October 2, 2020

What (nearly) everybody gets wrong about work and the coronavirus

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

You’ve probably read and heard dozens, or even hundreds, of different viewpoints about the effect of the pandemic on the world of work. Most of them (until recently perhaps) have dished up one of the two binary options as part of a zero-sum game. Many are based on hackneyed ideas and expressed as clichés. More →

September 28, 2020

People still love the office, but would prefer one closer to home

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

A new survey from IWG claims that commuting remains the biggest barrier to the return to office life post-Covid, with only 8 percent of British workers now prepared to travel more than an hour to get to work. In the short term, workers are set to follow Government guidance by continuing to work from home, in the longer-term, six in ten (57 percent) want an office that is closer to home and an even greater proportion (77 percent) say that a more conveniently located office is a must-have for their next job move. More →

September 24, 2020

Employees grow increasingly concerned about prospect of burnout

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working lives

In a survey of employees and business leaders across 11 nations, The Workforce Institute at UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group) claims only a fraction of employees (20 percent) felt their organisation met their needs during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is a silver lining: a third of employees globally (33 percent) say they trust their employer more now than before the pandemic began because of how organisations reacted. More →

September 21, 2020

Time to get on board with the psychological effects of working from home

by Jörg Bakschas • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing

It almost goes without saying that this year has seen a rapid shift towards remote working, with many companies now moving to a flexible working model. From a business perspective, many employees are proving that they can still get their work done working from home. But what is the psychological impact of this? And are companies doing enough to research and prevent any negative psychological effects of remote working? More →

September 7, 2020

Homeworkers supporting local economies through Covid-19

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News

While city centres are taking time to recover, there’s better news elsewhere, suggests Vodafone research into small business employees. Local economies are benefitting from the rise in homeworking, with 25 percent of homeworkers spending at least once a day at their local coffee shop or café. The research, which surveyed 1,003 small business employees, also claims that working from home has not hindered Brits’ productivity, with 40 percent of workers putting in an average of 642 additional hours, equal to 26 extra days, since lockdown began back in March. More →

August 28, 2020

A new social contract can improve the everyday experience of work

by Mark Spratt • Comment, Workplace

It’s not happening quickly enough for some and too slowly for others, but most companies are in the midst of managing a return to work and grappling with a very different post COVID-19 world and what it means for employees. HR professionals are paying close attention to how well employees are faring and are looking to build new forms of employee care into company cultures and values. But maybe there is something more they can do to foster employee trust and safety? More →

August 20, 2020

Working from home and the future of work. How quaint

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

In 1962, a professor of communication studies called Everett Rogers came up with the principle we call diffusion of innovation. It’s a familiar enough notion, widely taught and works by plotting the adoption of new ideas and products over time as a bell curve, before categorising groups of people along its length as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. It’s a principle bound up with human capital theory and so its influence has endured for over 50 years, albeit in a form compressed by our accelerated proliferation of ideas. It may be useful, but it lacks a third dimension in the modern era. That is, a way of describing the numbers of people who are in one category but think they are in another.

August 20, 2020

Job clusters and urban sprawl will become evident post lockdown

by James Lennox • Cities, Features, Flexible working

For most of us the experience of working from home this year has, on balance, been positive – enough that it may well become the norm after the COVID-19 crisis ends. But modelling by Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies shows there will be costs alongside the personal benefits, with more urban sprawl, job clusters with a flight to the biggest cities and greater economic disparities between regions. More →

August 14, 2020

People increasingly confident about return to offices

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

Half (49 percent) of employed British adults feel positive about the prospect of returning to their place of work after lockdown, with less than one in five (18 percent) feeling negative, an Aviva study claims. The findings paint a relatively positive picture for businesses that have supported their people through lockdown, such as regularly communicating with workers and taking necessary steps to manage the risk of infection in the workplace. However, where businesses have not embraced risk management and prevention strategies, employees may decide not to return to work at all. More →

August 12, 2020

Casting a spell on the future of work and workplaces

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

There was a time we used to talk with dismay about the Japanese phenomenon of intense social distancing known as hikikomori. We would consider with horror the isolation, lack of engagement with society, poor mental health and loneliness of the people who had almost completely withdrawn to their rooms. Those poor bastards locked up in enclosed spaces linked to the outside world only by screens. More →

July 16, 2020

Flexible working set to double once pandemic crisis is over

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

New research from the CIPD claims that employers now expect the proportion of people working from home on a regular basis will increase to 37 percent compared to 18 percent before the pandemic. Employers also expect the proportion of staff who work from home all the time to rise to 22 percent post pandemic compared to 9 percent before lockdown measures started to be imposed. More →

July 15, 2020

Business leaders remain confident about post lockdown growth

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

CEOs and the self-employed are cautiously optimistic about post-lockdown growth, claims a new report. As the country begins to emerge from lockdown, new research from The Institute of Leadership & Management ‘Life after lockdown: future of work’, explores the predicted changes to the workplace following the Covid-19 pandemic. More →