June 14, 2021

Hybrid working will impact younger people in very specific ways

by Nick Gallimore • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing

When considering a hybrid working method for your organisation, it’s far too easy to try think of what will work for all employees as a whole, rather than breaking this down and thinking about the different needs from certain groups of people. One example of this is age and experience. Employees from different age groups and at different levels of experience within in an organisation may have very different needs when it comes to hybrid working. Those who have been with the business, or in a similar work environment, for some time may be perfectly comfortable to work from home the majority of the week, with little help or supervision. However, this probably isn’t going to work as well for younger employees with less experience. More →

June 14, 2021

Wellbeing should be part of business strategy after lockdown, claims new report

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

A new report from the RSA and Vitality warns of the potentially serious impact on the long-term physical and mental health of employees. The authors claim that the ‘long lockdown effect’ should lead employers to see health and wellbeing as important strategic issues and place them on the company’s risk registers. With the shift to more flexible working cultures now set to continue, Healthy Hybrid, a Blueprint for Business, claims to shine a light on the health impact of successive lockdowns on homeworkers. More →

June 14, 2021

Many employees lack workplace friendships

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working lives

A new study conducted by Wildgoose, into friendship in the workplace claims the impact of working from home on personal connections in the office. One in 20 employees starting a new job while working from home have found it hard to make colleague friendships. This is equivalent to over 300,000 employees struggling to integrate and make friends in a new role. More →

June 11, 2021

Employees worlkpace health damaged by pandemic

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working lives

New research by Gartner Inc, which surveyed more than 20,000 employees between January 2020 and March 2021, claims that COVID-19 has negatively impacted the health of 55 percent of the global workforce. More →

June 10, 2021

UK organisations risk losing talent if lacking in empathetic leadership

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working culture

New research commissioned by Workplace from Facebook claims there is a growing demand from UK employees for more empathetic leaders since the pandemic. More →

June 10, 2021

Returning to the office may see a rise in family separation anxiety

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Working lives

Research from Love Energy Savings claims that nearly half of parents (46 percent) are concerned about missing key moments in their child’s development when they return to working in the office. More →

June 9, 2021

Work factors that make the drive home more dangerous

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working lives

Most road traffic accidents happen on the drive home from work, claims new research from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM), which examines which characteristics of the working day have implications for road safety and why. More →

June 9, 2021

UK job quality continues to fall short

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working lives

Job quality in the UK has been surprisingly unaffected by the Covid pandemic so far but continues to fall short on a number of key measures, according to the CIPD’s annual Good Work Index. More →

June 8, 2021

More than a third of workers in the UK are languishing

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working lives

According to research from Randstad UK, more than a third of workers told the recruiter that the pandemic had left them feeling ‘aimless’ while more than a quarter of employees said the pandemic had left them unable to concentrate properly. A third described how the pandemic had sapped their motivation. More →

June 7, 2021

The bullshit jobs theory may turn out to be, well…

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing, Working culture

The so-called ‘bullshit jobs theory’ – which argues that a large and rapidly increasing number of workers are undertaking jobs that they themselves recognise as being useless and of no social value – contains several major flaws, argue researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Birmingham. Even so, writing in Work, Employment and Society, the academics applaud its proponent, American anthropologist David Graeber, who died in September 2020, for highlighting the link between a sense of purpose in one’s job and psychological wellbeing.

May 27, 2021

For a workplace culture to flourish, sometimes you have to let go

by Cathy Hayward • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Ten years ago, the day after I left my full-time job at FM World magazine* to set up Magenta I wrote a blog called In Defence of the Office about how people feel when they’re asked to work flexibly. I talked about how many people struggle, finding that without the structure of day-to-day office life, they can’t manage their time properly, can’t discipline themselves to work and get distracted by domestic life. And they find, because perhaps they haven’t got to grips with the new technology, that they can’t locate important files or connect to that key person. They find that without the workplace they can’t work – or at least not as well. More →

May 27, 2021

Workers report worse mental health following pandemic

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing

St John Ambulance is to launch a new workplace mental health qualification as eight out of 10 (81 percent) workers say their mental health is worse or more variable as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. More →