Eli Lilly announced it won't be attempting to recover past pay from Joshua Smiley, who resigned as chief financial officer after an internal investigation unveiled inappropriate communications with employees. The company confirmed the removal of Smiley's 2020 bonus of $1 million, along with more than $20 million of incentive compensation.

Productivity has increased among employees working from home, according to data from Prodoscore, which finds productivity is highest on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. However, burnout could be a concern, given Prodoscore's finding that employees work more on weekends than they used to.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is calling on Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee leadership to direct $10 billion to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The funding would go toward block grant programs for states to provide substance use and mental health treatment as part of the coronavirus relief package.

Three STEM schools are being recognized for offering hands-on learning programs and projects to prepare students for careers, even amid the pandemic. The three schools in three states have students participate in activities, including simulated crime scene investigations, app development to track and support mental health, and creation of chemistry videos to post on social media.

Group chat platforms, such as WhatsApp and Slack, aim to make communication more efficient, but the need to respond in real time or catch up with a backlog of missed messages is creating anxiety among some users, mental health experts say. These expectations create a "dreaded communication debt that we can now accrue by having asynchronous messages," Bernie Hogan, senior research fellow at the University of Oxford's Internet Institute, says.

A girl from Maui covering the workforce and K-20 education.

"Communication debt" is a thing. I don't get it as much in text or chats -- as mentioned in the HR Leaders story today -- but work email is often a blizzard of messages. I catch myself sighing as my unread emails climb to over 200 and 300 in just a few days. I worry that important messages are getting buried under the dross.

So I go through them with my "Delete" machete and start hacking away. Bad subject lines, spam guest post offers and story pitches that go over two paragraphs are quickly chopped. It still takes time, but whittling that "communication debt" and getting to messages that matter feels good.

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