UK employees working £4.2 billion unpaid overtime every week

UK employees working £4.2 billion unpaid overtime every week

unpaid overtimeThe amount of unpaid overtime that workers around the world are doing has soared in the past year; unpaid overtime in the UK has steadily risen from six hours in 2019 to seven hours in 2020 in the advent of COVID-19, to almost eight hours in 2021, claims a new study by the ADP Research Institute, People at Work 2021: A Global Workforce View. More →

‘WFH paranoia’: Half of UK workers send emails late at night or early morning

‘WFH paranoia’: Half of UK workers send emails late at night or early morning

paranoiaOne-in-five (20 percent) UK workers now have their work instant messaging app on their personal mobile phone, as WFH paranoia sets in, according to new research by Furniture At Work. More →

Scottish homeworkers struggle with work-life balance and excessive workloads

Scottish homeworkers struggle with work-life balance and excessive workloads

ScottishThe significant shift to homeworking as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed deep differences in job quality across the Scottish workforce, according to CIPD Scotland’s annual Working Lives Scotland report. More →

Winning the war for talent in the post-pandemic world

Winning the war for talent in the post-pandemic world

pandemicThe Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack Technologies, Inc., has released a new study that unpacks how 15 months of pandemic work has shifted employee expectations. More →

HR should play a more strategic role in business resilience

HR should play a more strategic role in business resilience

HR and resilienceAlmost every organisation now knows it must become more resilient as the economy emerges from the pandemic. As well as coping with crises and global events, organisations must excel in the face of the many less high-profile disruptions that hit an organisation – from supply chain bottlenecks to shifts in demand and sudden skills shortages. HR departments have a major role to play in this but to do so successfully requires a change of mindset, taking a step back from traditional administrative functions and reviewing the entire business as if they were an outsider. More →

Research claims ’emerging class divide’ in who gets flexible working

Research claims ’emerging class divide’ in who gets flexible working

class divideNew polling in a report published by the TUC claims an emerging class divide as some workers opt to keep working from home whereas those who can’t work from home have little access to any forms of flexible working. More →

Is it time to ban out-of-hours emails?

Is it time to ban out-of-hours emails?

The global pandemic has blurred the lines between home and work for millions of people around the world. Where once there was a clear distinction between being on and off duty, the demands of remote working and ever-presence of smartphones has created an ‘always on’ culture in many organisations. The trend has led to a number organisations in the UK to now call for a ban on out-of-hours emails in order to alleviate pressures on employees mental health. But is this really necessary, or even logistically possible, for the new world of work? We asked four leading experts for their thoughts. More →

Cities could be more important post-pandemic, not less, suggests report

Cities could be more important post-pandemic, not less, suggests report

Manchester, one of the UK's great citiesParadoxically, more in-person work environments and the concentration of jobs in cities could be a medium- to long-term impact of the pandemic’s shift to remote working, suggests Citi GPS Technology at Work: The Coming of the Post-Production Society, a report produced by Citi and the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. The report cites the automation of manufacturing and clerical tasks alongside the potential for professional services jobs that can be done remotely to be done cheaper overseas as the start of a foundational shift in developed economies. The future of work in these countries, it suggests, could be based largely on innovation, exploration and creative thinking which require face-to-face interaction and geographic proximity. More →

Working from home has increased UK working hours, but at what cost?

Working from home has increased UK working hours, but at what cost?

hoursResearch from Ezra claims that UK employees are working longer hours than ever thanks to remote working. However, the lack of structured office hours is having a detrimental effect on employee work-life balance and wellbeing and, therefore, the quality of their work. More →

Suburban commercial property markets outperform City Centres for first time in a decade

Suburban commercial property markets outperform City Centres for first time in a decade

suburbanResearch from The Instant Group claims that suburban commercial property markets are outperforming City Centres for the first time in over ten years. The increased demand is largely being driven by those who no longer want to work from home, but don’t want to be back in larger cities. More →

UK working parents concern about future linked to final restrictions lifting

UK working parents concern about future linked to final restrictions lifting

parentsNew research from Working Families claims nearly a third of working parents (29 percent) are concerned their caring responsibilities will make them more vulnerable to redundancy when furlough ends, after juggling work and childcare through the pandemic. More →

People have picked up bad cybersecurity habits while working from home

People have picked up bad cybersecurity habits while working from home

cybersecurityA new report from Tessian claims that most IT leaders (56 percent) believe their employees have picked up bad cybersecurity behaviours since working from home. As organisations make plans for the post-pandemic hybrid workforce, Tessian’s Back to Work Security Behaviours report highlights how security behaviours have shifted during the past year. More →