June 5, 2020

Vast majority neglecting breaks when working from home

by George Eltringham • Flexible working, News

A new study claims that “microbreaks” have decreased for 95 percent of employees during home working, as lockdown sees people glued to our desks more ever before. The ‘Working from home’ study, conducted by Wildgoose, asked employees from 133 companies throughout the UK how their working day differs at home compared to in the office, whether they wanted to continue working from home after lockdown has finished, and how companies could improve home working practices. More →

June 5, 2020

Brits are among the most fervent remote workers during the coronavirus crisis

by George Eltringham • Flexible working, News

A new survey by CASS Business School, IESE Business School and HR Service Provider SD Worx claims that two thirds (65 percent) of British employees are working remotely during the lockdown. Almost half (47 percent) of the new batch of remote workers had never worked remotely before the COVID-19 crisis. The research focussed on salaried white-collar workers and covered six countries: Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. More →

June 4, 2020

Wellbeing at work was falling even before the lockdown

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

Work has made our wellbeing worse over the last two years, according to new research from the CIPD. A survey of more than 6,000 workers found the number of people saying work has a positive impact on their mental health has fallen from 44 per cent to 35 per cent. Not only does this highlight that employers haven’t done enough to tackle the issue to date, according to the CIPD, it raises concerns about the further impact COVID-19 could have on people’s wellbeing, given many are worried about contracting the virus at work, losing their job or bearing the brunt of other cutbacks by their employer. More →

June 4, 2020

Right, said Fred. Here I am again

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing

If there has been an underlying driver of workplace thinking over the past several decades, it has been a rejection of the principles of scientific management. These begat the idea of the office as a factory, subject to the same rigid times and places of work and the same culture of process, efficiency and productivity. This made a pantomime villain of its key figure Frederick Taylor. The worst adjective you could use to describe a working culture was Taylorist. More →

June 3, 2020

The second wave of digital transformation after lockdown

by Anna King • News, Technology

The reimagining of business in the digital age to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements has been happening at varying speed for decades. The coronavirus pandemic is impacting digital transformation in a range of ways. More →

June 3, 2020

Data is changing the role of the workplace and HR

by Shaun Guyver • Comment, Property, Workplace

Business leaders have been heavily dependent on HR, real estate, and technology functions working together to help their organisation adapts to this new world of work during the pandemic. Ensuring personal safety, promoting wellbeing, encouraging collaboration, and maintaining efficient service delivery will never be more important than in the coming months. The challenge facing CRE leaders is how to advise on the appropriate range of workspaces and hygiene standards to allow organisations and their people to thrive, and how to cut through the complexity of accessing and interpreting data to achieve this. More →

June 2, 2020

Working life set to become more precarious and unequal

by Neil Franklin • News, Working culture, Working lives

The future of work is likely to be even more precarious and unequal, according to a new research review from academics at Durham University Business School, Kings College Business School and University Paris-Dauphine. Dr. Jeremy Aroles, Assistant Professor in Organisation Studies at Durham University Business School, alongside colleagues, Dr. Nathalie Mitev (King’s College) and Professor François?Xavier de Vaujany (University Paris-Dauphine), reviewed a wide range of research related to working life new work practices and summarised this into a number of predictions for the future of work. This research review paper was published in the journal ‘New Technology, Work and Employment’, which is open access throughout June. More →

June 2, 2020

Embracing emotion and empathy to drive us beyond this crisis

by Riccarda Zezza • Comment, Workplace

We’re currently living and working through some of the most intense, challenging conditions many of us will have had to endure – and we all will empathise that it can be particularly difficult to manage your working life. A recent study in Harvard Business Review found that tiredness, fear and panic all reduce our ability to think clearly, to be able to manage our relationships effectively, to focus on the right priorities, and to be able to make intelligent and informed decisions. More →

June 1, 2020

Zoom fatigue and the new era of online meetings

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology

When it comes to that annual announcement the publishers of dictionaries like to make about their Word of the Year, 2020 will have only one candidate. But if there were a shortlist, you can bet that Zoom would be on it. The uptake of Zoom and other apps to help people connect during the lockdown has been remarkable. Numbers emerge each week of the scale of growth, but they’re instantly out of date and probably meaningless anyway. We could make up something like there having been a 2,300% increase since March 23rd, and it might as well be true. More →

June 1, 2020

The new era of work will embrace an ecosystem of spaces

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Property, Workplace design

The results of a new survey on people’s experience of working from home during lockdown will accelerate the shift from primarily office-based work to a “total workplace ecosystem”, based on offices, homes and other locations including digital space. That is the conclusion of a new report from Cushman & Wakefield which analysed responses from more than 40,000 individuals from around thirty companies across nearly twenty sectors. More →

May 29, 2020

The role of workplace professionals in the new era of work

by Kelly Bream • Comment, Flexible working, Property

Many consequences of the COVID-19 crisis are immediately apparent to workplace managers and users. Potentially less obvious, are the fundamental changes to the job roles involved in managing commercial property, both within occupier businesses and property management teams alike. More →

May 29, 2020

Organisations still adjusting to reality of `gig economy`

by Neil Franklin • News

A new report from Aon claims that the so-called gig economy will continue to flourish but many employers are still adjusting to its realities. Using research from HR and gig workers across Europe, the report, Gig Economy: Financial Security or Greater Control, claims that 26 percent of European HR directors believe their workforces will have 51-75 percent of gig workers in five years’ time, while 18 percent of UK HRDs believe 75 percent or more of their workforce will be made up of contractors in 5 years’ time. Nearly all HRDs believe providing health and benefits packages would improve gig worker recruitment (94 percent), engagement (93 percent), productivity (88 percent) and retention (95 percent). More →