The next time you have to prepare for a round of salary negotiations, you might want to do your homework first on PayScale. The site offers a free customized report for job candidates, employees, job seekers and businesses curious about the average salary for a certain profession. If you're worried about retaining your best employees, it wouldn't hurt to take a look at the site to determine if you're paying competitively enough. You can also check out the PayScale blogs for the latest information on all things salary-related.

Think back to your New Year's resolutions made in January. If they had anything to do with helping your business go green, this company can help you do just that. GoLoco is a new service that combines social networking with transportation. By using the service, your employees can join the ridesharing revolution and find rides with friends, neighbors and fellow employees. GoLoco founder, Robin Chase, previously founded Zipcar, the world's largest car-sharing company. Chase was inspired to start GoLoco after realizing that 75 percent of all passenger cars transport one person at a time. In an effort to save the environment, Chase allows members to create free online profiles to find their ridesharing match. Here's how it works: Potential ride sharers seek out local members with common interests or commutes, then GoLoco collects each passenger's monetary share of the total trip and transfers it to the driver through their online account. GoLoco does take out a transaction fee for organizing the ride.

In this blog post, we told you what your employees are really up to for a few wasted hours of their workday. And now, USA Today is shedding a little more light on the subject of playing hooky.  According to the Hudson Employment Index, about 30 percent of workers say they've called in sick to play hooky. Their reasons? 49 percent said they simply needed a break, 22 percent reported an illness in the family and nine percent said they needed to run errands. To prevent employees from feeling the need to lie, some employers are following the recent trend of allowing more flexible work schedules or letting employees work from home if their tasks allow it.