I’ve been traveling the past week, so I spent the weekend catching up on my reading. Here are a few newspaper stories worth a look:

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution—A long Sunday profile of new Home Depot CEO Frank Blake showed the big difference in management style between Blake and his pugnacious predecessor, Bob Nardelli. The article recounts how Blake recently met with dissident shareholder Leigh Baier, who was so fed up with Nardelli’s approach that he was considering a proxy battle before Nardelli was ousted. He related his first meeting with Blake:

“We just stood in the lumber department and talked. I basically told him that people are running out of patience and that he needs to lay out a plan to fix the problems pretty quickly,” Baier said. “He really seemed to listen and agree. There was a warmth and comfort level that I just didn’t get from Bob.”

A few days later, Baier got a handwritten note from Blake, thanking him for his two cents’ worth, Baier said.>“I operate in the world of big law firms. Everything is faxed or e-mailed. He’s the only person I’ve gotten a handwritten note from in a long time. That tells me it’s straight from him and not screened or cleaned up by somebody,” Baier said. “I’m pretty impressed so far.”

From The New York Times—Faith in the workplace is becoming a huge management issue, and a Sunday Times story headlined “When Religious Needs Test Company Policy” got into the issue of accommodating religious differences as more employees push to inject their faith into their working life.

Religion has become a flashpoint in many offices as more employees seek to bring their whole identities to work. So managers are contending with how to create workplaces that are comfortable and welcoming for employees of all faith —and of none.

“Managers have to think what the factors are that attract or cause people to leave their organization,” said Toni Riccardi, now the senior advisor on diversity and inclusion at the Conference Board, which published a report last November on faith in the workplace. “If religion is one, they have to think about how to manage that,” and create an environment that is inviting to as many people as possible.

From the Lebanon (Pennsylvania) Daily News—Workers at Hershey are worried about outsourcing and the manufacturing jobs that are moving from Pennsylvania to Mexico in the next three years. They blame their predicament not only on Hershey management, but also on the federal government, NAFTA, and the Hershey Trust. Hershey management has not been particularly forthcoming about its plans:

If Calvin Smith Jr. is going to lose his job, he’d like to know about it.

Smith and his fellow workers at the Hershey Co. already know the company plans to reduce its workforce by 1,500 jobs during the next three years and eliminate a third of its production lines. And when employees for a new plant to be built in Monterrey, Mexico, are factored in, the actual number of job losses at the company’s U.S. and Canadian plants could total 3,000.

But what Smith and his co-workers don’t know is when the ax will drop.

“Any human being with a soul has a fear of the unknown,” said Smith, who lives in Jonestown and serves as branch president of Local 464 of the Chocolate Workers of America. “We don’t know what our future is. … We don’t want the great American chocolate factory to become the great Mexican chocolate factory.”