Proper workplace gift etiquette usually stipulates that gifts should be given downward to those you manage and not upward to those who manage you, writes Alison Green. You should also avoid overly personal gifts, and don't feel pressured to include yourself in collections for group gifts.

Employees have to take charge of their career development, as managers are often too busy to do so. This article offers four ways to get started, beginning with setting aside time for strategic thinking.

Professional networking events need not be excruciating experiences, Jenny Foss writes. She suggests checking online interest groups for networking opportunities, bringing an extroverted friend to networking events, setting up a social group with other professionals and using social media more.

IKEA will provide up to four months of paid parental leave to US employees, regardless of how many hours they work. The move aims to foster a happier workforce with increased productivity and longer tenure, officials say.

You can easily customize your resume by emphasizing keywords that are important for specific industries, like "created" for copywriters or "managed" for supervisory positions. Make sure to note specific skills that apply to the position you're interested in that can be taken from previous experience, writes Erica Breuer.

Improve your work-life balance by remembering your responsibility to your employer is to be a professional, not a perfectionist. Try to learn from your mistakes instead of spending all of your energy attempting to avoid them completely, writes Crystal Alviela.

Edward Charles Pickering's worldwide haul of photographed stars and other astronomical features required a team to analyze, and he generally hired women. Dava Sobel has written about these educated, professional women of the late 1800s, including Annie Jump Cannon, who devised a stellar classification approach still used.