Search Results for: charity

January 29, 2018

New RSA report highlights increasingly precarious and diverse nature of work

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace

Britain is dividing into seven new classes of worker as the gig economy grows, according to think-tank the RSA (the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). Striving, Thriving or Just About Surviving has been published to coincide with the launch of the RSA’s Future Work Centre, following RSA chief executive Matthew Taylor’s employment review for Theresa May last year. The report warns of a 30:40:30 society: while around 30 percent live comfortably, economic insecurity is “the new normal” with 40 percent just managing and a bottom 30 percent not managing to get by.

January 19, 2018

Working families at breaking point as parents buckle under the strain of overwork, claims study

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The UK’s working parents are struggling to cope with the strain of overwork – and deliberately stalling and downshifting their careers to reverse the negative impact it is having on family life, according to a new study. The 2018 Modern Families Index, published today by work life charity Working Families and Bright Horizons, reveals the stress of the modern workplace is pushing parents to breaking point, creating a ‘parenthood penalty’. According to the study, many parents are obliged to work far over their contracted hours due to increasingly intense workloads or because they feel it is expected of them.

November 10, 2017

Warnings of widening gender pay gap as women are hit hardest by low pay

by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

It is Equal Pay Day today (Friday 10^th November) – the day in the year which is marked in the calendar as the one where women start to work for free, and the campaigning charity the Fawcett Society has warned that the pay gap is actually widening for some groups of women and will now take 100 years to close, based on the current rate of change. Research by the Living Wage Foundation published to mark the day has also revealed women are hit hardest by low pay in the UK. Women make up nearly two thirds (62 percent) of workers currently struggling to make ends meet on less than the real Living Wage claims the Foundation, which amounts to 3.4 million women compared to 2.1 million men. Nearly 1/3 of all UK working women (26 percent) are still earning less than the Living Wage, compared to just 16 percent of all working men. And this trend has been the case since 2011, when KPMG and the Living Wage Foundation launched its annual Living Wage report.

October 27, 2017

Review into workplace mental health calls for change in culture and legislation

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing

The independent review into workplace mental health, commissioned by the Prime Minister in January and led by Dennis Stevenson and Paul Farmer, has published its report, Thriving at Work. The review looks at how employers can better support all employees including those with poor mental health or wellbeing remain in and thrive at work. The study found that 300,000 people with a long-term mental health problem lose their jobs each year and that poor mental health costs employers up to £42 billion a year, with an annual cost to the UK economy of up to £99 billion.
The statistics from the Department of Work and Pensions reveal that 300,000 people with a long term mental health problem lose their jobs each year. Analysis by Deloitte, commissioned by the reviewers, also reveals a demonstrable cost to employers, and quantifies for the first time how investing in supporting mental health at work is good for business and productivity. Poor mental health costs the UK economy between £74 billion and £99 billion a year. Deloitte’s analysis shows that the cost to employers is between £33 billion and £42 billion of this number. Evaluations of workplace interventions show a return to business of between £1.50 and £9 for every £1 invested.

October 10, 2017

We (still) need to talk about mental health in the workplace

by Liam Butler • Comment, Wellbeing

In recent years we have made huge strides in moving discussions around mental health into the public arena. Celebrities such as Cara Delevingne, Ryan Reynolds, Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt have all come forward to share personal stories of their struggle with mental health problems. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry have also championed mental health awareness through the Heads Together campaign, a charity that aims to help people feel more comfortable with their everyday mental wellbeing and offer practical tools to help support their friends and family. The campaign rose to prominence in the media as the 2017 Virgin Money London Marathon Charity of the Year.

October 5, 2017

Rising numbers of employees face demotion, disciplinary action or dismissal for disclosing mental health issues

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing

Most UK employees have experienced mental health issues because of work yet over a million people face negative consequences after disclosing, according to a new report, Mental Health at Work published by the charity Business in the Community in advance of World Mental Health Day. YouGov surveyed over 3,000 people in work across the UK for the study and found that three in five (60 percent) employees have experienced mental health issues in the past year because of work. Yet despite 53 percent of people feeling comfortable talking about mental health at work, a significant percentage of employees risk serious repercussions for disclosing a mental health issue. 15 percent of employees face dismissal, disciplinary action or demotion after disclosing a mental health issue at work (almost twice the number identified in similar research undertaken in 2016). Scaled up to the general working population, this could mean as many as 1.2 million people negatively affected for disclosing mental health problems.

October 3, 2017

List of the UK’s most family friendly workplaces announced

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

A list of the organisations across the UK who are ‘leading the way in building flexible, family friendly workplaces’ has been published by the charity Working Families. The list is devised by asking employers to answer questions which are scored in four key areas, to build a comprehensive picture of their flexible and family friendly working environment. These are: integration which looks at culture, attitude and how far flexibility has become embedded; policy which looks at the creation, development and deployment of flexibility; consistent practice which considers how well flexibility is supported and measurement and results which looks at the effects of flexibility on the organisation, and their ability to understand those effects.

October 2, 2017

Time to start a new culture to tackle stigma on mental wellbeing issues in the workplace

by Kate Cooper • Comment, Wellbeing

As a recent Workplace Insight story reported, UK workers are still uncomfortable about having honest conversations at work, with nearly two thirds (61 percent) feel they keep an aspect of their lives hidden in the workplace. Family difficulties (46 percent) was the most likely hidden issue at work, followed by mental health (31 percent). Talking about mental wellbeing worries to employers can be very distressing for individuals and not only make a person’s condition worse, but also, leave their career in a worse place according to our latest thought leadership research report: Mind Culture. Our latest research study shows that more than half (51 percent) of survey respondents who had confided in their line manager about a mental health issue did not receive any extra support. Even worse, 8 percent respondents faced negative consequences, including being sacked or forced out, demoted or subjected to disciplinary action.

September 19, 2017

New advice issued to small businesses on health and wellbeing in the workplace

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Although the majority (60 percent) of the UK’s private sector workforce are employed by small businesses; advice and support for employers and individuals in supporting health and wellbeing at work has generally focused on large companies. This is the impetus behind a new campaign launched by The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) which focuses on the wellbeing of small business owners and employees. Alongside Public Health England and other organisations, such as the mental health charity, Mind, FSB has also developed Wellbeing in Small Business: a short guide, which aims to provide ideas people can adopt to improve their health and wellbeing. It includes advice on how to start conversations about stress, mental health and wellbeing, tackling loneliness, managing flexible working arrangements, networking, fitness groups and improving the physical environment.

August 10, 2017

Men more likely to experience work-related mental health problems

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing

New research from mental health charity Mind claims that men are twice as likely to have mental health problems due to their job, compared to problems outside of work. One in three men (32 per cent) attribute poor mental health to their job, compared to one in seven men (14 per cent) who say it’s problems outside of work. Women, on the other hand, say that their job and problems outside of work are equal contributing factors; one in five women say that their job is the reason for their poor mental health, the same as those who say problems outside of work is to blame (19 per cent).

June 11, 2017

Bisley’s classic MultiDrawer recognised with a Design Guild Mark ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Furniture, Workplace design

Bisley’s iconic MultiDrawer, one of the office’s most recognisable products for 60 years, has been awarded a Design Guild Mark, recognising its timeless qualities in design, functionality and quality. Now approaching six decades from its launch, the MultiDrawer has never lost its appeal, becoming an icon in storage. Almost 2 million of the diminutive cabinets have been sold, helping the brand name Bisley become part of the lexicon in the German language to describe storage cabinets, such is the reach of this British born icon. Created by Freddy Brown, founder of Bisley and an experienced metal worker, the MultiDrawer was first made in 1958. The Bisley factory was expert in metalwork having evolved from car body repairs, then making metal waste paper bins and, during the war, designing and making the large metal containers that were dropped by parachute into war zones to deliver supplies. The Design Guild Mark is awarded by The Furniture Makers’ Company, the furnishing industry’s charity, in order to drive excellence and raise the profile of British design and innovation. The award recognises the highest standards in the design of furniture in volume production, by the best designers working in Britain or British designers working abroad.

June 8, 2017

Whether you choose order or chaos depends on what you want to achieve

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

Chaos gets a bit of a bad rap when it comes to running a business. Yet as Greg Lindsay highlighted in his interview with Insight a while back, chaos is something that many organisations should actively try to harness as a way of fostering the creativity they claim to desire. Certain structures, be they cultural silos, traditions, professional demarcations or the physical walls and storeys of a building inhibit chaos and so restrict interactions and creative processes. So, if you want to achieve what many businesses say they want to achieve, they need to introduce a little anarchy. We’ve known about or suspected the links between harnessed chaos and creativity for a long time. In his 1883 novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, writes, “I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” The same idea has been expressed in many ways, but few of them quite so poetic.