February 12, 2019
Staff are still largely sedentary and want benefits that will help improve wellbeing
Despite the fact that a large number of employees continue to be relatively sedentary during their working day, there a growing demand for benefits that could help them achieve a healthier lifestyle, claims new research from Personal Group. More than 40 percent of employees surveyed want health insurance to be added to their workplace benefits programme; more than a third (34 percent) would like their employer to introduce discounted gym memberships, and more than one in four (28 percent) want to have access to rewards linked to physical activity. Almost a quarter (24 percent) want physical health-based incentives, such as interdepartmental step challenges or competitions added to their company-wide benefits programme. However, data shows that 70 percent of those surveyed who sit down to work only get up from their desk or workstation every hour at best, and 38 percent only move every two hours or more. Furthermore, a large proportion of employees eat at their desk or workstation on a regular basis (32 percent) and the majority choose to drive to work (60 percent) over walking (15 percent) or cycling (3.5 percent).
February 7, 2019
Maybe the time has come to shoot the workplace messenger
by Rob Harris • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace design
I spent some time with Frank Duffy recently, releasing a stream of memories of working with him, first as an employee at DEGW during the 1980s, and then as a client while directing developer Stanhope’s research programme during the 1990s. Along with his long-term business partner, John Worthington, and thinkers including Franklin Becker, Gerald Davis, Michael Joroff and Jack Tanis, to name a few, Frank helped sketch out the grand scheme of what we now call ‘workplace’. Much of the work of their successors has involved filling in the matrix of detail within the grand scheme. But further reflection has caused me to ask whether, in filling in the finer details, we have recently somehow lost our way. Are we, the ‘workplace profession’, instead of standing on giants’ shoulders, now just pandering to fads and fancies? Or, even more radical, might it be that ‘workplace’ is now done, and that we’ve run out of meaningful things to say? More →