One of the laments of those who work from home offices has been the difficulty of defining when they should stop working. Technology that allows us to avoid commutes and put dinner in the oven any time we wish also has made it easy to work well into the night. Now a new study from Steelcase indicates even those who work in more traditional offices are having increasing problems separating themselves from work during leisure time.

A recent Workplace Index Survey on the Nature of Work, conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for Steelcase, found that only 61 percent of Americans use all their allotted vacation time. Moreover, 43 percent of respondents spent time working during their vacation-nearly twice as many as the 23 percent who did so in a survey ten years ago. Most said they work on vacation because they are "committed to the job" (25%), or have "a pressing assignment" (22%) For others, the reasons were they "don't want to leave it all for when I get back" (12%), "technology makes it easy" (11%) or they were unable to "relax until things are taken care of" (10%).

Steelcase Corporate Marketing Manager Chris Congdon suggests, "The data cause us to question whether job commitment has increased or if the ease of connectivity enables workers to demonstrate their job commitment remotely and persistently. In either case, the ability to connect to work from anywhere challenges the notion of what constitutes a workplace."

Indeed, 80 percent who worked on their last vacation indicated they used technology to complete their work, but now the laptop is the technology that most encourages them to do so (41%), replacing the cell phone, which ranked highest (56%) in 1995.

Is connectivity robbing us of the time we need to re-charge-or is it enabling us to relax more completely by getting urgent problems off our minds and onto our e-mail systems? These trends have implications for evolving corporate cultures, hiring practices and HR policies as much as they do for technology acquisitions. Companies that truly want their staff to rest and regenerate during vacations eventually may need to establish boundaries on the use of connectivity or create new systems for delegation.

Diversity is an important issue for companies in every business sector, and DiversityInc has become a vital publication for monitoring news and trends across the full spectrum of diversity topics as they relate to business. The print edition of the magazine, launched in 2002, is published monthly; but it comprehensively reports diversity news every day on its web site (launched in 1998) with original content written by a team of nine full-time journalists at its home office in Newark, N.J. and bureaus in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. It also publishes a free e-mail newsletter six days a week.

The publication targets senior management at large corporations and operators of women- and minority-owned businesses, with feature articles and news items relating to racial, gender, ethnic, religious and sexual diversity. Its Diversity News column posts news items six days a week. A Diversity Management section promotes the benefits of diversity in corporations with information on business practices and metrics in diversity recruitment, retention and promotion. Other sections on Legal-Affirmative Action, Career Advice, and Diversity Facts supplement numerous diversity-related features that focus on topical events, actions and news in the business community, education and government.

The magazine asserts also that it maintains an extensive database on more than 300 companies for benchmarking and assessing corporate diversity management methods.

"Successful companies, particularly those with a global reach, recognize the critical importance of diversity to the wellbeing of its organization. DiversityInc is a receptive and valuable media outlet in telling that story," says Patrick McLaughlin, APR, account manager, Airfoil Public Relations. "Informed companies want to tell their diversity story, be acknowledged as progressive in this area, and help provide best practices for other firms to consider and emulate. DiversityInc is an excellent vehicle for client thought leaders to articulate the rationale for embracing diversity as a core guiding principal."

Airfoil has expanded its healthcare practice as it begins work on behalf of Trinity Health System, America's fourth-largest Catholic health-care system. Trinity Health, headquartered in Novi, Mich., operates 45 hospitals and hundreds of other health-care facilities in seven states from coast to coast. Airfoil is supporting Trinity Health's mission with efforts to expand awareness on both local and national levels and to generate positive attention for the organization's community programs.