned to best suit employees who haven't been in the office for years, or who are reluctant to return? What provisions should be made for staff to improve their commutes? Do employees feel like they're doing meaningful work? Do they feel empowered and in control of their work and careers? And how can you keep them better engaged and informed? This is why good businesses now realise that work-life balance and wellness need to be baked into the company ethos and mission rather than just an afterthought. And it also means that wellness tools should be easily accessible and seamlessly integrated into the wider workplace experience. Steve Watmore, HR and payroll product manager at Sage, says familiarity with an app can be a huge help here. 'If you use a platform or an app regularly, you're always in that space, and anything else that happens within that app is engagement,' he says. The more that people use these apps, the better they know them and the better they become at leveraging their resources. Staff soon start to view these tools as places they can go to not just for information but for personal growth and development, and that can be very empowering. 'It becomes a real focal point for employees,' says Watmore. 'We see that within the Sage People app and we've seen that with the Sage People platform.' Giving people the right tools is a huge part of fostering engagement. Staff feel happy when they're in control and making their own decisions. This perhaps shows us where the thinking about wellness is going next. In the past, you might have provided some wellness initiatives, but now you have more of a smorgasbord of wellness-related initiatives, ranging from distraction-free zones to cycle parking and illness policies to mental health support. You offer them to employees, but staff make the choices themselves, and are all the happier and empowered for it. Discover more about the importance of a work-life balance and employee wellbeing
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Oil prices ease as traders assess US tariffs, OPEC+ output hike
July 8 (Reuters) - Oil prices eased on Tuesday after rising almost 2% in the previous session, as investors assessed new developments on U.S. tariffs and a higher-than-expected OPEC+ output hike for August. Brent crude futures dropped 21 cents at $69.37 a barrel by 0041 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 24 cents at $67.69 a barrel. U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday began telling trade partners, which included major suppliers South Korea and Japan as well as smaller U.S. exporters like Serbia, Thailand and Tunisia, that sharply higher U.S. tariffs will start August 1, marking a new phase in the trade war he launched earlier this year. Trump's tariffs have prompted uncertainty across the market and concerns they could have a negative effect on the global economy and, consequently, on oil demand. However, there are some signs current demand remains strong, particularly in the U.S., the world's biggest oil consumer, which has supported prices. A record 72.2 million Americans were projected to travel more than 50 miles (80 km) for Fourth of July vacations, data from travel group AAA showed last week. Investors were bullish heading into the holiday period with data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission released on Monday showing money managers raised their net-long futures and options positions in crude oil contracts in the week up to July 1. Regarding supplies, on Saturday the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, a group known as OPEC+, agreed to raise production by 548,000 barrels per day in August, exceeding the 411,000-bpd hikes they made for the prior three months. The decision removes nearly all of the 2.2 million-bpd of voluntary cuts and analysts at Goldman Sachs expect OPEC+ to announce a final 550,000-bpd increase for September at the next meeting on August 3. However, the actual output increase has been smaller than the announced levels so far and most of the supply has been from Saudi Arabia, analysts said.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Investors to double down on US junk bonds on another tariff tantrum
July 7 (Reuters) - When President Donald Trump's 90-day pause on U.S. tariffs ends Wednesday, once-bitten-twice-shy bond investors could take on more risk by adding high-yield bonds to portfolios, rather than panic-sell credit as seen after April 2's 'Liberation Day' tariff announcement, said many fund managers and bankers. Credit market shops as a whole are likely to avoid a knee-jerk reaction to sell the riskiest bonds in their portfolios, and instead buy them as they view any impasse on tariff negotiations as a way to a watered-down solution rather than a non-negotiable outcome, the fund managers and bankers said. "Investors are likely to take any news of a tariff deadline extension in their stride and not overreact because there is always a put with this government – they will find some resolution to any impasse like they did post-Liberation Day,' said Sandeep Desai, co-head of North America leveraged debt capital markets at Deutsche Bank. High-yield credit spreads, or the premium paid by companies over risk-free Treasuries, touched their widest levels in two years in the days after Liberation Day, when Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs on 57 countries. Widening spreads mean an increase in borrowing costs and reflect market perceptions of a rise in default risk. But this negativity did not last beyond a fortnight, and spreads are now a whopping 149 basis points (bps) inside those levels as of last week's close, according to ICE BofA Global data. (.MERH0A0), opens new tab. On Wednesday, expectations of some sort of deal-making got a boost when Trump announced that the U.S. had struck a deal for a lower-than-promised 20% tariff on many Vietnamese exports. A retracement in spreads showed credit investors were simply not worried that the macroeconomic impact of tariffs would lower the ability of a broad swathe of companies with the riskiest credit ratings to make interest payments on their debt. The conviction in their fundamentals was so strong that even extreme geopolitical events - including an escalating war between Israel and Iran in late June - failed to push junk bond credit spreads or the default risk gauge wider. "There definitely seems to be a lot of looking through the headlines and what would, in prior periods, have served as extreme sources of volatility," said Michael Levitin, managing director and co-head of liquid credit at MidOcean Partners. For Joseph Lynch, global head of non-investment-grade credit at Neuberger Berman, it was a case of investors appreciating the improved quality of the high-yield bond universe. More debt has become secured by a certain amount of collateral, while more companies are using new deal proceeds to optimize their balance sheets rather than for leveraged buyouts, he said. Over the past five years, the percentage has increased to nearly 35% from 20% of U.S. high-yield bonds secured by collateral like physical assets or even shares, noted Jennifer Haaz, investment specialist at Penn Mutual Asset Management, in a recent report. These had a higher recovery rate than those that were unsecured in case of a default, she added. The extra security of collateral also helped companies reduce the cost of their debt, which investors viewed as a sign of more prudent balance sheet management by companies. Junk-rated debt was also offering yields between 7% and 8%, which investors saw as more than compensating for any default risk when improved fundamentals were taken into account. This has increased demand, which has in turn created what bankers called a supply-demand imbalance and pressured spreads tighter. U.S. high-yield funds saw outflows of $8.42 billion in April after Liberation Day, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. But since then the direction of flow has reversed with high-yield funds receiving roughly $13 billion of inflows between May 1 and June 25. But only $149.8 billion in new U.S. junk bonds have been issued so far this year, versus more than $165.5 billion this time last year, according to JPMorgan research published last Friday. "You have a situation where the supply of bonds is just not keeping up with the demand," said Piers Ronan, head of debt capital markets at Truist Securities. Spreads could widen slightly, if at all, come Wednesday. If they do, Berman's Lynch said, "we could be allocating more capital to high-yield."
