June 25, 2021
The amount of unpaid overtime that workers around the world are doing has soared in the past year; unpaid overtime in the UK has steadily risen from six hours in 2019 to seven hours in 2020 in the advent of COVID-19, to almost eight hours in 2021, claims a new study by the ADP Research Institute, People at Work 2021: A Global Workforce View. (more…)
June 15, 2021
Women’s average working hours have taken a far smaller hit during the pandemic than men’s, with women who do not have children now working longer hours than ever before – in marked contrast to predictions of a ‘shecession’ at the start of the pandemic, according to new research by the Resolution Foundation. (more…)
June 9, 2021
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 7, 2021
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 17, 2021
Long working hours led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016, a 29 per cent increase since 2000, according to the latest estimates by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization published in Environment International today. In what the authors claim is the first global analysis of the loss of life and health associated with working long hours, WHO and ILO estimate that, in 2016, 398 000 people died from stroke and 347,000 from heart disease as a result of having worked at least 55 hours a week. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of deaths from heart disease due to long hours increased by 42 percent, and from stroke by 19 percent. (more…)
May 4, 2021
Has working at home during lockdown made people more productive or not? This has been the subject of some lively debate recently. Many companies do not routinely measure productivity. A large number will have traditionally assumed that they get the highest output when staff work longer hours or under close supervision, but remote working is clearly causing some to re-evaluate this. Major firms, for instance professional services group PwC, have been sufficiently impressed to make remote working a permanent option for their staff. (more…)
April 28, 2021
Companies that have a high-level of mutual trust between their management and employees are much more likely to have a greater economic and financial performance, according to new research from Durham University Business School. (more…)
April 14, 2021
As the UK prepares to return to normal in the coming months and industries reopen, research from The Workforce Institute at UKG claims that as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, 87 percent of UK workers have been propelled into the future of work by accelerating their digital transformation projects. Furthermore, 86 percent are enjoying the benefits of these new technologies, and 38 percent are fearful that their organisation will go back to the “old way” of doing things post-pandemic. (more…)
UK employers are the most optimistic about hiring in eight years, according to the latest 
While working from home has surged in recent months, the use of flexible working hours – such as part-time, flexi-time and compressed hours – has fallen over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic, according to new 
June 22, 2021
The office sector needs to face up to its landfill issue
by Joanna Knight • Comment, Environment, JK, Workplace design