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Sexism In Rafting Isn’t Dead, YetHere’s what we can do about it.

Raft guide and researcher Maria Blevins has spent half a decade investigating sexual misconduct with the aim of making the river industry and community a safer place for everyone. Here’s what she learned about sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault in the rafting community—and what we can do about it.

Is Remote Work to Blame for Lower Productivity?A wide array of reasons--including poorly managed remote work--are contributing to a big decline in worker productivity in the U.S. Here are ways to alleviate the burnout and stress in the workplace that are slowing workers down.

Experts offer seven suggestions to boost workers' output, whether they work in the office or remotely.

1. Assess workplace productivity.

Organizational communication expert Rebecca Rice, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, suggested a spot survey of your workforce. Ask employees whether they sense a decline in productivity, and look around to see whether you notice any deterioration.

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6. Pay attention to mental health.

Rice noted that employees still may be coping with mental health challenges tied to the pandemic. Employers should make mental health a key component of productivity measures.

"It's important that employers think about how to cultivate resilience in employees by attending to the whole employee," she said. "Beyond productivity, what might be going on that is impacting employees at work? What resources can you provide to address those issues?"

Sexual harassment has plagued the river guiding world. Here’s how Utahns are working to change it.Sexism and harassment long went unaddressed in the professional river rafting world. These Utahns are changing the conversation.

It was those explosive allegations that led Maria Blevins, a former river guide and now a professor at Utah Valley University, to begin her research documenting sexual harassment often present within the river rafting industry — and to start to make efforts to change it. She read that Grand Canyon report, she said, and thought back to her own experiences.

“I’d actually done a river trip with those guys, and I was like, ‘Those guys? They were so cool,’” she remembered. “And then I thought about it and I was like, ‘Well, except for when they asked us to run that rapid topless. Or when they were trying to get into my tent at night. All of these things were going through my mind that hadn’t even fazed me on the trip. I had just been like, ‘Oh well, that’s what you do on the river.’

“But when I thought about it, we were all at work,” she added. “We were on a research trip. And people were hammered every night. They did things that would never be asked of me at a different job.”

Blevins found in her research that women have been hazed at work or told to shrug off crude jokes. Some have felt unsafe during overnight trips when men — either clients or coworkers — made unwanted sexual advances while they partied at night along the river. What often happens to these women, Blevins found, is that they leave jobs they love and are good at because of this toxic work environment.

The world as we know it is ending. Why are we still at work?From the pandemic to climate change, Americans are still expected to work no matter what happens.

Beyond time off, more companies are also offering wellness perks from art classes to visits from therapy dogs, said Rebecca Rice, a professor of communication studies at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, who studies how organizations work during emergencies. Such extras can be nice, but ultimately they’re “a temporary fix to a broader feeling of everyone being overextended,” Rice said.

Employers need to understand that today’s slate of overlapping crises “is a new normal that perhaps requires different standards,” Rice explained. That means having “honest conversations with employees about what work is necessary and a priority and what work is not for right now.” That could mean a daily meeting happens only three days a week — or never.