CBS News
Work remotely? Here’s why you should think about your email signature.
For employees, the spread of flexible work schedules since the pandemic has put a premium on getting their digital email signatures right. After all, with millions of Americans now working remotely, it’s becoming ever more important to let colleagues and clients know when they’re on and off the clock, including when not to expect a reply right away.
Take Jesse Kent, president of Derring-Do, a small public relations firm in New York. Ever since the pandemic, he has included the following line of text below his name in his email signature: “My work day may look different than your work day. Please do not feel obligated to respond out of your normal hours.”
Kent has long worked unconventional hours, a necessity given the need to be available to his clients around the world. And post-COVID he’s also seen a shift in how they operate. “I’ve noticed my clients are also riding the flexible work wave, fitting in their replies whenever they can, even if that means pausing for family moments and circling back to work later in the evening,” he told CBS MoneyWatch.
Kent also said his digital signature has been well received.
“It’s been a hit. Clients, journalists and others in the loop have really appreciated the nod to flexible working hours over the stiff 9-to-5 routine, allowing everyone to reply when it suits them best,” he said.
Transparency is key
Non-profit veteran Laurie Greer, who most recently worked as a vice president at NextUp, a women’s empowerment organization, also added a flexible-work notice to her email signature for the first time during the pandemic.
It now reads: “I work on a flexible work schedule and across a number of time zones so I’m sending this message now because it works for me. Feel free to read, act on or respond at a time that works for you.”
“I wrote it during the pandemic, but it makes even more sense now because so many people keep flexible work schedules, and that’s something we promote, especially in women’s equality organizations,” she told CBS MoneyWatch. “People step away from their desks to fix their kids’ lunch and they may come back on at 7 or 8 at night, so I want to be respectful of that.”
In Greer’s case, she’s most concerned about being respectful of other people’s time. “I am including this in my signature to give them the opportunity and the ability to work when they feel is most beneficial to them,” she said.
Public relations pro Brenda Manea, an employee of a firm called BAM communications agency, makes clear in every email that her firm has adopted a four-day work week.
What started as a test program about a year ago has become permanent policy, and her signature now reads: “BAM is a flexible agency, with teams working across multiple time zones Mon-Thurs. I may be slow to respond on Fridays.”
Transparency is key in communicating to how the agency operates, Manea said. “It’s what has helped us make it work. You show people how you want to be treated, and the signature is an example of that.”
Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves made his professional auto racing debut on Saturday at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“The Matrix” star, who qualified 31st out of 35 cars, ran as high as 21st before a single-car crash a little more than halfway through the 45-minute race briefly stopped him in his tracks.
Darron Cummings / AP
The 60-year-old spun into the grass without a collision on the exit of Turn 9 when he had about 21 minutes of racing left. He re-entered the course and continued driving, signaling he was uninjured.
Reeves finished 25th.
The actor is competing at Indianapolis in the Toyota GR Cup, a Toyota spec-racing series and a support series for this weekend’s Indy 8 Hour sports car event. He has a second race on Sunday.
Darron Cummings / AP
He is driving the No. 92 BRZRKR car, which is promoting his graphic novel “The Book of Elsewhere.” He is teammates with Cody Jones from “Dude Perfect.”
Reeves has previous racing experience as a former participant in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in the celebrity race. Reeves won the event in 2009.
A passenger successfully landed a small plane on Friday after the pilot had a medical emergency, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 90 was traveling from Henderson Executive Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada to Monterey Regional Airport in California, with a pilot and one other person on board, the FAA said.
The pilot suffered an unspecified medical emergency while flying, the FAA said, forcing the passenger to take the controls and make an emergency landing at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California.
The Kern Fire Department told CBS News affiliate KBAX that firefighters were called to a report of a medical emergency on the plane. The pilot was reported to be “incapacitated,” the fire department said. Firefighters saw the plane approach and land safely, then “chased” the plane down the runway in emergency vehicles to meet it.
The FAA did not release the passenger or pilot’s identities nor give an update on the pilot’s condition. The pilot was taken to an area hospital by ambulance. The passenger did not report any injuries.
The FAA and the National Transportation Security Board will investigate the incident, the FAA said.
Congolese authorities began vaccination against mpox on Saturday, nearly two months after the disease outbreak that spread from Congo to several African countries and beyond was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization.
The 265,000 doses donated to Congo by the European Union and the U.S. were rolled out in the eastern city of Goma in North Kivu province, where hospitals and health workers have been overstretched, struggling to contain the new and possibly more infectious strain of mpox.
Congo, with about 30,000 suspected mpox cases and 859 deaths, accounts for more than 80% of all the cases and 99% of all the deaths reported in Africa this year. All of the Central African nation’s 26 provinces have recorded mpox cases. Officials in Congo previously told CBS News that they’ve struggled to diagnose patients and provide basic care in the vast country of 100 million people, where a fragile, under-resourced healthcare system is also burdened by the stigma associated with the virus.
Although most mpox infections and deaths recorded in Congo are in children under age 15, the doses being administered are only meant for adults and will be given to at-risk populations and front-line workers, Health Minister Roger Kamba said this week.
“Strategies have been put in place by the services in order to vaccinate all targeted personnel,” Muboyayi ChikayaI, the minister’s chief of staff, said as he kicked off the vaccination.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
At least 3 million doses of the vaccine approved for use in children are expected from Japan in the coming days, Kamba said.
Mpox, also known as monkeypox, had been spreading mostly undetected for years in Africa before the disease prompted the 2022 global outbreak that saw wealthy countries quickly respond with vaccines from their stockpiles while Africa received only a few doses despite pleas from its governments.
However, unlike the global outbreak in 2022 that was overwhelmingly focused on gay and bisexual men, mpox in Africa is now being spread via sexual transmission as well as through close contact among children, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups, Dr. Dimie Ogoina, the chair of WHO’s mpox emergency committee, recently told reporters.
More than 34,000 suspected cases and 866 deaths from the virus have been recorded across 16 countries in Africa this year. That is a 200% increase compared to the same period last year, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
A lack of diagnostic materials and basic medicines to treat the virus, which can improve survival rates, have also hampered efforts to contain the outbreak, and access to vaccines remains a challenge.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
The continent of 1.4 billion people has only secured a commitment for 5.9 million doses of mpox vaccines, expected to be available from October through December, Dr. Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa CDC, told reporters last week. Congo remains a priority, he said.
At the vaccination drive in Goma, Dr Jean Bruno Kibunda, the WHO representative, warned that North Kivu province is at a risk of a major outbreak due to the “promiscuity observed in the camps” for displaced people, as one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis caused by armed violence unfolds there.
The news of the vaccination program brought relief to many in Congo, especially in hospitals that had been struggling to manage the outbreak. Doctors with several charities working in the country have told CBS News they’re overstretched and short on supplies, even having to use tents and mattresses on the floor of makeshift isolation wards to treat a constant influx of patients.
“If everyone could be vaccinated, it would be even better to stop the spread of the disease,” said Dr. Musole Mulambamunva Robert, the medical director of Kavumu Hospital, one of the mpox treatment centers in eastern Congo.
Eastern Congo has been beset by conflict for years, with more than 100 armed groups vying for a foothold in the mineral-rich area near the border with Rwanda. Some have been accused of carrying out mass killings.
